Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance/Archive 4

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Introduction sentence

There seems to be some debate and low-level edit warring regarding how the introduction sentence should be formulated. Technically, the name of the article is "Franco-Mongol alliance", and therefore it is better to start with "The Franco-Mongol alliance is...". But my main point concerns the meaning being conveyed: "Many attempts were made towards forming a Franco-Mongol alliance..." expresses only one point of view ("attempts towards an alliance"), and only a part of the sources (about half of those gathered at this point). There is an obvious better choice which expresses both point of views:

"A Franco-Mongol alliance, or attempts towards such an alliance, occurred between..."

I don't see how we could better represent a neutral point of view, and maintain a good balance between the arguments. In view of the Wikipedia policy to maintain balance and NPOV, and in view of the sources, I trust this is the only acceptable choice. PHG 17:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I and Adam Bishop like the phrasing of "Many attempts were made towards forming a Franco-Mongol alliance between the mid-1200s and the early 1300s, starting around the time of the Seventh Crusade." In fact, if we can stick with that wording, then I'm willing to accept the article title as "Franco-Mongol alliance", how's that for a compromise? --Elonka 17:50, 20 September 2007 (UTC)


  • I am amazed... Isn't it quite unethical that you can consider a historical definition the subject of a bargain? Are that your standards Elonka? "Franco-Mongol alliance" is a well-known and published expression, your opinion or acceptance regarding its usage is completely irrelevant. As User:Srnec was saying, you really just act as if you owned the articles around here, but, sorry this isn't the reality. A scholarly expression can stand in its own right, and your refusal or acceptance of it (especially under a bargain!) is totally irrelevant.
  • The introduction sentence you propose ("Many attempts were made towards forming a Franco-Mongol alliance...") is not acceptable. It expresses only one point of view (yours, and possibly Adam's), and only a part of the sources (about half of those gathered at this point). It is POV and doesn't take into account the other half of the sources which consider the Mongol alliance as fact. "A Franco-Mongol alliance, or attempts towards such an alliance, occurred between..." is the only NPOV choice, combining both views, and I will reinstate it until a good reason for doing otherwise will appear (and not a cheap bargain please...).
  • You claim you have "a consensus" for introducing this one-sided sentence (your last revert): this is a total mis-representation (again!): two opinions against one has never been a consensus. You consistently take liberties with sources (all the references you destroyed, your mis-representation of Tyerman, God's War (above)): please follow sources faithfully and avoid bending source material to fit your point of view.
  • I think the reality is that you've now lost your argument against this article: its title is legitimate, it is highly referenced, and it reflects in a balanced and detailed manner the reality of the Mongol alliance. PHG 18:51, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
I think Elonka's proposal makes the most sense...since, as you say, half the sources say there was an alliance and half say there was not, it would be unacceptable to claim that it did in fact exist. You are doing the same thing you are accusing Elonka of doing. Adam Bishop 19:33, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
I think the current (Elonka/Bishop) version of the lead sentence is fine, however I am opposed to renaming the article. To clarify: whether or not an alliance ever existed for any period of time (and I think the definition of alliance is sufficiently broad to allow that brief alliances did in fact exist, at least I have read that there were attempts at coordinated attacks on a mutual enemy between the Crusaders and the Mongols, which is an alliance by some [broad] standards) is not relevant to the article title, since this article discusses the alliance whether it existed or not. Just like an article on the chimera would discuss the chimera, even though no chimera ever existed. (In that case "chimera" would refer to an imaginary thing, but still a thing.) This article discusses Crusader-Mongol relations as attempts to establish an alliance, so the title is fine by my standards. Srnec 01:53, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
It is just a matter of objectivity, NPOV and logic. If some sources speak about attempts, and some about an actual alliance, both views deserve to be reflected. There is no reason to favour one over the other. It is just a matter of respecting available sources. My proposal puts forward both scholarly interpretations, and therefore is necessarily better than a proposal that only favours one side: it is the de facto compromise solution: "A Franco-Mongol alliance, or attempts towards such an alliance, occurred between..." PHG 05:21, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Let me get this straight. We have three editors (myself, Adam Bishop, Srnec) that like version A, but one editor (you) who likes version B. And so therefore you are saying that the logical compromise is to use version B. Um, no. --Elonka 06:55, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Am I the only one upholding Wikipedia's NPOV policy here? 3:1 is clearly way not enough to overturn this encyclopedia's policy for balanced point of view and equal representation of major sources. Neither is it enough to sustain your claim of a "consensus". Again Elonka, your approach is quite disputable for an editor of high-standing. Voting (especially such minuscule-scale voting) has never been reason enough to overturn Wikipedia' editorial ethics. And NPOV standards are not subject to micro-votes anyway. As both views are well published, both deserve representation. End of the story. PHG 07:07, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
The consensus seems pretty clear. Adam Bishop, Srnec, and myself (Elonka) like the wording of "Many attempts were made towards forming a Franco-Mongol alliance between the mid-1200s and the early 1300s, starting around the time of the Seventh Crusade." PHG wants a different wording, and continues to strongly disagree with everyone else, and edit war about it. Now, we've discussed this extensively, looked at alternatives, listened respectfully to PHG's objections, filed an Request for Comment, and even offered mediation, but PHG has rejected that option. So, there seems no alternative, but to declare consensus. PHG, your objections are noted. Now, can we please stop edit-warring about this, and move on to something else? --Elonka 20:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
3 against 1 has never been called a consensus Elonka. You are not respecting even the most basic Wikipedia rules, just to try to make your point of view prevail. PHG 20:41, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
PHG, I think the point is, that your point of view is not prevailing. Please see Wikipedia:Tendentious editing. --Elonka 21:31, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Maybe my point of view is not prevailing at this point (to judge from the microcosm of 3-4 editors), but it is highly sourced from reputable sources nonetheless. Statements from reputable sources cannot just be dismissed because of a 3 to 1 argument. And 3 to 1 has never been a consensus on Wikipedia. PHG 14:20, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
Based on the above opinions, the clear consensus version (noting that PHG continues to disagree) is: Many attempts were made towards forming a Franco-Mongol alliance between the mid-1200s and the early 1300s, starting around the time of the Seventh Crusade. --Elonka 16:36, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I would also like to express a preference for the Elonka/Adam Bishop introduction. The analysis of scholarly sources on this page seems to lean strongly to that being the overwhelming view of scholarly historical sources. Decision making on Wikipedia is made based on agreement by its editors. Consensus is important. I think PHG must do more to recognise that his opinion on how this article should read is a minority one. Many editors disagree and that he really needs to concede some ground given the arguments made. Compromise is a good thing - not something to be looked upon as a threat. The view that such an alliance occured seems to be a minority one - definitely worthy of discussion in the article, but it shouldn't be given the same standing as the view that no such alliance materialised. If it is, then that would be giving that interpretation undue weight. A reader of the article who knows nothing about the topic, should be given the understanding that there is one prevailing view among scholars of the period, and a different opinion backed by only a few. WjBscribe 18:48, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, I cannot subscribe to the view that the "Alliance" view is a minority one. It is supported by numerous mainstream scholars (User:PHG/Alliance). Elonka's list is partly right, and partly fabricated (for example, her presentation of Amin Maaloof as describing the Alliance only as "a dream" was clearly abusive when I checked the source). According to Wikipedia:NPOV policy, both views should be represented, and the standard intro phrase for that would be "An alliance, or attempts towards an alliance...". On our mediation, the mediator, who went into the details, has clearly said also that in his view both theories should be presented and that source-counting was pointless (Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Franco-Mongol alliance#On track), and he favoured my "An alliance, or attempts towards an alliance,..." approach, so Elonka cannot say that she has a consensus. I will not spend my time lobbying on Wikipedia to try to get votes the way Elonka does to claim a 4:1 or 4:2 (2 being myself +Srnec) or a 4:3 (3 being myself +Srnec + our mediator User:Tariqabjotu) position is a "consensus". It is sufficient for me that both views are expressed by mainstream historians, and that Wikipedia policies therefore allows for the representation of both. Regards PHG 12:18, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
For the record, no, our mediator has not favoured PHG's version, and has corrected PHG on this matter at his talkpage:[1] So the current situation is that we have all editors with an opinion (WjBscribe, Srnec, Elonka, Adam Bishop) liking "Many attempts were made towards forming a Franco-Mongol alliance between the mid-1200s and the early 1300s, starting around the time of the Seventh Crusade." Except for PHG, whose objections are noted. Anyone else have an opinion? --Elonka 15:30, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
(followup) Now that we've gotten through the holidays, I'd like to take another look at getting this article cleaned up, condensed/split, and polished up for another run at FA. I see that the first sentence had crept to a different version from what was agreed in the above discussion, so I went ahead and updated it. If anyone has comments or concerns, and agrees or disagrees, please feel free to post here. Thanks, Elonka 21:14, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Elonka. You seem to be forgetting the result of our mediation which was for the introduction sentence: "A Franco-Mongol alliance, or at least attempts to form such an alliance, was the objective of...". You specifically gave your agreement to that sentence, so let's respect what was said. Regards PHG (talk) 22:25, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
PHG, you are seriously distorting things. The version of the lead sentence that was in the article was not what we had agreed to in mediation (though I see that you have since changed it). Further, anything agreed to in mediation is voluntary, not compulsory. Mediation does not override talkpage consensus to take a different action, and participants in a mediation are free to change their minds based on later review. My opinion, and that of WJBscribe, Srnec, Adam Bishop, and now Aramgar,[2] is that there was no alliance. Aramgar hasn't commented on specific wording yet, but based on his comment below, it would seem (Aramgar, please correct me if I'm wrong) that the most appropriate lead sentence for this article is "Many attempts were made towards forming a Franco-Mongol alliance between the mid-1200s and the early 1300s, starting around the time of the Seventh Crusade. --Elonka 22:33, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
The revision Elonka made on January 12 (here) best represents scholarly consensus despite all the good faith efforts of the primary editor. This article would be more appropriately called Franco-Mongol diplomacy. Aramgar (talk) 22:55, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks Aramgar. I went ahead and changed the article back to the consensus version of the intro sentence. PHG, can you please respect the consensus here? We have a lot of other things we need to discuss, and I don't want to get bogged down on just this one thing. I really feel that if we can just get past a few more disagreements, we can have an FA-class article here. --Elonka 01:42, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
This is to confirm that the introduction sentence agreed on at the mediation between Elonka and myself was: "A Franco-Mongol alliance, or at least attempts to form such an alliance, was the objective of..." (I had only forgotten the "at least" in the original wording). The mediation was made after the various user comments on the introduction phrase, and was agreed to by Elonka and myself as a compromise. I believe the results of the mediation should not be disregarded and should to be abided to in good faith. Expert Wiki-opinion on the subject would be appreciated. PHG (talk) 11:10, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
PHG, as I've said before, an earlier mediation does not trump talkpage consensus. Mediation is voluntary, and participants are free to change their minds. My opinion, and the opinion of every single other editor in this discussion (except you), is that the wording of the intro sentence should be "Many attempts were made towards forming a Franco-Mongol alliance between the mid-1200s and the early 1300s, starting around the time of the Seventh Crusade. If you disagree with this, you are welcome to continue discussing it and trying to convince other editors, but you must absolutely cease edit-warring about it. --Elonka 18:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
The mediation (November 2007) post-dates most of the discussions there had been about this phrase. A compromise sentence was found between you and me in a formal mediation, after something like 2 months of discussion, and you specifically said that you were finally happy with "A Franco-Mongol alliance, or at least attempts to form such an alliance, was the objective of...". I think it is a basic rule of behaviour that you should abide by your own words and commitments. You cannot just erase what you formally agreeed to, simply because you feel you might have a new opportunity to promote your original point-of-view. Should Wikipedia remember that your commitments have no value? Regards PHG (talk) 06:02, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Here is the text of Elonka's agreement for the introduction sentence at Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Franco-Mongol alliance/Archive#The mediation is here on November 14th, 2007:

A Franco-Mongol alliance, or at least attempts towards such an alliance, was the objective of diplomatic endeavors between the Franks and the Mongols, starting around the time of the Seventh Crusade. PHG 06:44, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I like that version.  :) --Elonka 07:14, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Concluded with agreement on the following opening sentence:

A Franco-Mongol alliance, or at least attempts towards such an alliance, was the objective of diplomatic endeavors between the Franks and the Mongols, starting around the time of the Seventh Crusade.

-- tariqabjotu 19:18, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

PHG (talk) 04:30, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

PHG, I don't think it's helpful for you to be copy/pasting comments that were made months ago, when the editors involved (such as, um, me) have clearly indicated different opinions since then.
In any case, this conversation seems to now be being continued in the below thread #Introduction sentence (part 2), so let's continue discussion there. --Elonka 00:22, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Further musings

I had some time to peruse Tyerman's book more fully; I see that this was already sorted out above, but he even continually talks about the lack of an alliance despite all the attempts, and how bad an alliance would have been if there had been one. I would also like, again, to caution against using Maalouf's book as a piece of historical scholarship. I'm sure Maalouf is a nice guy but he's no historian. He's a novelist and the book reflects that; he's not making stuff up but, well, would you want to use this Wikipedia article as a reference? No, of course not. It's the same idea. (This problem isn't specific to the Mongol articles, it's also an ongoing problem with James Reston and the Richard I article, for one example.) I've also been trying to figure out how PHG's various edits fit together. The latest argument about Bohemond is contradicted here and in Bohemond's article. I'm also not sure why this all hinges on Demurger, whose reputation perhaps rests on PHG's constant insistence that he is reputable - but more importantly, the footnote given for Bohemond's presence in Baghdad says nothing about Bohemond being in Baghdad. PHG, are you just misreading Demurger?

There are lots of other fishy statements. Aside from the bald plagiarism, authors who wrote generations apart are made to agree with each other when one is obviously just getting his info from the other. Or they are made to agree when they actually disagree. Like, Runciman is an okay source, if he's the only one and it's a little article. Otherwise, no. There is a continuum in these sorts of things - books just don't appear out of thin air, everyone builds on previous scholarship, and to use everything no matter how outdated is completely unnecessary. Or there is superfluous information which has nothing to do with the Mongols (Edward I for example).

So that's my impression after finally taking five minutes to have a look at it. Sorry for stirring up the debate again, if that is what happens. I think I'll go back to fixing the Siege of Maarat article where I am more at home with that period of history... Adam Bishop (talk) 18:10, 3 January 2008 (UTC)


Hi Adam. I have Demurger's book (Jacques de Molay) in front of me, and it says on page 55:

"The Count of Tripoli and Prince of Antioch (the two state had the same ruler), and the king of Cilician Armenia (or Little Armenia) had made their submission to the Mongols. Since 1247 already, they had paid tribute and supplied troops. King Hetoum I went to Karakorum to make his submission in 1253, and Bohemond VI was present in Baghdad in 1258."

What do you mean he doesn't say that Bohemond VI was in Baghdad? Also Alain Demurger, besides his reputation in France ("one of the most eminent specialists of the history of the Order" Jean-Philippe Camus), is praised as the author of a good general survey on the Knights Templar, in Malcolm Barber's book The New Knighthood : A History of the Order of the Temple (p.397):

"There are good general surveys, by Marie-Louise Bulst-Theile, Sacrae Domus Militiae Templi Hierosolymitani Magistri (1974), and Alain Demurger, Vie et mort de l'ordre du Temple" (Life and Death of the Order of the Temple).

For a list of statements about the factuality of the Franco-Mongol alliance please check User:PHG/Alliance. I'll be glad to discuss other statements you might have issues with. Regards. PHG (talk) 18:30, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Ah, I missed that one, I was looking at a different footnote (it's kind of hard when there are 400 of them). Alright, well we've already gone over that bit then. I think it would be best to dismiss the whole thing with a footnote, if you're going to insist on mentioning it. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:49, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
As discussed previously, I clearly circumscribed the claim to Demurger: "According to Alain Demurger, Frankish troops from the Principality of Antioch also participated, and Bohemond VI was present at Baghdad in 1258" + footnotes. Regards PHG (talk) 19:01, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
I see you added it back in after I mentioned it, sneaky sneaky! Anyway, I also want to point out that just because an historian says something does not make it true or noteworthy. Are they not human? Are they incapable of error? Of course not. Also, if Demurger is praised as an historian of the Templars, how does this pertain to Bohemond's presence in Baghdad? Adam Bishop (talk) 08:41, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Hum, it seems the quote about Bohemond VI in Baghdad in 1258 had been removed from the article by someone, so I had to reinsert it. It had been however on this Talk Page for several weeks (above), for all to see, so it was nothing new.
  • I suppose historians may indeed make mistakes, but it is not for us poor Wikipedians to pass such judgements. The only acceptable approach would be to find another historian claiming that Demurger's claim is a mistake, and balance the two opinions, with references.
  • Demurger is one of the first authotities on the Templars, but he is also quite an authority on the Crusades as a whole. He has published several books on the Crusades through some of the most reputable publishers in France, such as La croisade au Moyen Âge, Fernand Nathan, Croisades et croisés au Moyen Âge, Flammarion, Nouvelles histoires de la France médiévale. Tome 5 : Temps de crises. Temps d'espoirs. Points Seuil. I would agree he's probably little-known in the US, like most French historians anyway, but I don't think that's a criteria for rejection. Regards. PHG (talk) 09:55, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

John de Monte Corvino passing through Karakorum?

