Image talk:Muhammad-Letter-To-Heraclius.jpg

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This image was nominated for deletion on 2006 August 11. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

[edit] Discussion from IFD

• Image:Muhammad-Letter-To-Heraclius.jpg (talk | delete)
  

Uploaded by Ibrahimfaisal (notify | contribs). CV. The image was scanned from Khan, Dr. Majid Ali (1998). Muhammad The Final Messenger. Islamic Book Service, New Delhi, 110002 (India). ISBN 81-85738-25-4. Neither the author of the original photo in the book, nor the copyright status of the image are known. The uploader claims unique historic photograph justification for fair use; however, this claim is wrong because if the document is authentic, then the photograph is not unique: it can be done by anyone, who has a permission to photograph this document at the archive where it is stored. Pecher ^Talk 14:35, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

• • Please read the fair-use-tag used by me. The tag so much correctly describe the image status, that I think it could not be better described. If the tag is saying exactly what the image is and the tag is provided by wikipedia then why the image can be deleted? Also please read the detailed [source comments of mine at the image page]. Remember the image is (more than 14) centuries old. The tag is {{HistoricPhoto}} --- Faisal 14:58, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
  • It may be ineligible for copyright ... I'm still not particularly comfortable with just copying images from a book, even though it is almost certainly ineligible for copyright. BigDT 15:57, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
    • If it's just a "slavish copy" of the original document, then there can be no copyright held by the photographer, so we should be fine: the image is in the public domain. It would be nice if we could get a non-green image without a caption, though. —Bkell (talk) 16:14, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
  • An important thing to note is that there is no evidence from scholarly sources that the document on the image is authentic. Most likely, it's a forgery by the book's author who thus obviously holds rights to this work. Very few authentic sources are available from that place and time. The whole list of such sources is in Historiography of early Islam, and this letter is not on the list. Pecher ^Talk 17:05, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Ah, well, that changes a lot, if true. —Bkell (talk) 17:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Per request as above, I've made a black & white version of the image and cropped out the caption. Image may be viewed at Image:B&W-MuhammadToHeraclius.jpg. If the image we are discussing needs to be deleted, then so does this image. Use as you will. --Durin 18:04, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Thanks for the great work Durin. I have replaced the image that I have with your image. Hence now the above image is available in B&W format without any caption. I hope it will satisfy the copyright issues. Durin can you please delete the new created image of yours? Now as far as the Mr. Pecher is concern then please do not make him God. How can he say something and a publish work could become null. I could try to find other places where it is published but why I must waste my time to satisfied Pecher unjustified demand. Instead, I can use that same time to work on wikipedia articles. I hope you will give more respect to published work (and wikipedia reliable resources policy) than Pecher without any merits saying. Listen many books mentioned that Muhammad write letter to that person (I can give references). Now tell me what a writer will achieve to forge a letter and put in his book when other books say that such a letter was written by Muhammad. I can admit that he might be forging only if he twisting a historical event by presenting that picture. Otherwise commonsense says that any writer cannot forge a picture and put his credibility in danger for nothing. I rest my case. ---- Faisal 18:36, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
      • Well, converting the image to black and white and removing the caption doesn't change anything about the copyright. The question, apparently, is whether this letter was created by Muhammad centuries ago, or created by the author of the book in 1998. I am no expert by any means, so I can't offer any opinions on this matter. If it is a forgery, however, it would technically be under copyright, since it was created in the 1990s. On the other hand, the author of the book is unlikely to claim copyright on it, because a copyright claim would be valid only if the letter were a forgery. So we can probably assume that this image is in the public domain and use it to illustrate an appropriate article; but if there really is a debate on its authenticity, that should be mentioned in the article, with references, of course. If it later turns out that this letter was indeed forged, then we will have to re-investigate the copyright status. —Bkell (talk) 18:51, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
      • Do you have any other sources authenticating this particular letter? There are plenty of hoaxes that have been published where the modern author has pretended to have found an ancient document. Sometimes it is for fame. Sometimes it is to advance his or her beliefs. Consider Talmud Jmmanuel - it is a 20th century forgery published to give credence to UFOs. Just look at False document and take your pick - there are plenty of times where people have forged documents. Is there any evidence, separate from the author of this one book, that can support or refute the claims that this is a copy of a letter Muhammad wrote? BigDT 18:55, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
        • No I do not have other source with the picture but I have other sources saying that such a letter was indeed written. But that does not mean that other sources does not exist. I do not think that I would like to use my time on this anymore and will like to spend hours searching in library for other sources (for no reason). If someone do not want to assume good faith, which is one of the important aspect of wikipedia then it is a useless debate. Also it is a published work. I am not able to find any prove that if author really have got any fame or alter facts by publishing that picture. Having said that if someone still wants to delete it then so be it. --- Faisal 20:42, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
          • The policy to assume good faith means only that we should assume that other Wikipedia editors are not acting maliciously. It does not mean that we should assume that what they write is correct, or that we should assume that any one source is correct. If there really is a debate on the authenticity of this letter, then someone should write something about this debate, with references. If there is no debate, then I don't see what the problem is. —Bkell (talk) 21:30, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
            • I googled various combinations of the author's name, "hoax", "forgery", and the name of the recipient of the letter and couldn't find anything claiming it is a hoax. At any rate, I'm now inclined to at least believe this is enough of a content dispute that it is beyond the scope of IFD to try and figure out the veracity of historic documents. BigDT 22:25, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
              • Actually, the onus to prove the authenticity of the image is with the book's author and then with the uploader; we won't be able to find any accusations of hoax simply because the author is a very minor figure, not recognized as an authority in the academe. Unless the author is able to provide references as to where he got the original copy of this letter, we'll have to assume it's a forgery and thus copyrighted. I've read quite a few academic sources on the early Islam, none of them suggests that the original of this letter has preserved. It's difficult to prove something in the negative (i.e., that the original document does not exist); therefore, we'll need to have proofs from reliable academic sources that it does exist. Pecher ^Talk 20:17, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Not deleted. This discussion is beyond the scope of IFD. I've tagged it with {{PD-old}}, but its authenticity should be debated at Image talk:Muhammad-Letter-To-Heraclius.jpg or Talk:Muhammad. howcheng {chat} 16:42, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

So this author implies that Mohammad could write. Why memorize the Qur'an, then? --217.9.225.146 08:21, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Other could write if not Muhammad. Then they have not written Quran and memorizing it? Many people around the world who could read and write still memorize it? why? I leave it on you to think. --- ابراهيم 00:15, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks like pretty much everyone here suspect this is fake.Opiner 23:35, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Hence proved it is fake. --- ابراهيم 23:57, 22 September 2006 (UTC)