The article about John of Montecorvino states that he went to Khanbalyk by ship, so passing through Karakorum would be somewhat difficult. Even overland Karakorum seems a bit out of the way. Yaan (talk) 20:09, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I indeed had the same doubts when I took the segment from Medieval Roman Catholic Missions in China. I suppose that "passing Karakorum" is a typo for "bypassing Karakorum". Would it make more sense? Regards. PHG (talk) 20:14, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe. But as said, I don't think Karakorum was on the standard route from Europe to China anyway, the silk road is further south. Regards, Yaan (talk) 20:39, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Yaan. I think what is meant is that the onland route to Mongol lands in the East normally implied a passage through the capital Karakorum. Regards. PHG (talk) 07:02, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Jerusalem

I tried to clarify the various sources about the capture of Jerusalem by the Mongols (precise modern accounts, medieval accounts by Arab, Armenian and Christian sources). I also took away one phrase which seems too general in nature and over-editorialized to really belong to a detailed, factual, segment about Jerusalem in 1300: "In a general comment on Jerusalem in her 2005 posthumous book Gateway to the Heavenly City: Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic West (1099-1187), Schein said nothing about Mongol conquest, but simply noted: "After 1187 and for the rest of the Middle Ages, Earthly Jerusalem, ruled by the Moslems (except for the short period of 1229-1244), was to loom large in all types of late medieval apocalypticism." PHG (talk) 15:09, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Aside from the fact that I disagree with PHG's sources and interpretation of events (as the vast consensus of modern historians is that the Mongols never "conquered" Jerusalem), I also disagree that this article is even the right location for a discussion of this. Multiple editors have stated multiple times in previous talkpage threads that this article is too long. And yet, PHG keeps pouring more and more information into it, such that the article is now 183K in length. I recommend that everything in this article related to Mongol activities in the Palestine area (except for a small paragraph, per WP:SUMMARY), be split to Mongol raids into Palestine. I have suggested a way to further rewrite/condense the article (see the "Article rewrite" section above), and everyone (except PHG) has agreed with my rewrite. It is my opinion that the consensus of editors at this talkpage, is that the article needs to be shortened. If someone else wants to do it, that's fine with me, but if not, I will proceed with this in the near future. --Elonka 18:41, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I have been a long time observer of the Franco-Mongol Alliance article and the many other pages now associated with it, and it is with some hesitation that I become involved. I would like to support Elonka’s statements on consensus in both the academic and Wikipedia communities: the academic consensus is that no alliance existed. Whatever might have happened in those months of 1300, no Mongol army conquered Jerusalem. The article is too long. Some considered part ought to be moved to Mongol raids into Palestine. Moreover, I would suggest that the articles Mulay and Kutlushah be deleted and the few details about these two commanders be moved to the same. Aramgar (talk) 21:06, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I am now nearly through with article content, most events are highly documented (400 refs), and indeed the time is soon coming to split the article into smaller parts. I will see what can be done about it.
  • Regarding the Mongol conquest of Jerusalem in 1300, please be objective and just look at the sources (I suggest you read that chapter again: Franco-Mongol alliance#The fate of Jerusalem in early 1300). Most contemporary sources (Arab, Armenian and Christian) do mention the conquest of Jerusalem and many, many, maybe most, modern historians do consider that Jerusalem was indeed captured, although for a short time. At least there is far enough to mention both views as per WP:NPOV.
  • As for Mulay and Kutlushah, they are perfectly notable Mongol generals of the period, with numerous references. There is absolutely no reason why they shoudn't have their own article in an Encyclopedia. Best regards PHG (talk) 21:48, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • hi PHG, first I want to commend you for the superb extraordinary work you've been doing. As an outsider, I dont know whats going on in this article but I want to comment on Mulay: I was expecting to find information about him in the article, however it was information about the battle :), so, maybe some kind of merge should be done or that information moved into other relevant places. My 2 cents as an outsider on the Mulay affair. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 23:33, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Hi Matt. Thank you for the compliment, I truely appreciate! I am currently preparing more biographical information on both Mulay and Kutlushah (I will also do Samagarh a bit later). Best regards. PHG (talk) 11:26, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Franco-Mongol alliance in historical litterature

For those who are new to this discussion, please see hereafter a sampling of how the expression "Franco-Mongol alliance" is used in historical litterature, and how the notion of the alliance between the Franks and the Mongols is developed. In summary, "Franco-Mongol alliance" is a highly recognized academic expression to describe these (admitedly little-known...) events. As far as I know, "Franks" is considered as the most exact term to designate Western European Crusaders dealing with the Middle-East, as this was the general name given to them by the Muslims. Other designations are too vague (Crusaders, Christians, Catholics) for this specific subject. Preference should clearly go to the recognized academic nomenclature for article title. PHG (talk) 09:00, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

  • René Grousset mentions especially "Louis IX and the Franco-Mongol alliance" (p521), "Only Edward I understood the value of the Mongol alliance" (p.653) "Edward I and the Mongol alliance" (p.653), "Edward I renewed the precious Mongol Alliance" (in "L'épopée des Croisades", p.301), "The Franco-Mongol coalition, of which the Hospitallers were giving the example" (p.686)
  • Jean Richard in Histoire des Croisades, has the Franco-Mongol alliance start in earnest in the 1260s ("The sustained attacks of Baibars (...) rallied the Occidentals to this alliance, to which the Mongols also convinced the Byzantines to adhere", in "Histoire des Croisades", p.453.) and continue on-and-off until it was strongly revived by Ghazan, to continue to have an influence until 1322 ("In 1297 Ghazan resumes his projects against Egypt (...) the Franco-Mongol cooperation had thus survived, to the loss of Acre by the Franks, and to the conversion of the khan to Islam. It was to remain one of the political factors of the policy of the Crusades, until the peace treaty with the Mamluks, which was concluded in 1322 by khan Abu Said." in "Histoire des Croisades", p.468). He concludes on the many missed opportunities the alliance offered: "The Franco-Mongol alliance (...) seems to have been rich with missed opportunities" in "Histoire des Croisades", 1996, Jean Richard, p.469
  • Reuven Amitai-Preiss in Mongols and Mamluks writes that "Under Bohemond VI, the northern Franks maintained their unequivocal pro-Mongol alliance after 'Ayn Jālūt" (p.54). She also writes about the "Mongol-Frankish rapprochement" (Mamluk perceptions of the Mongol-Frankish rapprochement, MHR 7 (1992), p.50-65)
  • Dr. Martin Sicker, in The Islamic World Ascendancy (p.113): "Ket-Buqa and Bohemond VI fully appreciated the mutual advantages of the Frank-Mongol alliance". He also mentions an end to the Franco-Mongol alliance after the events of Sidon: "Suitably provoked, the Mongols responded by pillaging Sidon, thereby bringing an effective end to the Frank-Mongol alliance." (p.113)
  • Christopher Tyerman, in God's War: A New History of the Crusades, does mention the existence of "The Mongol alliance", although he specifies that in the end it led nowhere,("The Mongol alliance, despite six further embassies to the west between 1276 and 1291, led nowhere" p.816) and turned out to be a "false hope for Outremer as for the rest of Christendom." (pp. 798-799) He further describes successes and failures of this alliance from 1248 to 1291, with Louis IX's early attempts at capturing "the chimera of a Franco-Mongol anti-Islamic alliance", Bohemond VI's alliance with the Mongols and their joint victories, and Edward's largely unsuccessful attempts.
  • Bernard de Vaulx in History of the Missions (p. 53) writes about the "Franco- Mongol alliance".
  • Peter W. Edbury in The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191-1374 (p. 92) mentions the "Franco-Mongol alliance", and gives as an example that the Mongol staged an attack to coincide with the Frank offensive during the Crusade of Edward I.
  • Jean-Paul Roux, in Histoire de l'Empire Mongol ISBN 2213031649, has a chapter on the "Frank alliance" with the Mongols. He describes the continuation of this alliance until the time of Oljeitu: "The Occident was reassured that the Mongol alliance had not ceased with the conversion of the Khans to Islam. However, this alliance could not have ceased. The Mamelouks, through their repeated military actions, were becoming a strong enough danger to force Iran to maintain relations with Europe.", p.437
  • Claude Mutafian in Le Royaume Arménien de Cilicie describes "the Mongol alliance" entered into by the king of Armenia and the Franks of Antioch ("the King of Armenia decided to engage into the Mongol alliance, an intelligence that the Latin barons lacked, except for Antioch"), and "the Franco-Mongol collaboration" (Mutafian, p.55)
  • Zoe Oldenbourg in The Crusades mentions the 1280 "Alliance of Franks and Mongols against Qalawun". (Oldenbourg, "The Crusades", p.620)
  • Alain Demurger, in the 2002 Jacques de Molay biography The Last Templar, refers to it as the "Mongol alliance", which came to fruition through such events as the 1300 combined offensives between the Templars and the Mongols.(Demurger, p.147 "This expedition sealed by a concrete act the Mongol alliance"), "The strategy of the Mongol alliance in action(Demurger p.145) "De Molay led the fight for the reconquest of Jerusalem by relying on an alliance with the Mongols", back cover)
  • Jonathan Riley-Smith mentions in his Atlas of the Crusades that in 1285 the Hospitallers of the north agreed to ally to the Mongols.("En 1285, Qalawun, nouveau sultan mamelouk, reprend l'offensive, qu'il dirige contre les Hospitaliers du nord, qui s'etaient montres prets a s'allier aux Mongols", Jonathan Riley-Smith, "Atlas des Croisades", p.114) He also describes Bohemond's alliance with the Mongols: "Bohemond VI of Antioch-Tripoli became their [the Mongol's] ally", in History of the Crusades, p.136
  • Laurent Dailliez, in Les Templiers, mentions that the Knights Templar allied with the Mongols, and that Jacques de Molay signed a treaty with them against the Muslim "their common enemy".("The Mongols, after taking Damascus and several important cities from the Turks, after having been routed by the Sultan of Egypt at Tiberiade in 1260, allied themselves with the Templars. Jacques de Molay, in his letter to the king of England said that he had to sign such a treaty to fight against the Muslims, "our common enemy"" Dailliez, p.306-307)
  • Peter Jackson in The Mongols and the West entitles a whole chapter "An ally against Islam: the Mongols in the Near East" and describes all the viscicitudes and the actual limited results of the Mongol alliance.
  • Claude Lebedel in Les Croisades describes the alliance of the Franks of Antioch and Tripoli with the Mongols: (in 1260) "the Frank barons refused an alliance with the Mongols, except for the Armenians and the Prince of Antioch and Tripoli".
  • Amin Maalouf in The Crusades through Arab eyes is extensive and specific on the alliance (page numbers refer to the French edition): “The Armenians, in the person of their king Hetoum, sided with the Mongols, as well as Prince Bohemond, his son-in-law. The Franks of Acre however adopted a position of neutrality favourable to the muslims” (p.261), “Bohemond of Antioch and Hethoum of Armenia, principal allies of the Mongols” (p.265), “Hulagu (…) still had enough strength to prevent the punishment of his allies [Bohemond and Hethoum]” (p.267), “..the Hospitallers. These monk-horsemen allied with the Mongols, going as far as fighting at their side in a new attempt at invasion in 1281."
  • Sylvia Schein in Gesta Dei per Mongolos describes the Templars, Hospitallers and crusaders of Cyprus as allies of the Mongols in the campaings of 1300-1302: "They (the Templars, Hospitallers and crusaders of Cyprus) sailed to the island of Ruad, and, from that base, captured Tortosa, but retired a few days later when their allies (the Mongols) did not appear.", p.811
  • Patrick Huchet in Les Templiers, une fabuleuse epopee relates that "Jacques de Molay, elected Master in 1292, associated himself with the Mongols to set up military operations on the island of Ruad (near Tortose)."
  • E. L. Skip Knox, Boise State University, in The Fall of Outremer online: "Some of the Crusader States wanted to form an alliance with the Mongols, while others weren't so sure. The allure of destroying Egypt was great, but the Mongols were pretty scary allies. In the end, Armenia and Antioch joined, along with the Templars and Hospitallers." also here: "A double army marched down from the north and east, crossing the Euphrates in 1281. Qalavun marched north and they met near Homs on 30 October. Once again, Christians fought alongside the Mongols (the Hospitallers and the Armenians this time)".
  • Reuven Amitai-Preiss writes about the "Mongol-Frankish rapprochement" (Mamluk perceptions of the Mongol-Frankish rapprochement, MHR 7 (1992), p.50-65)
  • Emmanuel Berl in Histoire de l'Europe (p. 219) writes about the "Franco-Mongol rapprochement".
  • Encyclopedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature.., p.100: "The fact that the Mongols were in ostensible alliance with Christians princes led to a renewal by the sultan of the ordinances against Jews and Christians."
PHG, isn't the above just another copy/paste of what you've already got at User:PHG/Alliance? You've already copy/pasted this to multiple talkpages, please, in the future, just give the link rather than repeatedly pushing this onto talkpages? --Elonka 17:57, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I may be new to the discussion but I have read every tedious word. I am concerned that many of the sources adduced to provide evidence for an alliance have been misrepresented. Yes, they use the word, but close reading will reveal that the author believes no alliance was ever effected. Yes, there was much coming and going of envoys. Yes, letters were exchanged. Yes, there were a couple of failed attempts to coordinate. Yes, an alliance was the aspiration of both the Ilkhans and parties in the West. But it did not happen.
A good summary of the current scholarly opinion on this subject is Reuven Amatai-Preiss’ book Mongols and Mamluks: the Mamluk-Ilkhanid War, 1260-1281 (Cambridge University Press, 1995). In the fourth chapter, in a section entitled “The Īlkhāns and the Franks” (pp. 94-105), Amatai-Preiss discusses all this coming, going, and letter writing, ill-starred coordinating and aspiring. He does not use the word alliance. And lest someone suggest that the book is limited in its scope, extending only to 1281, allow me to quote from the concluding paragraph:
…the fact is that through his reign Abagha sent at least four embassies to the West. Each visited more than one court, including that of the Pope, and carried a letter calling for a joint anti-Muslim campaign. This phenomenon, perhaps more than any other, indicates the importance which Abagha attributed to the war with the Mamluks, and the extent to which he wanted to extend his sway into Syria and perhaps beyond. Most of his successors shared these goals, and in order to realize them they attempted, like him, to interest the Christian West in a common venture. They were all equally unsuccessful in achieving this goal. (p. 105; link and emphasis my own.)
Rather than citing every use of the word “alliance” in the relevant literature, editors ought to take into account what the relevant literature actually says. See Elonka’s page on the opinions of various scholars in the field. I find it much more compelling than the references provided above.
I believe that per Amatai-Priess and PHG’s suggestion “Franco-Mongol” is right. The new title ought to be either Franco-Mongol diplomacy or Franco-Mongol relations. I prefer the former but am flexible on this point. Episcopus and Elonka ought to perform a major “coproëctomy.” I would rather go back to the Sultans of Rum. Too many good editors —and I include PHG among them—have wasted too much time here. Aramgar (talk) 18:41, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why people are tearing themselves to bits here. Leave the article's name as it is. A Franco-Mongol alliance, whilst it may have never been felt in force in the Middle East, did occur to a small extent. The Mongols and the Franks were unable to cooperate due to many reasons. That sounds like an alliance that was never used when needed most. A Franco-Mongol alliance ofcourse, had nothing to do with Byzantium, although it must be said that the Mongols of the Ilkhanate Persian regime and the Byzantine Empire did attempt to ally to stop the Ottomans, but this failed as well to achieve success. There were alliances between the Franks and the Mongols. Its just that it was not enough to beat the Mamelukes - simple as that, and the article explains this, so who cares, just leave the name as it is. Tourskin (talk) 01:05, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


Article split

I started splitting the article into periods, which actually correspond to the reigns of the various Il-Khan rulers. That's going to take some more fine tuning, but the article size is already down to 140k (and it is only 80k without the copious references).PHG (talk) 12:12, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure that splitting Franco-Mongol alliance into three or four separate articles which perpetuate a selective and idiosyncratic reading of the secondary literature is what the other editors had in mind. So now we have a Franco-Mongol alliance (1258-1265), a Franco-Mongol alliance (1265-1282), and a Franco-Mongol alliance (1297-1304). Perhaps there should be some central list of all the articles that have been affected by the primary editor’s Franco-Mongol enthusiasms. In time these will all have to be moderated. Aramgar (talk) 16:10, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
As always, moderation, with due references and presentation of the various significant views as per Wikipedia:NPOV, is welcome. Regards PHG (talk) 16:17, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I am with Aramgar that splitting the article into multiple "Franco-Mongol alliance" by date sections is not appropriate. PHG, surely you should have realized that such a change is highly provocative and disruptive, and should have been discussed first? All other discussions about splits were about moving information to existing articles, not making new ones. When you've created POV forks in the past, they have been deleted,[3][4] and it seems that you're just trying to find new titles to push this POV. Your point of view is that there was an alliance between the Mongols and the Franks, and everything that you're writing is pushing this bias. You state "alliance" as the primary view, and you state "maybe there wasn't an alliance" as a minority view. But this is backwards to modern scholarship, and is giving undue weight to opinions of modern historians. In actuality, the vast consensus of modern historians is there was not an alliance, though there are a couple isolated incidents of historians (Jean Richard, Alain Demurger) who argue that an alliance technically existed. But even Demurger and Richard don't agree with each other as to the scope of it. PHG, your edits are in violation of WP:UNDUE. Please stop what you're doing, and work with other editors, instead of against them. --Elonka 17:53, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I dont have any comments on the nuetrality and other disputes (including titles of the splits) right now but I feel that dividing the article by age/era is the most suitable way because all the headings in the article are arranged after all in chronological way. Seems to makes sense to me to divide the article into the various time periods it covers. If the alliance word is not found to be suitable under consensus, then all the titles of the various splits will later have to be changed which shouldnt be a problem. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 22:36, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Matt. Let me remind that a formal consensus was already established in favour of the "Franco-Mongol alliance" title: see Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance/Archive 2#Requested move. There is therefore nothing more legitimate than to split the article according to this same nomenclature. PHG (talk) 05:52, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Franco-Mongol alliance (1297-1304) implies even more strongly than Franco-Mongol Alliance that there was an explicit treaty alliance between Franks and Mongols. john k (talk) 14:46, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Splitting the article at all is a bad idea. We don't need to spread this around to a whole series of articles; more than anything, this one just needs to have a crapectomy. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:56, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I concur. I believe that until the apparent contoversy over the main article has been settled, it is unwise to split it into separate smaller article. It seems to be an attempt to confuse the issue by implying a resolution that does not currently exist. Kafka Liz (talk) 15:29, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
After all the requests to split the article, it is a little disheartening to see that now some editors are not so much into splitting after all... Basically, I have taken great care to give the most complete account possible on the various contacts and collaboration between the Mongols and the Franks. I spent 4 months and went through about 40 books to get all the pieces together. We now have a highly documented article, probably one of the best reference anywhere on the Franco-Mongol alliance. Everything is referenced, so I am quite reluctant to delete any of the available information. As the article is a roughly 200k, the only way is to split, and probably do so along chronological/regnal lines. This also gives us the opportunity to condense the main article in summary style, as I think everybody desires, myself included. I suggest we spend the next few weeks condensing the main article, but I will also expand slightly the sub-articles in the meantime, as I have a few more elements coming up (from Reuven-Amitai mainly). It is the very beauty of Wikipedia that we can indeed go into a lot of detail even for very arcane and obscure subjects: this is what is making it a reference worldwide. Best regards. PHG (talk) 17:58, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
My point is just that I think that consensus should be reached and the controversy resolved before the article is split into subpages. The issues are easier to keep track of if they are all on a single page, no matter how long that page may be. Having subpages that propagate such different viewpoints makes Wikipedia look bad. PHG, you’ve unquestionably done a lot of work here, but I think it should remain in the main article for the time being. Regards, Kafka Liz (talk) 18:52, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Kafka Liz. It's really no big deal to keep track of one article and 4 subpages, especially when content size justifies it. Best regards. PHG (talk) 19:09, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks PHG, it does look like people leaned towards retaining that title though it would be nice to have gotten input from more people on that poll. I will agree with John K though. Also, its looking like even though there's many historians that have confirmed the existence of the alliance, there's many that have talked in unsure terms about it. Sorry, I havent been following up this debate and dont mean to ask you to repeat the arguments, but in short terms what do you think of these alternate opinions Elonka archived here on her user space? From this it looks like, historians have differed on how they recorded this incident and were at times, unsure of the whole thing while others have been sure of it, like you have presented. What do you think?

I want to ask people here though: for the view that the alliance didnt happen, how does this affect the rest of the article? I have not read the article and i may be wrong but it looks like to me on first glance that the rest of the article doesnt have any meaning if the alliance didnt happen. Is that right? --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 18:57, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Very simply, all these contacts and military cooperation between the Franks and the Mongols are amply proven to have happened. Now, some famous scholars just say this was a Franco-Mongol alliance, some say there was a Franco-Mongol alliance but the results were few, some say there was no alliance, and some say it was more of an entente etc... For a summary of modern views, please check Franco-Mongol alliance (modern interpretations). Now it supposed to be easy to deal with on Wikipedia: according to Wikipedia:NPOV, all significant opinions should be presented (it's even said to be "non negotiable rule"), which is what we're trying to do here. Best regards. PHG (talk) 19:07, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
PHG, thanks. 1) First, regardless of whether the alliance existed or not, I also think the title "Franco-Mongol alliance" implies that the alliance existed. Do you agree on that? (although likewise, we have Flying Spaghetti Monster which does not exist). I would say though the title of this historical topic would suggest that this alliance existed. My opinion is that if historical topics are titled like this, it usually means the title is something that is a historical fact. 2) I'm seeing the article link you gave. There are many people who are denying the alliance, e.g. "The attempts of the crusaders to create an alliance with the Mongols failed", "the failure of the attempt at an alliance", "attempts were made" (the author would not say it like this if he meant, the alliance existed)- etc. What is your opinion of the writings of these reliable authors? Are you saying they got it wrong? The sources which say it existed, are also strong. I'm not decided about whether it happened or not. One group of these people is obviously wrong, either it happened or it didnt or maybe it happened halfway (i.e, they tried to make an alliance, achieved something but not much). I would like to ask: Out of these 3 options, which one has received the more authorship in terms of volume and quality of reliability? Is there a way to determine that? If we have 8 sources that said it did happen and they wrote a lot about how it happened and what happened during it, and only 3 say it didnt happen and say nothing about how or why it didnt happen, then the 8 would win. This is one way of determining who got it right. Again, I have about no knowledge of the subject so I'm looking at it from a generic point of view. 3) I should ask this question after I get your answer about #2, however I'll just ask it now: How would it effect the topic if it was renamed to what Elonka suggested, Franco-Mongol relations? This does not mean that the alliance didnt exist, although yes if it did, the word alliance looks and fits better than "relations". --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 01:07, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Adam (and others) I have a rewritten and much-condensed version of the article at User:Elonka/Franco-Mongol alliance. How does this look to folks? If everyone likes it, we could:
  • Use the text from my subpage to completely rewrite the text in the main article at Franco-Mongol alliance
  • Delete/redirect the other various "split" articles that have accumulated, including:
Then, we could continue discussing things in a more focused fashion, since we'd only have the one article, Franco-Mongol alliance, to worry about, and it would be a much shorter and condensed version that would be easier to discuss. We could then move on from there, to determine if more information needed to be added or removed, and also continue our discussions on whether or not it needed to have a title change.
How does that sound? --Elonka 21:13, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I would much prefer a single, consolidated article to the Hydra-esque confusion this article has become. I'm not sure I feel comfortable commenting on the content at this point, in part because I haven't had the chance to read through all of the material yet. Kafka Liz (talk) 21:32, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
That is like saying "I would much rather prefer a single consolidated article on Islam" (which would have all the information summarized in it rather than every subject having their own article). There's a lot of sourced content which PHG has worked hard to bring in. It wouldnt make sense at all to shrink the amount of knowledge the article has. Usually, the more the better. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 00:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
With respect, Matt57, it is a completely different case because most modern historians -- nay, even the President of the United States -- agree that Islam exists. The problem with PHG's sourced material is that he has read it selectively with less-than-scrupulous regard for the authors' intent. More is not better when more is a fringe theory. Kafka Liz (talk) 01:07, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, regardless of whether there are fringe theories existing in the article, it is not reasonable to write one's own version of an article and want to replace it with the main article, especially if it is half in size. The correct way to deal with any fringe theories or other disputes is to deal with them directly on the article itself. If anything, such a replacement should be done with consensus and yes Elonka is trying to do that by asking us all but you can see that I would be opposed to such a replacement and I'm guessing some other people would oppose this too, so consensus is not likely to form in favour of such a replacement. There would be people who would oppose it and some who would not and I'm guessing, more people would oppose it. Although from the edits, 85% or so of the article is written by PHG so we could say that this means that both pieces have equal weight since one is an Elonka version and the other is (mostly) a PHG version. Even in that case, I would still say replacing one article with the other is not the right way. Thats not what happens on this website. People raise every issue with the article and resolve it on the talk page with the author(s), thats what everyone else does. No one here writes up their own version and replaces it with the main article (unless the main article was something like a CopyVio or total OR written by someone who refuses to discuss it - in which case no one would object to the replacement). In short a replacement like this is not possible. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 01:38, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
So in summary, if there are any claims of un-scrupulous-ness, these should be brought out on the talk page and discussed individually. Writing up our own version of an article which according to us is now 'scrupulous', and then replacing it with the main version, thats not right. I could claim this for any Islam related article and I'll tell you, my trying to replace any Islam related article with my own claimed 'scrupulous' version wont be accepted by anyone. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 01:46, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Matt57, I'm not trying to pick nits with you, but I have not yet committed to the proposed rewrite as I have not yet read it. I would, however, like there to be a single version of this page, rather than numerous subpages, until the whole mess is more straightened out. This, as you can see, is what I wrote to PHG above. You seem to be putting words in my mouth. Kafka Liz (talk) 01:57, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Maybe I misread you when you said "single, consolidated article". You didnt mean to say you wanted the article shortned then, only keep it in one place? If so, I apologize. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 02:08, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Sorry I didn't get a chance to respond to you earlier. Yes, what I meant was that I would like to see it all in one place. I still don't feel I give an opinion at this point as to whether or how it should be shortened, although, speaking generally, I think most articles benefit from streamlining -- removal of repetitive material, sources that pertain only tangentally an article, etc. Please bear in mind that my last statement is just a generalization; I'm not referring specifically to this article (I was thinking more of stuff like this as an extreme example). Kafka Liz (talk) 03:02, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Elonka, the piece you wrote at User:Elonka/Franco-Mongol alliance is only your own according to the edit history, am I correct? I dont think a proposal to simply replace the current version of the article with the one you have written is right. Thats like me going into Islamophobia, writing up my own completely different version in my article space and then asking eveyrone to replace the one we have with mine. No one would accept that if I tried to do that. The correct way is for me to go in and contest everything that should be changed, or change the main article. I dont know much about your version and I havent read it, but your version is only 70KB, as compared to the current 190K (before the splits). Doesnt that mean you have removed sourced content, or did you summarize? In any case I think more detail is better than less (and splits would thus make sense). Dont worry about the various splits and titles. All those will be changed or left unchanged, according to any consensus. The important issue right now is to decide what the title should be. Once we decide that, we can change (or according to consensus, leave unchanged) the titles of the split articles easily. I'm not currently decided about the title yet. I'll try to read up more and think about how this can be resolved. For the title I think we are going to have to get more community input on this, specially from any other subject knowledge experts. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 00:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Actually, the option of providing an optional rewritten version is quite commonly used in disputes. I've used this technique multiple times at other articles, usually successfully. And you are correct, the edit history just shows my name, but that's just because I copy/pasted the version of the article at that time into my userspace, and then worked from there. In no way am I trying to claim credit for PHG's work, as I freely acknowledge that he has been the majority contributor to this article, and has easily written over half of the text. In fact, I agree with much of what PHG has written. However, I also think that there's too much of what PHG has written, and further, that the article currently reflects too much of PHG's own bias, especially as regards the two issues of "Was there an alliance" and "Did the Mongols conquer Jerusalem". PHG appears to believe that the answer to both of those questions is "Yes." Most modern scholars disagree. But in any case, by copy/pasting my rewrite into the article, it would not in any way erase any of PHG's previous edit history. We'd just have a really big diff, showing a major condensing of the article, and then discussions would continue. --Elonka 07:17, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

FYI, Tourskin's comments on Elonka's talk page here are interesting and seem reasonable. Again, I'm still undecided about whether the alliance existed or not. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 01:38, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


Appart from the fact that Elonka seems to be inviting friendly users to participate to this discussion [5] [6] (isn't this canvassing, or is it OK if I do the same?), I agree that Tourskin's opinion on Elonka's Talk Page [7] seems highly worthwhile and relevant:

"Thanks for the little invite into the discussion. My opinion has been stated on the relevant talk page, but in short:

  • Christians of Armenia (who were influenced by the West) participated in battle with the Mongols
  • Friendly relations between Mongols and Franks were established but never capitalized upon.
  • Therefore the alliance existed, but it was a rather defunct alliance and/or lacked results. Tourskin (talk) 01:08, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
What is an alliance? Declaration of cooperation? Actual cooperation? Recognition of mutual goals? The Franks and the Mongols had something going on thats for sure (not necessarily the last three mentioned things). Some such as myself will call it an alliance, but only for the sake of simplicity because there was more good feeling than aminosity. Others will not. Sorry, but I had to defend my point. Tourskin (talk) 04:27, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I personnally agree that there was an effective alliance, as examples of epistolary agreements and effective cooperation abound (under Bohemond VI, during the Crusade of Edward I, with the Hospitallers, under Ghazan), BUT:
- that many unsuccesfull attempts were made until actual and limited military cooperation occured.
- that it ended with little results... and overall ended in defeat (but, hey, not all alliances end in victory, do they?).
- that it was meant to be much bigger but was hampered by communication/ logistical problems.
- that it is unknown if the intentions of the Mongols were honest (it may have been a tactical alliance, until the Christians would have been conquered by the Mongols ultimately.)

But that's not even the point. The point is that "Franco-Mongol alliance" is a standard expression used by historians to describe these events, even if the alliance was imperfect, or even tentative. It is more of a convention to call it so, and it is OK to put all the disclaimers we want about its actual extent. A title such "Franco-Mongol relations" is not bad, and such an article could also exist, but it would have to include much more material, beyond the alliance stuff (Mutual perceptions, cultural exchanges, plenty of religious interractions, the actual neutrality/opposition of some of the Franks (Acre) against the Mongols, the in-depth commercial relations of the Venetians and Genoese with the Mongols), of which the Franco-Mongol alliance (diplomacy + military cooperation) is only a small part. By the way, I am interested in creating such an article in the near future. Regards PHG (talk) 05:39, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I hesitate to offer this compromise, but would "Franco-Mongol diplomatic relations" work as a title? "Alliance" carries the connotations of something more formal than just friendly relations and mutual goals. That would be what most non-specialists think of when they hear alliance. Ealdgyth | Talk 05:44, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the comment. The fact is that actual military cooperation occured repeatedly, so it goes much beyond just diplomatic relations. For example, in response to Edward I's embassy and request for help, Abaga responded ""After talking over the matter, we have on our account resolved to send to your aid Cemakar (Samaghar) at the head of a mighty force" and did send an army to support the English ruler (Franco-Mongol alliance#Cooperation during the Ninth Crusade (1269-1274). The "alliance" was actually repeatedly consummated through actual military actions on the field. Regards PHG (talk) 06:01, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


Poll for renaming the article

Just to see if there's any rough consensus for the rename which is a big issue right now, I'm just listing here some people who have supported or opposed the renaming of this article. Yes I know there had been a poll before here but it had only 3 other people besides Elonka and PHG participate so lets see if we can get more people in. If you list yourself in this list, please also provide a short reason (this is not a simple yay/nay poll). If I've listed anyone wrongly, please fix it:

Keep the current title (Franco-Mongol alliance)

  • PHG (main disputing party)
  • Tourskin: "Leave the article's name as it is." ... (detail)
  • Srnec: "however I am opposed to renaming the article" ... (detail)
  • Adam Bishop: "I know I suggested some of the other titles, but if this one has been used in the literature, then we are kind of obliged to go along with it." detail

Rename to Franco-Mongol diplomatic relations or similar

  • Elonka: (main disputing party)
  • Ealdgyth: "would "Franco-Mongol diplomatic relations" work as a title"?
  • Aramgar: "The new title ought to be either Franco-Mongol diplomacy or Franco-Mongol relations. I prefer the former" - detail
  • john k: "Either of those is preferable to the current title." detail
  • Deacon of Pndapetzim: "Something along the lines of Mongol-Catholic relations during the Crusading period would be more appropriate than the current title." - detail

Undecided currently:

  • Matt57

Please add your opinion here if its not listed. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 18:07, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Voting is evil, especially when it is already clear consensus is unlikely. Arnoutf (talk) 18:56, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Thats why I've asked for a reason besides signing up. RfA's, AfD's are all "votes" or polls or consensus, whatever you want to call it. RfA's are actually worse, people come and sign up as Support/Oppose, frequently without giving a reason. That process is accepted here but this 'poll' is better since I'm asking people to provide a reason. This discourages the simple nay/yay the policy page you link to mentions. You're right though, there isnt appearing any consensus on this issue as of right now. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 19:06, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I think that a straw poll at some point may be a good idea, but I don't think that we're at that point yet. Right now, a poll may have the unfortunate side effect of making it look like opinions are polarized, when I don't think that's the case. Also, the current structure of this one is making it look like people have weighed in, in a "poll" format, when these are just comments in a discussion. And lastly, some of the comments above are many months old, and not necessarily still valid. If we do want to go with a poll format, it might be better to list various alternatives, and then ask everyone to weigh in on which ones that they would support. --Elonka 19:09, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I was just going through past discussions and bringing in all the opinions together to see what people have said. The main point is that currently it seems there is no consensus for doing anything about the title and this is what I wanted to find out. As for people's comments being outdated, I doubt they've changed their opinions. Some have not come back for the discussion here. If there are any old opinions, we could contact those people and reconfirm their opinion. Do you feel there is a consensus for the title change? --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 19:20, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough, reading just the introduction of this vote I got a bit worried it migh be overinterpreted. If the only conclusion is that there is no consensus, that is fine with me. Quantifying qualitative arguments tends to create the perception of precision and 'truth'. That is why I am very hesitant about polls. Arnoutf (talk) 21:51, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, I've clarified it slightly to discourage plain voters. They should give some argument for their reasons. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 23:11, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I stand by my opinion given in the original move request (and restated above by Matt57) that the current title is fine whatever you think of the "alliance". Even if it never existed, the article discusses attempts towards achieving it. And the phrase "Franco-Mongol alliance" appears in the literature sparingly; does "Franco-Mongol diplomatic relations"? The title is a side issue, the real dispute, in my opinion, is what consistutes a reliable source and who decides. Srnec (talk) 22:41, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


Mongol alliances in the Middle-East

Template:Mongol alliances I just created the “last piece” in the puzzle of the geopolitics of the Middle East under the Mongols: the alliance between the Mamluks and the Mongols of the Golden Horde (Mamluk-Mongol alliance). This alliance actually worked as a counter-balance to the Franco-Mongol and to the Armeno-Mongol alliances. The Byzantine Empire had a more ambivalent posture and actually allied alternatively, and sometimes with both, the Il-Khanate and the Golden Horde. I also created a template that will permit navigation between these various political and military alliances. I guess this might again irk a few, but frankly this interweaving pattern of alliances, between the Ilkhanate and the Golden Horde on the one hand, and the Franks, the Mamluks and the Byzantine Empire on the other, is perfectly presented throughout historical literature. Best regards.PHG (talk) 18:11, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

PHG, this is getting ridiculous. This is obviously just another attempt on your part to push this POV of "there was an alliance." Multiple editors now have been speaking up against your actions, and yet you keep escalating. The template needs to be either deleted, or rewritten for neutrality. Please stop this disruptive behavior. --Elonka 19:07, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
"Perfectly presented throughout historical literature"? Would such a perfect presentation of academic consensus have generated the reams of archives on this page? I see one editor pushing a suspect POV, and several other informed editors with serious concerns. This seems to me just another Hydra's head. Please, let us resolve disputes here prior to any grand expansion. Aramgar (talk) 19:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
This template illustrates the various alliances at play in the Middle East during the Mongol Empire in the 13th-14th century. These alliances were also highly connected. The Mamluk-Mongol alliance worked as a counter-balance to the Franco-Mongol and to the Armeno-Mongol alliances. See historian Ryley-Smith for example: "When the Golden Horde allied with the Mamluks, the Ilkhanate looked towards an alliance with the Christians" (Atlas of the Crusades, Jonathan Riley-Smith, p.112, French edition), with is the exact illustration of this template. Regards. PHG (talk) 20:45, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


Deletion nomination of Template:Mongol alliances

Template:Mongol alliances has been nominated for deletion. All interested parties are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Elonka 20:18, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


More data points

More Mongol quotations for you:

From Barber, Malcolm (1992). The two cities: medieval Europe, 1050-1320. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-09682-0. 

p. 135 in the context of Louis IX's crusade at Damietta, and after the payment of his ransom ... "During the withdrawl [from Damietta] the king was captured and only released on payment of a ransom of 800,000 besants and the cession of Damietta. Despite this disaster the king stayed in Outremer for another four years, rebuilding his defences and making contact with the Mongols, with whom the possibility of an alliance was being canvassed."

p. 507 "Although in the east Kubilai remained amenable to visits by westerners, including the Polos and the mendicants [friars in this case], any slim hope that a Mongol-Christian alliance could revive the sinking fortunes of the Crusader States had largely vanished by the 1260's, despite sporadic attempts at reviving it."

You may also wish to look at Payne, Robert (2000). The dream and the tomb: a history of the Crusades. New York: Cooper Square Press. ISBN 0-8154-1086-7. , especially the last chapter, where he states that (page 390) in 1300 "Ghazan, before leaving Damascus, sent ambassadors to the pope and the sovereigns of Europe, urging them to pour men, money and armaments into Palestine, which was his gift to them. He wanted an alliance between the Mongols and the countries of Europe against the Mamelukes, and he was prepared to back up the alliance with his vast army." and later "The pope told the Mongol ambassadors that the time was not ripe for another Crusade, and the soverigns of Europe said the same." It should be noted that this is a popular history, and is not footnoted very well.

Lastly, about King Edward I of England. From Prestwich, Michael (1997). Edward I. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-07157-4. , which is the most modern scholarly biography of Edward.

p. 75, dealing with Edward's crusade in 1271, "Edward spent frustrating weeks in Acre before moving against the enemy. His men and horses had to be prepared, and diplomatic arrangements had to be made. An English embassy was sent to the Mongol II-Khan Abagha, to try to organize concerted action against the redoubtable Baibars." (this is footnoted to Liber de Antiquis Legibus: Cronica maiorum et vicecomitum Londoniarum ed. T. Stapleton Camden Society 1846 p. 143)

p. 78, still dealing with 1271-1272, this after Edward's attempt to take the fortress of Qaqun, while the Mongols advanced on Syria. "He [Edward] may have hoped that help would be provided by the Mongols, but Baibars soon entered into negotiations with them, and it became clear that they had no intention of launching a major campaign in the Holy Land."

p. 82, an assessment of Edward's crusade "In Palestine, Edward's diplomatic efforts to obtain the co-operation of the Mongols achieved little, and in military terms his troops were too few to achieve much."

p. 331, talking about a proposed crusade after the fall of Acre in 1291, "The prospects for the crusade were undoubtedly diminished in the absence of the hoped-for Mongol alliance." and later on the same page "In that year the West rejoiced at news that a Mongol army under a new Il-Khan, Ghazan, had retaken Jerusalem, which was now thought to be safe for Christianity. The news was, of course, a considerable exaggeration of the facts, for Ghazan's control of the Holy Land only lasted a few months, and he was the first of the Il-Khans to accept the Moslem faith, a piece of information his envoys withheld from the West."

p. 332 same context, "The failure of the Mongol alliance was but one of the many obstacles in the way of Edward's crusade in the early 1290's."

I didn't see these works referenced yet in the discussion. Certainly if we're going to discuss Edward I of England we should look at Prestwich's biography. Barber's is one of the more recent overviews of medieval history, and Payne's book is a popular history of the Crusades, designed to reach the non-historian audience. Comments in brackets are mine to elucidate the context. Ealdgyth | Talk 21:23, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Ealdgyth, that's very helpful.  :) I've gone ahead and added the information to User:Elonka/Mongol historians. If you see anything that needs changing, or would like to add other authors, please feel free. In fact, anyone who wishes to add other authors is free to do so, though of course I reserve the right to tweak as needed. --Elonka 01:41, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks Ealdgyth. All sources are welcome. PHG (talk) 04:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Article title

Aramgar suggested above, that this article (currently at "Franco-Mongol alliance") might be better titled as "Franco-Mongol diplomacy". I've personally supported "Franco-Mongol relations", myself, but I'd be willing to go along with "Franco-Mongol diplomacy" as a title. Anyone else have an opinion? --Elonka 00:54, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Either of those is preferable to the current title. I wonder if it might be better to say "Crusader" rather than "Franco"? john k (talk) 02:11, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I've thought about that too, but "Crusader" starts really broadening the topic. As I understand it, the main thrust of this article is about the diplomatic relations between the Mongols, and the Franks of Western Europe. So another possible title is "Latin-Mongol relations"? That would help distinguish it from the Byzantines? --Elonka 02:19, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
How does Crusader broaden the topic? We are talking about relations between the Mongols on the one hand, and the elements which constitute "Crusading" in western Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean on the other. This includes the nobility of Outremer and Cyprus, the Military Orders, and whatever western European leaders happen to be involved in crusading at any given time (primarily Loui IX at the time we're talking about, but also Edward I, and perhaps some others). Referring to this as the "Franks" is appropriate. But Franco-Mongol relations, or whatever, can easily be interpreted as being about relations between France and the Mongols, which is not the subject of the article. Most people don't know that the Crusaders are called "Franks." "Latins" would be okay as well, but I don't understand how "Crusader" broadens the topic. john k (talk) 02:44, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
The subject of the title for the article has already been discussed extensively, and has already been the object of a consensus in favour of "Franco-Mongol alliance": see Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance/Archive 2#Requested move. Basically, "Franco-Mongol alliance" is the way these events are called in the historical litterature: a sampling here. PHG (talk) 10:58, 15 January 2008 (UTC
John: You are probably better qualified to define the term than I, but my impression was that "Crusader" was a term that could apply to multiple cultures, not just Western Europeans. However, I'll freely agree that it usually means Western Europeans, so I'm not totally against the title.
Although as a common noun "crusader" can be used in a variety of contexts, as a proper noun, Crusader can only refer, so far as I'm aware, to actual Christian crusaders from the Middle Ages. Am I missing something here? john k (talk) 21:07, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
PHG, the subject was discussed back in September. Consensus can change, and it is reasonable to re-examine the issue from time to time, especially when there are new voices. We only had five participants in the previous discussion, two of whom have not been actively engaged in quite awhile. It would be nice to get input from more people to ensure that the article title reflects actual consensus. If the consensus is still to keep the article title at "Franco-Mongol alliance", then fine, it'll stay. If the consensus has changed, then the article should be moved. --Elonka 17:44, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
The article seems to be about the relationship between the West and the Mongols with an emphasis on the overall Crusading movement's dealings with the Mongols. Something along the lines of Mongol-Catholic relations during the Crusading period would be more appropriate than the current title. It's not like there was "a West" or, after the break-up of the Mongol Empire, "a Mongol state" that could actually form something as technical as an alliance. You've got the Pope, with his relations with the Great Khan and then lesser Khans for lots of different reasons, curiosity, conversion, crusading, etc; then you've got the actual crusader states dealing with the Mongol Khanates and armies on a practical basis; then you've got the the three great kings of the west dealing with them for whatever reason. Keeping most of the current content, I'd suggest the article could be renamed Crusader states and the Mongols (which is what the article is mostly about), with all the more general stuff going into Mongols and the West or something like that. Catholic-Mongol alliance is a small article about theory and historical debate, not this one. This is a very impressive looking article btw! Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 00:07, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Thank you Deacon of Pndapetzim for your appreciation of the article! Best regards PHG (talk) 06:21, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
If it's helpful, I've compiled a list of several dozen quotes from various books, to see how they are referring to the issue: User:Elonka/Mongol historians#Quotes. The top two "in text" descriptions seem to be "alliance" (as in "absence of the hoped-for Mongol alliance"), and "relations". But for an actual title, the patterns are different. "Mongols and the West" is used a couple places, plus "Western Europe and the Mongol Empire". I'd personally be happy with many of the above suggestions as well. I also like the "Relations" variants since that seems to be more of a Wikipedia standard (see Category:Foreign relations by country, though that's obviously more for modern countries). Let's definitely keep talking and see if we can find a consensus.  :) --Elonka 00:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
The subject of the title for the article has already been discussed extensively, and has already been the object of a consensus in favour of "Franco-Mongol alliance": see Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance/Archive 2#Requested move. Basically, "Franco-Mongol alliance" is the way these events are called in the historical litterature: a sampling here. PHG (talk) 05:47, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
PHG, that's just a copy/paste of what you already said 20 hours ago, at 10:58 on 15 January. Can you please not keep repeating the same thing? --Elonka 00:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

So our current options for article title are:

  • Franco-Mongol alliance (current title)
  • Franco-Mongol relations
  • Franco-Mongol diplomacy
  • Franco-Mongol diplomatic relations
  • Crusader-Mongol relations
  • Crusader-Mongol diplomacy
  • Mongol-Catholic relations during the Crusading period
  • Mongols and the West
  • Mongols and Western Europe
  • Crusader states and the Mongols

In order to try and winnow the list down, perhaps everyone could pick their 2 or 3 favorites, and then we could go from there? My own favorites are "Franco-Mongol relations" and "Crusader-Mongol relations", though I could go with others as well. The main thing I want, is to ensure that we have a consensus decision on it. So, if you like some of the above, or would like to suggest others, please feel free.  :) --Elonka 06:09, 20 January 2008 (UTC)


Articles for deletion

I have nominated the various dated subpages of this article for deletion. Those interested are welcome to join the discussion here. Kafka Liz (talk) 22:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. For ease of use, I am listing below all of the currently active deletion discussions, so that anyone who is interested, can easily participate:
--Elonka 01:25, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


Thanks for the summary :) A few comments though. User:Kafka Liz, who has been creating all these AfDs is totally new to our discussions (to this subject?), and has been invited in by Elonka ([8] Canvassing?). This seems like some fairly objectionable methodology. Regarding the issues at hand:

  • Franco-Mongol alliance (modern interpretations) is a content collaboratively created between Elonka and myself to keep track of the modern sources on the subject. It was simply created as a split to reduce the size of the main article.
  • Mulay and Kutlushah are Biographical articles on well-known Mongol generals. There is no resean whatsover to delete these articles, as already stated by several editors who are highly knowledgeable of this subject (Talk:Mongol raids into Palestine).
  • Template:Mongol alliances is only an attempt at summarizing the various geopolitical alliances in the Middle East under the Mongols.
  • Franco-Mongol alliance (1258-1265), Franco-Mongol alliance (1265-1282), Franco-Mongol alliance (1297-1304). These three articles were created after multiple requests from other users (but mainly Elonka) to split the main article Franco-Mongol alliance. The objective was to reduce the size of the main article, which was about 190k before the split. As the name "Franco-Mongol alliance" for the main page has already been accepted through a formal consensus (see Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance/Archive 2#Requested move), and as the split was specifically requested by other users, accusations of POV fork are quite unfair. PHG (talk) 03:49, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
PHG, can you show me evidence of these multiple reqests for splitting the article? I've seen Elonka mention splitting in some of her remarks, but I haven't noticed anyone else requesting it. I myself would support splitting the article, if warranted, after consensus is reached, but not before, and I suspect that these multiple editors you mention feel the same way. Kafka Liz (talk) 10:41, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Kafka Liz represents my opinion: splitting the article is necessary, but only after disputes have been settled. Otherwise it is just obstructive of a settlement. Srnec (talk) 16:49, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
I concur with both of the above. Let's get the whole controversy settled before we go splitting the article. Ealdgyth | Talk 17:17, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Since PHG has created yet another fork today, I added another AfD to the list (started by KafkaLiz): Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mongol alliances in the Middle-East‎. --Elonka 20:33, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
I know this is a rather arcane subject, but please just look at the sources. This last Mongol alliances in the Middle-East article allows to explain the broad geopolitical structure of the Mongol alliances, and connects the various articles already put in place. It is not a repetition of content, as it rather puts into context the other materials and give many new sources related to the broad context of these alliances. It is perfectly legitimate and sourced. These diplomatic contacts and alliances are highly referenced in academic sources. By the way, I think I am through with creating new articles on this subject (broad picture/ each alliance/ template for navigation), so nobody has to worry about ever-spreading contibutions... and it should save unsubstanciated "POV-fork" accusations :). Regards PHG (talk) 12:52, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Introduction sentence (part 2)

Elonka has been edit warring to force an introduction sentence to this article which only expressed one point of view ("attempts at an alliance"), claiming an earlier consensus (various comments from Talk Pages discussions over September and October). We then went to mediation, where Elonka specifically gave her agreement to a compromise sentence "A Franco-Mongol alliance, or at least attempts towards such an alliance, was the objective of...." on November 14th. Elonka is not repecting this agreement, which is a moral issue, but also I think an issue per Wikipedia. I am asking for the compromise sentence to be reintroduced, as it gives both sides of the story and presents the variety of sources per Wikipedia:NPOV. Here is the transcript of the agreement at Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Franco-Mongol alliance/Archive#The mediation is here:

A Franco-Mongol alliance, or at least attempts towards such an alliance, was the objective of diplomatic endeavors between the Franks and the Mongols, starting around the time of the Seventh Crusade. PHG 06:44, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I like that version.  :) --Elonka 07:14, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Concluded with agreement on the following opening sentence:

A Franco-Mongol alliance, or at least attempts towards such an alliance, was the objective of diplomatic endeavors between the Franks and the Mongols, starting around the time of the Seventh Crusade.

-- tariqabjotu 19:18, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

PHG (talk) 04:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi PHG, as you must have noticed, there are now more interested parties than there were at the time you and Elonka pursued mediation. Both of you are probably going to have to adapt your views to the consensus developing with this wider involvement of editors. Concensus can change and you cannot require editors to agree to part of an unsuccessful mediation they were not party to. Also people in mediation sometimes agree to a compromise on issue X in the hope that the other person will give way on issue Y. Any agreement at mediation is hard to rely out of context - in the end the two of you could not reach agreement - and must now be adapted to take into account the views that have since been expressed. WjBscribe 05:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi WjB. The bottom line is that this is simply a case of Elonka breaking an important agreement reached through a formal mediation process. Especially as this agreement (November 14th) post-dates the earlier Talk Page discussions that she is now claiming as a justification for edit-warring. PHG (talk) 08:42, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
At this point, I believe there is a consenseus on the introductory sentence that Elonka has introduced and that PHG keeps reverting. The sentence ought to read as follows: "Many attempts were made towards forming a Franco-Mongol alliance between the mid-1200s and the early 1300s, starting around the time of the Seventh Crusade." Aramgar (talk) 14:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
I concur. I find that opening sentence to summarize the secondary literature rather well, as collected by both PHG and Elonka. Ealdgyth | Talk 14:44, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Not quite. It is true that scholars are divided on the extent of the Franco-Mongol alliance (Although even those who write about "attempts only" still use the "Franco-Mongol alliance" expression anyway (relevant to article title)). Many historians do consider the alliance as fact (User:PHG/Alliance), and many consider it was an alliance that ultimately failed (true), and a few deny there was an alliance at all (obviously untrue). To me, this is just a Wikipedia:NPOV issue: we should just outline the differing opinions, and leave it at that. This is why I consider important an introduction sentence such as "A Franco-Mongol alliance, or attempts towards such an alliance, was the objective of...", because it allows to present both views. Let me remind that even Elonka has accepted this phrasing in our mediation on November 14th as satisfactory, until she broke the agreement recently. PHG (talk) 13:08, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

My uneducated opinion

I will likely regret getting involved with this, but given this dispute has been running on for I don't know how long, and I've managed to find myself reading it again, I'd throw in my opinion on this. My opinion isn't based on historical knowledge, but an interest in both a neutral point of view and a resolution (however unlikely) to this debate. Without further ado, here's my favored introduction sentence:

A Franco-Mongol alliance, or at least attempts towards such an alliance, was the objective of diplomatic endeavors between the Franks and the Mongols, starting around the time of the Seventh Crusade.

I would remove the at least since it seems unnecessarily wordy. However, I don't want to propose yet another alternative so I left it in. My reasoning is relatively simple: Elonka had previously accepted that version in mediation, so I'm not sure why it's an issue again. Secondly, the alternative suggested by Elonka seems less neutral than the one agreed upon in arbitration. The current revision seems to imply that there was no formal alliance, which is the basis of the dispute here. But, feel free to take all of this with a grain of salt, I'm one of those "nobodies" that User:Adam Bishop was referring to :). Justin chat 00:42, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Justin, the more opinions here, the better.  :) In answer to your concerns, it is true that I accepted PHG's version of the sentence in mediation, back in November 2007. It was my hope that if I would give in on one thing, we could more easily find a compromise on something else. But as it turned out, PHG refused to compromise on anything else, and the mediation was eventually closed as unsuccessful. I thought hard about it for a couple months, and read other discussions on this talkpage, and then decided that the best opening sentence was, and is: "Many attempts were made towards forming a Franco-Mongol alliance between the mid-1200s and the early 1300s, starting around the time of the Seventh Crusade. This is the version of opening sentence that everyone else on the talkpage (except for PHG) likes, it has consensus, and it is in alignment with the vast majority of modern historians' opinions on the subject. If you would like more information on the disputes here, I recommend reading User:Elonka/Mongol quickref, and if you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to speak up.  :) --Elonka 05:47, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Thank you Justin for your support. Some precisions on Elonka during our mediation: the introduction sentence was agreed on November 14th, and Elonka broke her agreement based on Talk Page discussions that actually far predated the mediation (except for one, by Aramgar).
Regarding the reasons why the Mediation was closed (visible here): it actually ended after Elonka was finally qualified as "far too dogmatic" and not being "fair" by the mediator [9], and he gave up any hope that the mediation would lead anywhere. The reality is that Elonka has actually been the one unable to compromise all along. PHG (talk) 11:35, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
I will just note (without taking sides in the great "Who was worse" in the mediation debate, where I have my opinion, but don't care to share it as it's really unneeded in this debate) in the interest of fair disclosure that the link that PHG gives above isn't to the "end" of the mediation nor the last statement on the matter by the mediator. The mediator did not explictly state that he was giving up because of Elonka's attitude (in fact he declined to state one party that caused the end of the mediation). Ealdgyth | Talk 14:33, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
The mediator's did make the above comments on Elonka's attitude, and the reality is that mediation was ended when Elonka re-started "It's your fault" personal attacks inspite of the mediator's warnings. I only need to clarify the reality of this mediation as Elonka is misrepresenting it (above). PHG (talk) 16:00, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
See, I knew I would have to work at it once I got involved :P. I had to seriously invest some time into reading about this debate and I have a few points. There seems to be no contention that an alliance was attempted, but whether or not it was successful. Per WP:UNDUE, fringe theories should be avoided while majority and signifigant minority opinions should be given due weight. Now that I've read the relevant information, I tend to feel that PHG's version gives undue weight to the idea of an existing alliance. I also think that Elonka's version tends to remove it altogether. I really hate to insert yet another option, but I think something similar to this to be viable:

Many attempts were made towards forming a Franco-Mongol alliance between the mid-1200s and the early 1300s, starting around the time of the Seventh Crusade. Although the majority of historians hold the attempts ultimately ended in failure, some have argued that a formal alliance eventually took place.

I know that sounds a bit weasely (and my prose probably sucks) but something to that effect, should resolve the issue. It fixes any issues with WP:UNDUE, by maintaining Elonka's introductory sentence, which appears to be the majority held opinion, while still making note that a minority-held opinion exists. Feel free to utterly ignore me, as again, I'm no historian (armchair or otherwise). :) Justin chat 01:20, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Having just come from cleaning up and polishing a few articles for GA (I hope), if I might suggest we worry about the content of the article, and not the lead section. I've learned as I've edited here, that it's best to leave the lead section until the article is in a polished, semi-stable state. Then, the lead and the introduction write themselves, as you're just sumarizing the content of the article. (This, by the way, also works really well when you write books, write the book, THEN the introduction.) We should, of course, have some sort of plan for the structure of the article, i.e. do we want to go with strictly chronological? Or by the regnal periods? By theme? A mixture of those approaches? Also, what should be covered in the article, and what's unneeded or might be better off split into another article. Personally, I think the sections on the cultural and technological exchanges would work better in a separate article, but that's an opinion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ealdgyth (talk • contribs) 03:21, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the majority/minority views, I tried to cover them in the section entitled Franco-Mongol alliance#Dispute about the existence of the Franco-Mongol alliance. Based on my own research, the vast majority of historians say that there were "attempts" at forming an alliance, but that the attempts failed. A few other historians do use the word "alliance" in their works, but usually this is simply as a general synonym, like to occasionally say "alliance" instead of "vassalage", or "allies" instead of "subjects", simply as a matter of varying words every so often. A notable exception to this is the French historian Jean Richard, who does argue that there was an alliance which started in the 1260s, and I've made sure to include a mention of his opinion in the "Dispute" section.
In terms of other historians' views, I think that we need to set some minimum standards. For example, in order for us to accept that a historian actually argues that an alliance existed, I think we really need specific "scope" language from that historian, like, "an alliance started in <date> and ended in <date>." It's not enough that the historian just uses the word "alliance," especially when they're referring to relations with Antioch or Cilician Armenia, which we have already established were overlord/vassal relationships, not an alliance.
Of the books I've read, I've seen only three historians who argued any kind of date of a European/Mongol alliance, and those three don't even agree with each other. Richard, in eloquent and thoughtful language, argues that an alliance technically started around the 1260s. Demurger, in very wishy-washy language, says that the Europeans put an emotional "seal" on an alliance around 1300, by committing troops to Ruad. And Zoe Oldenbourg has one line in the back of one of her books, where in a "Crusades timeline," it says that an alliance existed in 1280, but she makes no other mention of this alliance anywhere else in the book, and I have to wonder if it's just a typographical error. In short, I'm reluctant to say that those three instances comprise a significant "minority view" that there was an alliance, since the three opinions don't even agree with each other. However, since Jean Richard is such a respected historian, I think it's reasonable for us to include his opinion in the article, which I have done in the "Dispute" section. However I don't feel that this gives the theory enough weight that it should go into the lead of the article.
If, however, anyone can locate any other reputable historians who argue the existence of an alliance in actual "dates and facts" language, especially if you can find two or more historians who actually agree with each other on the scope of an alliance, I am of course interested in reviewing those works, towards including that information into the article in an appropriate fashion. --Elonka 07:21, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd have to say Payne in The Dream and the Tomb argues for an alliance, especially in the last chapters. I set a few quotations out below, but as it's a fairly recent book, and aimed at the general market, not the scholarly, more folks will have heard of it. It should probably be mentioned. I picked my copy up used at Half-Price (love that store!) but you can probably acquire ones at most any used bookstore. Or from Amazon. It's actually a very well written work, my main beef with it the lack of adequate source citations. I would like to avoid using it in the article itself, but as a proponent of the alliance idea, his ideas are probably worth mentioning. Ealdgyth | Talk 07:39, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
I think it's usually easy to determine when an opinion constitutes a fringe theory, and when it constitutes a minority-held view. This one isn't so easy, since the term "alliance" doesn't explicitly mean a formal agreement. That being said, I think you are putting a bit too much emphasis on interpreting what an author "means". It's clear that you and PHG have different subjective views on what an author might mean by "alliance", and in either case it's original research. If an author uses the phrase "Franco-Mongol alliance" it's best to take it at face value, instead of "reading" whether they meant a formal alliance or an informal alliance. "Attempts at a Franco-Mongol alliance" should be taken at face value. And notable authors that use words besides alliance should be included in the section on the dispute. I would agree with you that dates should be a requirement if the PHG wanted to put "a formal alliance" in the lead. But he isn't, so I feel that you are setting the standard a bit too high.
WP:UNDUE is pretty clear on this. If it's a fringe theory, it shouldn't be in the article at all. If it's a minority-held view, it should be included, but with due weight. Avoiding putting it in the lead, but then putting it in the body of the article seems to put this somewhere between fringe and minority (not to mention, it doesn't properly summarize the article). I think much of this can be resolved by involving independent editors that can help determine if, indeed, this theory of an formal alliance constitutes fringe or constitutes minority-held view. I tend to lean towards the latter, based on the variety of sources you and PHG have used to make your points. Justin chat 19:49, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Outside opinion

Elonka seems to be getting no trouble at all for solicitating outside opinion ([10] [11]). I will therefore also invite a few editors who are highly knowledgeable of these issues, although I will self-limit myself to 2 invitations for balance. I would appreciate to have some information on Wikipedia policy in this respect. Regards PHG (talk) 08:42, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

PHG, I have been following this conflict without comment for some time. I have been hesitant to get involved for a variety of reasons, including the vast drain on my time that involvement would seem to entail. I stepped in at this juncture because the rapidly multiplying number of POV forks you've created suggested to me that the situation was getting out of control. While I appreciate having being invited to the discussion, I want to emphasize that the decision to contribute here is my own and results from what I perceive as your own disruptive behavior. I still don't understand your reluctance to refrain from splitting the page until greater concensus has been reached. Can you explain it to me? Kafka Liz (talk) 10:22, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Kafka Liz. Thanks for your explanations, although I note the sollicitation occured nonethelesss.
  • First, the title "Franco-Mongol alliance" has been officially approuved through consensus already (Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance/Archive 2#Requested move), therefore my understanding is that an article with that title (or variations of it, like adding a date) is perfectly legitimate. If a new formal consensus emerges, we'll change at that time.
  • Actually, I am totally fine with "refraining from splitting the page until greater concensus has been reached". It was actually my position all along to keep the article together until issues are clarified (for example: "Article size. I believe we first need to settle content disputes before we start slicing the article." here) but Elonka kept demanding an article "reduction/split" (and threatening that she would soon take the matter in her own hands if no action were taken) because the article reached an "unacceptable" 190k ("It is my opinion that the consensus of editors at this talkpage, is that the article needs to be shortened. If someone else wants to do it, that's fine with me, but if not, I will proceed with this in the near future. --Elonka 18:41, 14 January 2008 (UTC)"). I only splitted the article because I was insistently asked to. As soon as I did it though, with a solution which I personnally think is quite nice (as some other editors have said too), I get slammed with "POV fork" accusations, huge criticism for splitting, and a host of AfDs. How fair is that? If the split is judged unnacceptable, I will gladly return to the 190k situation, so that we can discuss from that base. I actually think the split allows to expand specific time periods and develop a summary-type Main Article, but I'm OK either way. Best regards. PHG (talk) 11:03, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
I believe the relevant part of the Jan 14 quote above is "shortened". Shortened does not necessarily imply splitting. From a personal point of view, and this is my opinion on the article as a whole, there are entirely too many extraneous quotations from original sources. For instance, quoting the letter from Güyük Khan to Pope Innocent IV is really not needed, as you've summarized the substance of the letter right in the introduction to the quotation. I could list many many more examples. If I was to rework the article, I would nix all the quotations right from the start. To me, they smack of WP:OR. The idea of Wikipedia is that we summarize the secondary literature. In line with what Adam Bishop stated above about it being obvious you are not a historian, the usage of primary sources (as a historian would see them) extensively in the article is a great example of why it is obvious you didn't train as a historian. We should be summarizing the secondary sources, i.e. the modern historians of the subject, not regurgitating isolated snippets from the primary sources. I could see using a primary source quotation (and have) when it has direct bearing on the personality of a biography or describes an dramatic event. They should be used sparingly, not as they are here, where I count 25!!!! And this is after you split the article up, I wonder how many were stuffed in before that. I've hesitated to get involved in this whole dispute, mainly because I have some rather large projects of my own that I wanted to work on, and this period is not an area I have a lot of references on nor was/am I particularly interested in, but you've been spreading your edits into areas I AM interested in, such as Edward I of England, where the section you added does NOT agree with the main biography of Edward (Prestwich) (See above for the relavant quotations from Prestwich) and have added undue weight to the period, not to mention being tacked into a section that was on Edward's crusade. I finally involved myself here mainly because I could see your articles spreading towards my area of interest, and wanted to hopefully influence it to maintain some sense of proportion. Sorry for the ramble, but this article is no where NEAR featured article status and the quotations are only the tip of the iceberg. Ealdgyth | Talk 14:41, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
In aid of testing that theory, that removing the unneeded quotations would shorten the article considerably, I offer User:Ealdgyth/Mongol testing, which has had all unnecessary quotations taken out. Dropped the article 40K. I'm sure that if I consolidated the references, it'd help some too, and the captions and/or pictures could be usefully pruned without loss to the sense of the article. Ealdgyth | Talk 01:25, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
If a subject is contentious or disputed, referencing each argument, and if possible actually quoting authors is probably still the best way to move forward. What else is there? A bunch of opinions from unknown editors without formal credentials? I prefer by far relying heavily on reputable published material, and layout the various academic points of view per Wikipedia:NPOV. Regards. PHG (talk) 14:55, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Academic point of view would be referencing modern works, not direct quotes from the medieval sources. The idea of Wikipedia is we write in a summary style, which means we use primary source quotations sparingly. I think you'll find that the consensus of the other editors replying here is that the primary source quotations and the literally hundreds of quotations in the footnotes should be removed. I may be wrong, which is why I did my testing on a sandbox, but I'd be interested to hear other opinions from some of the other editors who've spoken up here. And please, PHG, can we start using edit summaries? It would help a bunch in keeping track of what is going on.Ealdgyth | Talk 16:38, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Ealdgyth. I am afraid I have not seen the consensus you are claiming against quoting modern and reputable secondary sources. Quoting reputable secondary sources is actually a good guaranty against mis-interpretations by users and improves the accuracy of an article. Wikipedia policy also seems to favour quotes: "Quotations are a fundamental attribute of Wikipedia. Quotes provide a direct source of information or insight." (Wikipedia:Quotations). Regarding primary sources, they are only quoted when also quoted or referenced by modern secondary sources, except maybe for 2 or 3 exceptions in the whole article. Regards. PHG (talk) 16:53, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
I went to Wikipedia:Quotations and reread the guideline. As I thought, the quotation that PHG is using above is actually "Third, while quotations are an indispensable part of Wikipedia, try not to overuse them. Too many quotes take away from the encyclopedic feel of Wikipedia. Also, editors should avoid long quotations if they can keep them short. Long quotations not only add to the length of many articles that are already too long, but they also crowd the actual article and remove attention from other information." PHG is quoting from the lead section of the guideline, without taking the qualifiers into account. Ealdgyth | Talk 14:42, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Why do you put so much faith in Wikipedia policies, rather than people who know what they are doing, have some semblance of credentials, and are trying to help you? Wikipedia policies are written by a bunch of nobodies with no credentials, so what makes you pick one random group of nobodies over another? Adam Bishop (talk) 19:41, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Ealdgyth that quotations should be used sparingly, and that the current version of the article uses too many of them. I'd be hesitant to remove all of them though -- I think that a few, especially well-known quotes of correspondence from one monarch to another, may be appropriate to show the nature and style of the communications going back and forth. But I don't think it's necessary to quote entire passages from medieval historians such as Templar of Tyre. In my own rewrite, at User:Elonka/Franco-Mongol alliance, I thinned out the quotations considerably. Since no one else seems to have concerns about my rewrite (except for PHG), I'll go ahead and start implementing sections of it. --Elonka 04:34, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I cannot agree with Adam's statement above that Wikipedia policies should be disregarded in favour of the opinions of a few editors banding together on a Talk Page. Wikipedia policy have primacy whatever happens. If you do not accept Wikipedia policy, either do not edit here, or go and try to change the policy itself. Regards. PHG (talk) 06:29, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
What policy? There isn't even any single policy, it's just a bunch of random rules. What about WP:ENC and WP:NOT? What is the purpose of writing this article at all? You want people to read about the Franco-Mongol alliance and understand it, right? That's impossible right now. But it's equally impossible to fix it thanks to your slavish adherence to supposed "policy". If Wikipedia policy allows you to write bad history, then policy must be ignored. Adam Bishop (talk) 19:01, 20 January 2008 (UTC)


Content organisation

Since it appears that the articles and template currently up for deletion (save, hopefully, the Mongol generals) will be deleted, I am writing this so that we are prepared to deal with some of the issues that such deletion may sidestep. First, there is no doubt that the article at its current length must be shortened somehow. But this cannot occur until the accuracy disputes are settled. Second, there are Armeno-, Byzantine-, and Mamluk-Mongol alliance articles that do not appear to be disputed (greatly, or asides from any refs to this article). The first issue could be partially ameliorated if any information redundant to both this article and one of the non-disputed ones is removed from here unless it is directly pertinent. Third, if these three articles are undisputed and this one remains under its current title (as I favour), then we will have four "x-Mongol alliance" articles without any over-arching connexion. PHG had created a template and article which are slanted for deletion (which I favour, since they disrupt the dispute-resolution process and could be easily re-created more accurately once it is resolved). Should there be any over-arching organisation if three of these Mongol alliances are undisputed and a fourth was a very real goal of certain diplomacy? Should this include a template like the one up for deletion? An article like the one up for deletion? Finally, are the other Mongol allinace articles actually undisputed asides from any Franco- refs in them? Could these issues be solved rapidly in such a way as to perhaps salvage the template & article up for deletion? Srnec (talk) 05:26, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Srnec! It is true that scholars are divided on the extent of the Franco-Mongol alliance (Although even those who write about "attempts only" still use the "Franco-Mongol alliance" expression anyway (relevant to article title). Many historians do consider the alliance as fact (User:PHG/Alliance), and many consider it was an alliance that ultimately failed (true), and a few deny there was an alliance at all. To me, this is just a Wikipedia:NPOV issue: we should just outline the differing opinions, and leave it at that. This is why I consider important an introduction sentence such as "A Franco-Mongol alliance, or attempts towards such an alliance, was the objective of...", because it allows to present both views. "Franco-Mongol alliance" (or variations of it) is a widely accepted academic expression for this subject however, so should stand in its own right. Best regards. PHG (talk) 13:00, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm inclined to think that the other articles would be just as disputed if we had the time and expertise to examine them as much as we do this one (perhaps all of PHG's articles would be). Adam Bishop (talk) 14:10, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Adam. In retrospect, my propensity for little-known multi-cultural subjects might indeed be a favourable ground for arguments and disputes, but all I write is referenced from reputable published sources, and is based on quite a lot of research. Should you wish to challenge anything, I will be glad to discuss, as always. Best regards. PHG (talk) 15:02, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

More quotes

I added in User:PHG/Alliance a quite straiforward quote by Reuven Amitai-Preiss in Mongols and Mamluks (1995) about the unequivocal alliance of the Franks and the Mongols under Bohemond VI:

"Under Bohemond VI, the northern Franks maintained their unequivocal pro-Mongol alliance after 'Ayn Jālūt"

– Reuven Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks (1995), p.54.

He goes on detailing the instances in which the Mongols further came to the rescue of the Frank Antiochians when they were attacked by the Mamluks, until the Fall of Antioch in 1268. This is but one more source. I would wish that some editors stop claiming that an alliance never existed, in the face of so many reputable and prominent historians who do say it did. PHG (talk) 15:37, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll note that this is an 8 year period out of approximately 100 years. 8 years of an alliance between Antioch and the Mongols does not necessarily mean that the whole of Western Europe was allied to the Mongols for the whole time period. You keep referring to "AN" alliance. I would posit that it is more correct to say "ALLIANCES" existed, each one of limited duration and scope.Ealdgyth | Talk 16:53, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Was there an overarching alliance? This is a matter of academical controversy. Many authors tend to consider the Franco-Mongol alliance as a global phenomenon encompassing various finite events (see User:PHG/Alliance). I think this is due to the encompassing goodwill and agreements for cooperation exchanged between the Popes and the Il-Khan rulers. On the field, the Franco-Mongol alliance concretized into various finite collaborative actions between 1258 to 1302. As far as I know, no authority has ever said "Franco-Mongol ALLIANCES" (plural). It would be a total neologism. Please see answer hereunder. Regards. PHG (talk) 17:13, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
My point is, that most of these historians you're referring to are talking about short term alliances. Like the above quote, which you clearly say applies to an alliance with ran from a battle in 1260 until 1268. That's one alliance. Then we talk about an alliance when Edward I was in the Holy Land in 1271, which lasted while he was there. Another alliance. The Oldenburg quotation states that the alliance that started in 1280 against a specific person. That's another alliance. The Riley-Smith quotation discusses an alliance that started in 1285. Each of those historians is referring to an alliance, yes, but they are talking about an alliance that is bounded in a shorter time frame than what is covered by the article. Or to put it another way, how can a "global phenomenon" as you describe it, have so many starting dates? Each historian is giving a new starting date - 1260 for Reuven Amitai-Preiss, 1270 for Prestwich, 1280 for Oldenburg, 1285 for Riley-Smith. Clearly they are discussing different local/specific alliances, and to argue that they are all referring to one global phenomenon looks to me like Original Research. I could be wrong, but I'd like to hear other voices on this, from other editors, such as Srnec, Adam Bishop, John K, etc. And certainly it would be nice to hear from some other newer editors. It's a collabrative project after all. And once more... could we use edit summaries? Ealdgyth | Talk 17:32, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
You are right that many authors are not so coherent about the time frame. I suspect that many are aware of some events, but not necessarily of all events that occured. For example for many authors 1302 falls out of their horizon for the Crusades in the Levant (which often are thought to finish in 1291 with the Fall of Acre). To me, the clearest author on the subject is the leading French historian Jean Richard: Jean Richard in Histoire des Croisades, has the Franco-Mongol alliance start in earnest in the 1260s ("The sustained attacks of Baibars (...) rallied the Occidentals to this alliance, to which the Mongols also convinced the Byzantines to adhere", in "Histoire des Croisades", p.453.) and continue on-and-off until it was strongly revived by Ghazan, to continue to have an influence until 1322 ("In 1297 Ghazan resumes his projects against Egypt (...) the Franco-Mongol cooperation had thus survived, to the loss of Acre by the Franks, and to the conversion of the khan to Islam. It was to remain one of the political factors of the policy of the Crusades, until the peace treaty with the Mamluks, which was concluded in 1322 by khan Abu Said." in "Histoire des Croisades", p.468). Regards. PHG (talk) 17:41, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Precision

I think before we go on, we need to discuss what exactly is meant by "Franco" here. Are we talking about all of Western Europe? If so, to talk about an existing alliance, we would need to marshall facts for the whole time period and covering the major kingdoms and the papacy. If by Franco we mean the Crusader states, then it would be easier to show that alliances (note the plural) existed, because certainly there are historians who put forth that there were limited time frame and limited to the Crusader states alliances and/or working together for limited goals. Precision in terminology is important, especially with the sweeping nature of the time frame. PHG keeps referring to "an alliance", which to me (and I may be misinterpreting his intent, thus this attempt at discussion) means that there was one large overarching alliance between the Western European powers (including the Crusader states and the military orders) for the whole time period. However, the historians seem to be referring to limited time frames with their discussions of "alliance", usually limited in time frame and goals. Perhaps the article and/or discussion might be better termed "Franco-Mongol alliances"? I would really prefer "Crusader-Mongol alliances" since even when Louis IX or Edward I were in the Holy Land, they were more acting as Crusaders, not as heads of France or England. Ealdgyth | Talk 16:53, 19 January 2008 (UTC)


Hi Ealdgyth. This was already discussed when Elonka's proposals for article change were formally rejected by consensus ( Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance/Archive 2#Requested move):
  • "Franco-Mongol alliances" would be a total neologism, which hasn't been used by any authority (just check on Google and Google books for a start).
  • "Crusader-Mongol alliances" would cover all the Crusaders (including the eastern Europeans) and the European front. It could be a larger article, of which "Franco-Mongol alliance" would be but one part.
  • The "Franco" in "Franco-Mongol alliance", refers to the Franks, who by convention are the European Christians who had business with the Levant (Since "Franks" was the term used by the Muslim to designate them). Between the 11th to the 15th century, the Crusaders in the Levant were usually called Franks. More broadly the term applied to any persons originating in Catholic western Europe (medieval Middle Eastern history). The term led to derived usage by other cultures, such as Farangi, Firang, Farang and Barang. "The term [Frank] was used by all the populations of the eastern Mediterranean to designate the totality of the Crusaders as well as the settlers" Atlas des Croisades,1996, Jonathan Riley-Smith, ISBN 2862605530. Frank does cover both the Crusader states in the Levant and Western European countries.
  • Was there an overarching alliance? This is a matter of academical controversy. Many authors tend to consider the Franco-Mongol alliance as a global phenomenon encompassing various finite events (see User:PHG/Alliance). I think this is due to the encompassing goodwill and agreements for cooperation exchanged between the Popes and the Il-Khan rulers. On the field, the Franco-Mongol alliance concretized into various collaborative actions between 1258 to 1302.
  • Lastly, "Franco-Mongol alliance" is indeed a standard expression used by historians of the period. Again User:PHG/Alliance. Thank you for this discussion. Best regards. PHG (talk) 17:13, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Let's see what others say about this. Consensus can change you know. And please... edit summaries?Ealdgyth | Talk 17:17, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Honestly, what reputable scholars actually write should be much more important to us than any micro-consensus between a few Wikipedians on a polemical Talk Page. Let's not create "Wikiality" (Fancifull "Wikipedia-reality" created through user consensus): academic usages and recognized definitions have to have absolute primacy in an encyclopedia. What do you mean regarding edit summaries? Regards PHG (talk) 17:30, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Edit summaries, when you are replying to someone it's nice to say "reply" .. when you are merely tweaking your spelling "spelling" or "typo" so that I can see what is an actual reply and what is you going back and tweaking your comments. Frankly, this talk page is cluttering up my watchlist with lots of little edits, and it would be nice to be able to separate when you are merely tweaking your prose, when you are rewording your comments, and when you are replying with a new comment.Ealdgyth | Talk 17:35, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes of course. I see what you mean now. Best regards. PHG (talk) 17:45, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Since I am one of the few voices that does not oppose the current title yet has misgivings about the article content and the alleged POV forks/coatracks being created, I thought I'd chime in at Ealdgyth's suggestion (in the previous thread). Let me ask this: George W. Bush was in Saudi Arabia recently. He kissed the Crown Prince and they had a jolly good time exchanging gifts and talking politics and sports. Is there an alliance between American and Saudi Arabia? It looked awfully friendly, yet I heard an analyst say on the news that Saudi Arabia is undeniably a foe of the United States. So what's going on? This is the type of difficulty we have looking back 700 years at Franco-Mongol relations. I think Edward Longshanks achieved some small level of cooperation with a small number of Mongol forces. And James the Conqueror may have been equally (un)successful. He certainly had a mutual plan of some sort with the Mongols, but his bastard sons don't appear to have had much effect in the Holy Land. Bohemond VI certainly cooperated with the Mongols, but was it compelled or was it "friendly"? Do Armeno-Mongol relations count as Franco-Mongol when the Franks had their noses so deep in Armenian business? If the "Franco-Mongol alliance" was mostly a chimera pursued sometimes relentlessly, sometimes disinterestedly by both sides against the Mamluks, can we say that in a few instances the overarching "idea" of the alliance achieved very limited expression in agreements and concerted action? And what is "an idea of an alliance in limited expression" but a limited alliance? There was not big Franco-Mongol alliance. There were only brief periods of agreement and cooperation between bit players, but this is enough, in my opinion, to justify this article (and under its current title). Instead of worrying what historians say about the "alliance" (attempts), let's worry about what happened and characterise it common-sensibly as it permits. I would like to say more, but this is long enough (and probably difficult to follow). I'd like to put the "was there/wasn't there an alliance?" dispute behind is and get on to dealing with the particular disputed claims in the article and the disputed reliability of certain sources. Srnec (talk) 18:51, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

My point about the alliance vs. alliances (or whatever) thing isn't to necessarily reopen the title discussion (although I will admit I'd be more comfortable with a different title, because the title definitely influences how folks read the article) but to make sure that the discussion of the article itself is grounded on some common definitions so we aren't misunderstanding each other when we discuss things. That was my main aim. As far as discussing what actually happened, I'm fine with moving on to that, but I'd like to also add to the discussion list the use of primary sources. Ealdgyth | Talk 19:21, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Stop the deletions of referenced material!!

I don't think that deleting a huge amount of perfectly referenced material [12] (from 190k to 80k of content), and adopting an alternate POV version, is the way to go on Wikipedia. I understand Elonka's impatience to get her version of things out, but the proper Wikipedia way to do it is to start from the complete text (although it's long at 190k, but editors have shown they did not want a split yet anyway), and discuss specific issues one by one. I will be glad to participate to these discussions. Doing otherwise would be a serious breach of Wikipedia methodology, and I will file a formal claim if this continues. I will reinstate the complete text with references, so that we can start discussions from that basis (FULL VERSION HERE) Thank you to respect Wikipedia rules: they should always have primacy over a few editors banding together on a Talk Page. Regards. PHG (talk) 06:16, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry but this is how things have worked. There is ongoing discussion above about improving the article, which I'm sure you have been watching. You need to stop subverting the improvement process by insisting on starting from your preferred version. Instead, join in the ongoing discussion and talk about what further improvements you think can be made. Please stop continually edit warring on this and related articles. I know you've put a lot of work into the area, but you need to allow others to work on the articles as well. Shell babelfish 06:42, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Just because a few editors say "I like Elonka's version", doesn't mean that there is a right to destroy a huge amount of referenced material from highly reputable sources. I am OK to have a summary article, but then split articles with all details have to be allowed for. As split article are also being denied, the only solution is to work with the full article with all references and discuss from that. PHG (talk) 07:10, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
But you see, there's exactly the point. I understand you are attached to the text, however, many other editors are saying that your text, however well referenced, is more than needed in this instance. There may be other formats which would be more conducive to the work you're doing -- have you considered publishing?
The main problem is that you don't get to say "all this gets included or put elsewhere or you can't change the article" -- that's simply not how Wikipedia works at all. Consensus and collaborative article writing means that you work with others, not against them, even when consensus doesn't necessarily go your way. Its difficult to do with subjects that you care a lot about, especially when you do a great deal of writing. Shell babelfish 07:17, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia is certainly not about writing around a single point of view, but about presenting "all significant views (that have been published by reliable sources). This is non-negotiable and expected on all articles, and of all article editors." (Wikipedia:NPOV). Deleting referenced material from significant authors on a given subject is therefore unacceptable. If there is divergence between contributors, the only solution is to present the various material in a balanced way (according to some historians...., according to some others...), which the (FULL VERSION) already does to a very large extent, and can continue to do with further contributions from other editors, but certainly not to erase sources and favour just one story. Editors are welcome to balance existing material by adding new material, but certainly not by erasing referenced contributions from reputable sources. Again, this non-negotiable per Wikipedia:NPOV. PHG (talk) 07:48, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
PHG, what is NPOV on a given article cannot be determined by one editor alone. Like anything else on Wikipedia it is a consensus based exercised and it is up to editors collectively to reach agreement on how to neutrally present content. You cannot limit other editors to only adding new content, sometimes the best way to improve an article will be to condense the material. Much like some of the best novels and academic texts were considerably edited down by their publishers (much to the author's chagrin), Wikipedia articles sometimes simply get too long and have to be reduce in size so they maintain manageable for the reader. WjBscribe 08:05, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:NPOV is not a suicide pact; it does not mean that we must include every view ever published on every subject as you seem to be implying. When dealing with historical articles, we strive to present an overview of modern, mainstream historical viewpoints -- if there is a highly significant viewpoint that is not modern, we may mention it as well. The key word in all this is "significant". The article now does a much better job of meeting this goal. If you have specific points that you believe were significant that have been left out in the rewrite, lets address those. Reverting back to a previous version whose problems have been discussed ad nauseum is not the answer; lets move forward. Shell babelfish 08:02, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

  • ISSUES WITH ELONKA'S VERSION:
  • Elonka's version is actually highly POV in that it dismisses any notion that the Franks or the Armenians could have been allies (instead treating them as "vassals" or "submitted to") the Mongols, inspite of the numerous historical sources that say they were indeed allies.
  • It is also highly POV in that it stresses that there were only "attempts at an alliance", although a quantity of highly reputable editors consider the alliance as fact (User:PHG/Alliance)
  • It also fails to represent factually the details of the alliance, in favour of a generally dismissive narration. This subject deserves actually mentionning the various embassies, epistolary exchanges, and military collaborations (how can even the 1260 combined campaign disappear from such an article?: Franco-Mongol alliance#Participation of the Franks to the Mongol invasion of the Levant (1260) from the FULL VERSION)
  • Generally, her version is an unprecise narration that favours a single very biased POV that there were no allies and no alliance worth mentionning, inspite of numerous academic sources to the contrary. It obviously contrevenes to Wikipedia:NPOV which states that all significant views should be mentionned.
  • The introduction sentence is highly representative of this bias, only mentionning "attempts at an alliance", whereas the obvious NPOV choice would be "A Franco-Mongol alliance, or at least attempts towards such an alliance" (as agreed to by Elonka on November 14th, but later disowned by her).
  • Only factual precision can make a good encyclopedia article, and deleting 100k of references and sources as she just did is certainly not the right direction to go. If the article is too long, we'll just split the material, but ending up with un-precise summaries is certainly not the solution. PHG (talk) 11:53, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
I understand where you're coming from. Unfortunately, right now it appears that many scholars, current history and the majority of the editors responding to requests for comment on this article all disagree with you. The article as it stands now is not highly biased since it is giving the proper majority weight to prevailing theories; it appears that your continued assertion of an alliance is a minority historical view and should be treated as such.
It might be very helpful for everyone involved if we could try not to blame this or that on a particular editor and instead focus on the content concerns we have. You've made this a battle between you and Elonka, but that's not what I'm seeing on this talk page and in the archives -- you've been the sole advocate of the idea that a majority of historians report an alliance and many other editors (Elonka included) have tried their best to explain their view and work with you. Shell babelfish 12:20, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Shell, I have never said that the "Alliance" view was majority (pretty hard to gauge anyway), only that it is a major and significant view held by many reputable historians (User:PHG/Alliance) and that therefore it deserves proper representation. I have never been against representing the other opinion that there were only "attempts at an alliance" either: both views should be represented, and it is unacceptable per Wikipedia:NPOV that only one point of view should be aired. As long as Wikipedia:NPOV exists, furthermore as a rule that is "non negotiable" [13], standing above any micro-consensus on a Talk Page, there is absolutely no reason why the opinion of a large portion of the most significant historians should be excluded.
I am not so sure about your comments regarding Elonka either. Our Mediation had to be closed (visible here) after Elonka was finally qualified as "far too dogmatic" and not being "fair" by the mediator [14], and he gave up any hope that the mediation would lead anywhere. She even broke the single agreement we had managed to reach on November 14th regarding the introduction sentence "A Franco-Mongol Alliance, or at least attempts towards such an alliance..." ("Okay, I like that version.:)--Elonka" here). The reality is that Elonka has actually failed to compromise all along (although she is very good at gathering support and at claiming consensus when there is not really one [15]), and unable to recognize that NPOV involves integrating the various points of view available. Regards. PHG (talk) 13:51, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
The debate about whether or not there was an alliance currently has an entire section to itself which discusses the different viewpoints; perhaps some of the information you're concerned about could be included in that area. The section is an appropriate place to cover the additional viewpoints since the majority of the article should be written from the majority viewpoint. Attempting to discount consensus reached (more than once) in discussions on this talk page by calling it "micro" simply doesn't work -- the article doesn't have to agree with your view of how NPOV should be reached on the article, it has to agree with the consensus of how NPOV should be reached. Its unfortunate that you disagree with the conclusions and article direction, however you're still welcome to continue discussions on how to improve the article going forward.
I'm not quite sure why you don't believe the advice given in Wikipedia's civility policies is a good idea; its a suggestion often made to keep things from becoming personal as they have here. Its unfortunate that the mediation between you and Elonka was unfruitful, however, I think you misunderstand the purpose of the process. For instance, your constant repetition of things said in the mediation and your attempt to use it against another party here is certainly not what mediation is for -- please read Wikipedia:Mediation#The_privileged_nature_of_mediation. The reality is that there are now other editors involved in the discussions here and we're all trying to focus on content; I'm just asking if you could please do the same. The previous failed mediation has no bearing. Shell babelfish 14:36, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
To the set the record straight: PHG, your comment that --

Our Mediation had to be closed (visible here) after Elonka was finally qualified as "far too dogmatic" and not being "fair" by the mediator [16], and he gave up any hope that the mediation would lead anywhere

-- is wrong. The reason for the closure is as stated in the closing template: "Participants' unwillingness to proceed with the mediation in good faith". That's "participants", plural, with an s. That's you, that's Elonka, that's both of you. And, going off what Shell said, I cannot see any reason to reiterate this point within this dispute. Elonka's conduct during the mediation is both inadmissible and irrelevant in advancing your position (or any position) here. -- tariqabjotu 08:41, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
This removal of refrenced material is simply wrong and should be reverted. PHG has worked hard to put this all together. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 15:01, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Matt you've been formally cautioned twice about following Elonka around and stirring up trouble. Unless you can show some knowledge of the subject or some reason that the consensus here is wrong, you'd be better off stopping before trouble starts again. (edit) *Especially* given your earlier comment. [17]Shell babelfish 15:11, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
What was wrong in my previous comment here? --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 15:45, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
The previous comment was fine and in line with the other discussions here -- the fact that you've now hopped the fence in another blatant attempt to further escalate the dispute since Elonka is involved is the problem. You two disagreed on the Muhammad image question; get over it already. Your poll below is a *complete* farce and not at all representative of the ongoing discussions here. Shell babelfish 20:33, 20 January 2008 (UTC)


  • SUMMARY:
  • I am afraid it is not a proper procedure on Wikipedia to replace a whole article by someone else's version, especially before precise discussion has been made on content: content should be discussed and defined collaboratively.
  • It is also a shame to delete 100k of properly referenced material from reputable sources.
  • It is also highly incorrect in terms of civility, especially as I have created this article and provided most of the material, spending months on it.
  • Many people have already given high credit to this article (Barnstars from User:Eupator, User:Ghirlandajo, congratulations from Matt57, Deacon of Pndapetzim etc...). Several (Srnec ("First, there is no doubt that the article at its current length must be shortened somehow. But this cannot occur until the accuracy disputes are settled"), Ealdgyth, Matt57 etc...) have also expressed that we should settle on content before we go into split/reduce the article, so I am really not sure about the reality of the claimed "consensus to replace it".
  • Overall, I am afraid Elonka's replacement of the original article is rude, against Wikipedia rules, inappropriate, and non-consensual. It has to be done the proper way: we start from the COMPLETE VERSION and evaluate each part to have a proper content consensus. Regards PHG (talk) 15:46, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Clarification, I said we should settle the content disputes before we split the article. It should be noted that I've been a vigorous proponent of shortening the article greatly.Ealdgyth | Talk 15:53, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree. We should discuss content, summarize the main article and split appropriately, so as to have a well-organized and consensual group of article, without sacrifying months of research and 120k of highly referenced material. If the main article is to be summarized, I still do believe that creating more detailed sub-articles by regnal dates is a good idea. PHG (talk) 16:13, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree, this is an inappropriate action, to simply replace the current article with another editor's version. There are whole sourced sections of the article which are missing. Elonka, could you explain each deletion that you have done? Here's a rough tally for those who disagree and agree with this replacement.
Disagree with Elonka's replacement
  • --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 16:09, 20 January 2008 (UTC) "I agree, this is an inappropriate action, to simply replace the current article with another editor's version."
  • PHG "Innaproriate, rude, against Wikipedia rules and non-consensual" PHG (talk) 05:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Srnec "This cannot occur until the accuracy disputes are settled".[18]
  • Eupator "I also strongly oppose this current "rewrite" aka removal of perfectly referenced material."
Replacement is acceptable
  • Elonka
UnclearDoesn't wish to make this into a one side vs. another side dispute, so won't pick sides.
  • Ealgyth "We should settle the content disputes before we split the article".


I'm not sure that a poll of this sort is the best approach. Splitting folks into "for" or "against" only serves to perpetuate that idea that it's a personal dispute, rather than what it should be, a discussion about content and the sources. My personal opinion is that the article is way too detailed and long, and uses too many primary sources, especially quotations. I've not looked to see who contributed what, because that's not important to me. I've not yet had time even begin to review the sources and see if they are correctly represented. Let's quit focusing on the people doing the edits and focus on the content of the edits, thank you.Ealdgyth | Talk 17:03, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Hear hear! Kafka Liz (talk) 17:10, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
In addition, I'm not sure the poll carries any weight if people are being placed in various columns rather than placing themselves there. Kafka Liz (talk) 21:48, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

PHG, everyone knows you have put in lots of hard work on this article, but that does not mean you own it; WP:OWN clearly states this. Yes, it also advises trying to work with other editors in the event of large-scale removal of material or drastic rewrites, but what I see is months of you ignoring the consensus of other editors on this talk page and being absolutely inflexible on all points. I would also like to point out that we are writing an encyclopedia article, not a dissertation or monograph. The level of detail and what appears to be original research is inappropriate in this context. Kafka Liz (talk) 17:06, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Hi Kafka Liz. That is rather inexact. Most of the contents that Elonka has wished to introduce in the article to balance the "Alliance" view have stayed (hence the "alliance/attempts towards an alliance", "ally/submitted" etc... style). I only insisted that the various views be balanced per Wikipedia:NPOV), and that she does not delete my own references. I once deleted what I thought was an essay, which stayed after Elonka re-inserted it, and became today's Franco-Mongol alliance (modern interpretations), which, as other users have also pointed out, is not very encyclopedic in nature. Other than that, Elonka has provided very little in terms of new content. As always, I am absolutely open to new content and sources that could enrich the article.
Welcome to (part of) my Crusades library, source material for the Franco-Mongol alliance article. Since this photograph was taken, I think I have about doubled the number of book at hand... that's the good side of disputes, they allow one to learn more! PHG (talk) 17:35, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Welcome to (part of) my Crusades library, source material for the Franco-Mongol alliance article. Since this photograph was taken, I think I have about doubled the number of book at hand... that's the good side of disputes, they allow one to learn more! PHG (talk) 17:35, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
  • All I write is referenced from proper published material. In the case of this article I was able to glean the facts relevant to the Franco-Mongol alliance from about 40-50 books, and coalesce it into one article. I made sure to have the maximum of references and quotes to authentify this work of synthesis. This has nothing to do with original research. Maybe I should also say that an important part of my material is from French historians, who generally put great emphasis on primary sources (Old French/ Latin/ Arab/ Armenian) and seem to favour the "Alliance" view more spontaneously than many of their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. Regards. PHG (talk) 17:27, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
PHG, you are ignoring my point about ownership of the article and about the overabundance of detail, particularly -- but not exclusively -- the quotations from primary sources. In addition, your eccentric and tendentious interpretations of the secondary sources do indeed qualify as original research. Kafka Liz (talk) 17:39, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Kafka Liz. I actually take great care never to interpret, and that's why I am so meticulous with following exact scholarly quotes, often to the point of being accused of paraphrasing. I strongly believe we are not here to interpret anything, but just to lay out what secondary sources say, in a balanced NPOV fashion. Details? I tend to believe that historical facts have a fundamental importance: to me factual precision/details and primary sources quotes (when referenced by secondary sources) have a huge value, and I think Wikipedia:Quotations agrees with that. Regards PHG (talk) 17:49, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Except that your version of the article did exactly the opposite. You've been arguing this same point with a stream of editors who've come through here in an attempt to help out. Your version of the article needed some work, which has been started. We can either move forward or get mired down in yet another debate on the same subject that's now filling the archives. Is there any hope of moving on to actual work on the article? Shell babelfish 20:33, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
PHG, I agree with Shell here. Including quotations that skew the context and obscure the author's intent is hardly NPOV. I'd also like to point out that you have yet to address my concerns about WP:OWN Kafka Liz (talk) 21:59, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
I think that instead of being polemical and systematically banding together, you should just point out specific cases where you have issues. Again, all I write is referenced from proper sources, but I will gladly discuss if there are specific. Regards PHG (talk) 05:15, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
I pointed out a few concerns with sources below in the Sources section. If I wasn't clear, please tell me where I was unclear so that I can clarify. Ealdgyth | Talk 05:30, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Forgive me, PHG, but your offer to address specific cases seems disingenuous and moreover, an attempt to drown opposition in a welter of details. You have not addressed my concerns about WP:OWN; you have not addressed Ealdgyth's concerns below; you have not addressed Aramgar's evidence against an alliance here, which is only one of literally hundreds of quotations that say categorically that attempts at a formal alliance came to naught; and when I review the interactions where you actually do address specific cases, all I see is you making counteraccusations of distortion and further attempts to add undue weight to your own POV. Too many good editors have already attempted point-by-point analysis with you; my doing the same would be simply be a retread of ground already covered and a waste of both our time. Kafka Liz (talk) 14:28, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

SUMMARY: NON CONSENSUS TO CHANGE TO ELONKA'S VERSION
Just replacing a highly developed of 200k collaborative text by a watered-down pov 70k version by one User is not only rude and a shamefull deletion of referenced material, but it is also deemed unnacceptable by at least 4 users already (Matt57, Srnec, PHG, Eupator, after just 1 day of tallying above) and one who "doesn't want to pick sides" (Ealgyth) but also said ""We should settle the content disputes before we split the article", so it is obvious that there is no consensus in favour of Elonka's replacement by her own article. It is also highly disputable in term of Wikipedia methodology: article content should be discussed and issues discussed one by one to reach consensus. I will therefore re-instate the COMPLETE ARTICLE, and we can discuss content/ reductions/ split from that. I will gladly discuss any specific issues there might be. Best regards. PHG (talk) 05:30, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

PHG, please stop this. There are plenty of editors who have agreed with my version (see #Rewrite 2 section above for names and diffs). As for the editors you've named: Matt57 is one of my stalkers, who has been blocked for harassment in the past, and has already been cautioned on this matter and now promised to stay away from this page. Eupator is under ArbCom sanctions (see Wikipedia:Editing restrictions). Srnec's opinion I respect, but he's already said that he liked my rewrite, and I haven't seen anywhere that he said he wanted to revert my changes, and you haven't supplied any diffs so I'm not sure what you're talking about. Now please, can you read my post above in the "Rewrite 2" section? --Elonka 06:50, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Honestly, PHG, are you not reading what people are writing? What about all of us currently involved in this long discussion with you who *do* like the rewrite and want to move forward from there? I know how terribly difficult it is to be objective about your own work, so please, take some time to step back before this escalates further. You are displaying some severe ownership problems and seem to be uninterested in any actual consensus in the discussions on this page. Meanwhile, everyone else is discussing how to improve the article. Shell babelfish 07:50, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


NON-CONSENSUAL REPLACEMENT OF THE FULL VERSION
The bottom line is that there is no consensus for Elonka's un-Wikipedian and rude replacement of a fully-referenced article of 200k by a poorly documented and pov 70k one.

  • "Smearing the adversary" is no solution and is unfair: nobody is guilty until proven so (for exmaple User:Eupator, whom I personnally greatly respect for his knowledge of Armenian matters).
-Eupator does oppose the replacement.
-Matt57 has been blocked in the past (even your friend WjScribe blocked me once -unduly and very shortly before it was reverted) because I had put a notice on this page that you were going for administrator. He does oppose the replacement.
-Srnec specifically said: "First, there is no doubt that the article at its current length must be shortened somehow. But this cannot occur until the accuracy disputes are settled. " [19] Srnec (talk) 05:26, 19 January 2008 on this page.
-I strongly oppose the replacement and deletion of referenced material.
  • On the other hand, most of the members on the list you are giving (Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance#Rewrite 2) just make comments in passing on you rewrite, but do not constitute a support to replace the current article. The consensus you are claiming does not exist at all.
-Srnec as a point in case of your wishfull misrepresentations, wrote "I don't see any major drawback to your revision of the Franco-Mongol alliance article." on your Talk Page [20], but he further wrote on this Talk Page that he wanted to discuss content before any reduction occurs: "First, there is no doubt that the article at its current length must be shortened somehow. But this cannot occur until the accuracy disputes are settled." [21], so,he is actually not a supporter of replacing the full version by your own version.
-Tefalstar complements you for your rewrite on your Talk Page (nice), but certainly does not say that it should replace the full article [22]
-John Kenney: in the diffs you are given, he just makes general comments and does not support any time your replacement of the main article.
-Aramgar: nowhere in the diffs you are giving does he support the replacement of the full version.
-Adam Bishop: in the diffs you are giving, Adam does say the article should be reduced, but he doesn't say he supports the replacement of the full version by your version.
-Kafza Liz: in the diffs given, Kafka Liz says she likes your version, but doesn't say that she supports the replacement (although I guess she would).
-WjScribe: in the diff given, WjScribe only says that the article should be reduced, but surely does not specifically support the replacement of the full version by your 70k version.
-Shell Kinney: does support replacing the full version by your own.

So all you have is smearing the 4 editors who specifically said that you should not replace the FULL VERSION, and 1 user (Shell Kinney) who specifically said she supports replacing the 200k version by your 70k version. The rest is a mishmash of contributors from various Talk Pages (not even this one) who just say "nice summary", but don't specifically support an actual replacement of the full version on the main Franco-Mongol alliance page. Also, nobody has actually voted in your favour in the tally higher in this section. In summary, your replacement action is non-consensual, and therefore goes against Wikipedia's most basic editorial rules. It is quite a shame that a newly-elected Administrator would resort to this kind of disputable tactics, and it is not acceptable bullying. I will therefore reinstate the full version FULL VERSION, and suggest that we now discuss the content of the full article, so that we can move to a shorter/splitted article through actual consensus. Regards PHG (talk) 06:04, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Right, I don't think I said I endorse Elonka's version, just a reduced version in general. I would endorse my version, if I had time to write one! Ha! Adam Bishop (talk) 06:58, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Regarding my support, PHG, please reread the first sentence of this post. Kafka Liz (talk) 11:07, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Withdrawing from this Alliance affair

Due to threats and false accusations of harassment (which is the norm with some of these editors), I'm withdrawring myself from this Alliance affair. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 01:05, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Request for archiving

Since this page is seeing quite a lot of traffic, and is up to 184K, could we set up an automatic bot or regular schedule of archiving? Yeah, I know I've contributed to a lot of those characters .. but dang, the talk page is almost as long as one form of the article, and definitely longer than it currently stands. Thanks. Ealdgyth | Talk 06:53, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Yup, I'll go ahead and archive again. You're right, it's been pretty busy lately!  :) --Elonka 07:26, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite 2

Arkadaşlarım: Now that I've had the chance to read up more on the subject, I feel comfortable supporting the rewrite proposed by Elonka. It is substantially shorter, well-sourced, and offers, I believe, a better balanced picture of a fairly complex historical situation. It eliminates the troubling over-reliance on primary sources and provides a good summary of modern academic consensus. I checked out a number of the secondary sources summarized both by PHG in his extensive quotations and by Elonka as seen here, and believe that the latter is the more accurate scholarly view. Kafka Liz (talk) 03:58, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Clarification: By "checked out," I mean that I checked these books out of a library and examined the context of the various passages cited. Kafka Liz (talk) 04:10, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. Since you and several other editors had indicated you liked the rewrite, I've started with implementation. I just finished my first pass, which has condensed the article down to about 78K, which I think is much more manageable. I also reorganized the timeline, so instead of going by year, it works through the various Mongol leaders in order, which (in my opinion) makes it easier to split information out to the individual biographies of each leader, as necessary.
There is more that I could do, such as doublechecking for duplicate references and other "polishing up", but I'm going to pause right now to doublecheck that people are happy with my changes, before I proceed further. If anyone has concerns, please let me know! --Elonka 05:40, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Elonka, I oppose this rewrite and massive removal of sourced material. It was completely inappropriate of you to push your own version of the article into the main space when there is obviously no consensus to do this. Please revert yourself.
Having said this I withdraw from this ugly dispute. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 16:52, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the question of whether or not there was consensus for me to work on condensing the article (and/or replacing it with my rewritten version at User:Elonka/Franco-Mongol alliance), these conversations were at times somewhat fragmented. So, I figured I'd pull some of the quotes into one place: Srnec, Tefalstar, John Kenney[23][24], Aramgar[25], Adam Bishop[26], Kafka Liz, WJBscribe, and Shell Kinney. Not all of these diffs specifically say "I approve of the rewrite," but I think it is clear from what people are saying, that they approve of my scholarship and intentions here, and that consensus existed for my changes. If anyone feels that I have misrepresented their thoughts, please do speak up.

Now, I understand that PHG is opposed to my recent work condensing the article (which is understandable, as he was the primary editor whose work was being condensed). PHG, for what it's worth, my intent was not to "replace" what you've done, but to improve it. You have done an enormous amount of work on this topic, and, with the exception of a couple of POV issues where we disagree, I still feel that much of your scholarship is excellent. In no way am I trying to diminish the respect for the other high quality work that you have done. You are, and probably always will be, the primary editor on this topic. However, as I'm sure you know, in any reputable academic reference endeavor, the work of any one editor must be subject to peer-review and editing. I, as one of your peers, am trying to do exactly that, review and edit your work. I understand that this makes you unhappy, which is a natural response when you see some of your own words and research deleted. However, I wish that you could see that we (I and the other editors on this page) are not doing this out of any desire to diminish your work, but instead, out of a genuine desire to improve what you have done.

PHG, I know that you have done a lot of work on Asian topics, so you may be more familiar with this quote, but I heard from someone I greatly respect, that one of the ways to know when you are done improving a Japanese garden, is when you can no longer remove anything without ruining the effect. In other words, "less is more." It is my opinion, and that of most of the other editors on this talkpage, that a condensed article is a stronger article, not a weaker one. By shortening the article, it gives the remaining sections more impact, and further, makes it more likely that they'll even be read!

So, rather than trying to revert to the previous very long version, could we please move forward, examining the article as it stands, and focus our discussions on how to further strengthen and improve it? I really do think that we have an article here that could be navigated to Featured article status, if we could just figure out how to get past some of these last remaining disputes. I don't want to exclude you from editing here, I just want to figure out a way that we can work together, in harmony, towards the mutual goal of making a high-quality article which will be of benefit to our readers. Sincerely, Elonka 21:38, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

False claim of consensus

I am afraid Elonka's claim of a "consensus" for replacing the 200k full article by her 70k rewrite is totally illegitimate. 6 to 7 users have specifically disagreed with Elonka's replacement of the main article:

On the other hand, here are the supports that Elonka is claiming (in Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance#Rewrite 2) to justify her replacement of the main article: Srnec, Tefalstar, John Kenney[32][33], Aramgar[34], Adam Bishop[35], Kafka Liz, WJBscribe, and Shell Kinney.

Of these:

  • User:Srnec actually does not support summarizing the article before content discussion has properly occured [36],
  • User:Adam Bishop actually concurs with working from the full article and does not endorse Elonka's version [37]
  • User:Tefalstar was actually canvassed to put a friendly comment "you did a nice summary" without specifically supporting the replacement of the 200k article by the 70k one. It is also only on Elonka's Talk Page, which makes it invalid. [38]
  • User:Kafka Liz was canvassed (invited through User:Aramgar, a relative): [39]. Also, Armagar and Kakza Liz usually only count for one person due to their proximity [40].
  • User:John Kenney just makes general comments and does not support any time the replacement of the main article, and this is also on Elonka's Talk Page only [41][42][43].
  • User:Aramgar nowhere supports in the diffs given the replacement of the full version [44][45], and anyway doubles with User:Kafka Liz due to proximity [46].
  • User:WJBscribe: in the diff given, WjScribe only says that the article should be reduced, but surely does not specifically support the replacement of the full version by your 70k version.[47].

That leaves Elonka with 2 users (User:Shell Kinney and User:Kafka Liz above) who actually agreed to the replacement (of which one user was canvassed...).

These numbers and these diffs are totally unacceptable to claim a consensus for replacing the 200k main article by a 70k summary.

Also, Elonka's interpretation amounts to a total breach of what a consensus really is, misrepresentation of what participants do say (a few do say they like Elonka's summary, but do not specifically support replacement) and a breach of trust by resorting to canvassing to obtain friendly support.

I will therefore reinstate the ORIGINAL 200k ARTICLE, and, as already ongoing, we will discuss how to improve. Such disregard for Wikipedia's rules and ethical standards has to stop. PHG (talk) 06:49, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

If you wish me to clarify my opinion, reading through them I find the version that existed shortly before your last revert more satisfying. It is more concise and from what I have followed of discussions, seem to be better at assigning different scholarly opinions due weight. It reads to me much more how a Wikipedia article on the topic should be, as opposed to an academic paper on the subject. In terms of NPOV and reader accessibility it seems to me preferable. Perhaps you could try addressing where you feel it is lacking rather than focusing on the one version vs. another issue? I'm not sure your breakdown of consensus above is very accurate - it takes a very literal view of what people have said rather than taking in the nuances. For example, I would have thought my comment was broadly supportive of the change although I did not explicitly use those words. If you want direct answers to which version these people prefer, you will need to ask the direct question, though I think that is a bad approach to take. You cannot require a lot of people cheering wildly a change to say there is consensus for it. I also don't understand why youn invalidate the comment by Tefalstar for not being on this page - that seems rather bureaucratic an approach. Finally, I think Matt57's involvement here given his past history of harassing Elonka (and a lengthy block for this) is best overlooked - I wouldn't assume anyone who agrees with you is helpful. In any event, I have reverted your revert. WjBscribe 08:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
PHG, isn't this wiki-lawyering getting kind of silly? You come in every day, at about 6 a.m. GMT, and revert to your old version. This has been going on for days now:
Please stop, and work with other editors, instead of against them? There's obviously consensus for the rewrite, and multiple editors have either reverted you, or moved on with editing the new version of the article, which makes it pretty clear that they're in support of the rewrite. Further, when you're reverting, you're not just choosing a different version, you're also wiping out many edits that have been put in place after talkpage discussions here. It should be obvious that no one here is going to say, "Oh, I guess PHG is right, let's just go back to his version and let him control the article." Your reverts have now been reverted by three different editors.[48][49][50]
If you keep on down this path, you may risk further consequences. Please, stop this. --Elonka 09:06, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
User:Ealdgyth has concerns with both versions, and has started work on BOTH versions. SHE is still waiting on answers on that section. Do not take the fact that I am trying to check on sources in BOTH versions as meaning I favor one version or the other. What I am doing is trying to evaluate both versions, which starts from looking at the sources. Ealdgyth | Talk 14:08, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Is a slow-motion edit war really what we need here? I think both User:PHG and User:Elonka need to relax a little bit. Reverting each others work is not going to fix anything. This is clearly a controversial article, and reverting back and forth makes both of you look poorly, as well as Wikipedia in general.
That being said, I don't think there is a clear consensus on either version (long or short). That being said, making such a massive change to an article in dispute needs a clear consensus. I haven't had the time just yet to read through them both (it's hard to keep track when reverts are going crazy). So, until the content issues are worked out I think a few things need to be done here: first, I think User:WJBscribe (whom I have a great deal of respect for) needs to self-revert. While I think it's great he has an opinion on the issue, another revert wasn't a good idea.
Once we have it back to it's original form, I think everyone involved here needs to stop editing the article. Talk pages are here to form a consensus. There is currently no consensus to keep either User:Elonka's version OR User:PHG's preferred version. A lack of consensus = status quo. THEN take the preferred changes to this talk page and form a consensus. It's clear a lot of people support a smaller article, but only a few have stated support for Elonka's version.
I have to say, this is starting to border on disruptive behavior by both of the editors involved. And while I know WJBScribe is simply trying to help resolve the dispute, reverting again added to the problem. Everyone needs to relax and have a cup of tea :). Justin chat 17:21, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi, Justin. It's my overall impression that the majority of editors who have commented here (and yes, I understand that is not necessarily the same as a consensus) are more comfortable working with the shortened version as it cuts out substantial portions of text that rely too heavily on primary sources (a practice discouraged per WP:PSTS)and contains far too much in the way of original research. Content issues aside, the longer version contains too much that shouldn't be here in the first place. The shorter version, while not perfect, provides a cleaner article from which to begin work. Kafka Liz (talk) 18:01, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Hello Justin, that was a very fair analysis.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 19:31, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
I have to say that while I suspect Elonka's version to be an overall improvement, I can hardly take the time to sift through both articles in full and determine that. Therefore, and because even the 70k version has an accuracy tag at top, I think we should stick with PHG's longer version and try to work through all the accuracy issues one at a time per talk. I'd leave the issue of the wording of the lead and the titling of the article for later. Why not go section by section through PHG's version at the talk page? Each section can then be criticised in full by all involved and interested editors to achieve consensus versions (or consensus deletions). This would be a long process, but this whole things has already taken five months, so it hardly seems like that could be an objection. If Elonka's version is really no more than an improved version of PHG's with community support, something very much like it should emerge from following the above process on PHG's version. Finally, in order for such a process to work, there would have to be consensus not to edit the article while the section-by-section critique is ongoing. Only when consensus has been reached should the article be edited accordingly. Srnec (talk) 00:35, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I could live with that system. Not sure it'll work well, but we can give it a try. Anything is better than the current "system" (which more closely resembles watching a tennis match... back.. forth.. back.. forth) For this to work, people have to discuss though. Ealdgyth | Talk 00:39, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Seems a strange idea to me - I don't see how the tags are relevant. At least one person is disputing the accuracy of both so either could be tagged until a consensus is reached. I don't understand why Srnec would say he doesn't have time to sift through all the material of the two versions yet thinks we should work on the longer one. Surely the shorter one makes a better base? A lot of progress seems to have been made in recent days, seems like a shame to move backwards. If you suspect this version is an improvement, that seems a good reason to stick with it. WjBscribe 00:57, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Aside from the fact that 'PHG doesn't like the rewrite,' can anyone identify anything specific that needs to be improved in the condensed version? Is there some section that people are really missing? As one of the primary editors here, I feel I'm being pretty responsive to good-faith concerns, but is there something that really needs to be fixed right away in the condensed version that I'm not understanding? If not, then sure, let's keep discussing things in the condensed version, section by section, and if there's something that needs expanding, then by all means we can definitely expand it. I recommend that we start with the "Christian vassals" section, since that seems to be the most controversial. How are we going to describe the relationship of Antioch, Tripoli, and Cilicia with the Mongols? Alliance or vassalage? --Elonka 01:07, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

To be clear, I wanted to start with PHG's version b/c there seems not to be a consensus for a complete rewrite and I would rather sift through more information and trim than less and expand. The process, however, could work either way. When I said I don't have time to sift through both, I meant that I cannot simply open up both versions and compare and make a final decision on which is better. I know which is probably better, but the accuracy tag is still an issue either way, so we need to address it regardless. It seems obvious to me that we must work through the issues section by section (with either article as a starting point) and that we must have a consensus to only edit (majorly) in accord with consensus reached on each section. A long, slow, laborious, possibly inefficient, and perhaps ineffective process, but an improvement on the current (non-)process whereby the article just lives with an accuracy tag at top. Just to get started, I'd be happy to begin communal critiquing of the "Christian vassals" section of this version, as Elonka suggested. Srnec (talk) 05:00, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Thank you all for your contributions! I think we've all spent too much time on this, and it's time to work on content. I personnally have been already forced to spend almost one hour everyday just to have to fight off Elonka's attacks and illegitimate claim at consensus for her emended 70k version (described above). What a waste of time and what acrimonity! As there is absolutely no consensus for Elonka's change, I am relieved that according to Wikipedia rules the full 200k version has to stay. It has a lot of material in it and therefore will be a rich basis to work from. Elonka, please stop trying to impose your versions to others inspite of Wikipedia rules, and let's work together on working on the original article. Best regards to all. PHG (talk) 05:13, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
(Note to Elonka: upon examining the contents of both versions briefly, I cannot identify one way in which the longer is an improvement except that it may contain valuable information which the shorter does not, but that would require section-by-section examination.) PHG, would you abide by my suggested dispute-resolution process whereby whatever version is established by consensus to be the starting point is critiqued section-by-section on the talk page until a consensus version is reached and that major (content) editing of the article will be suspended meanwhile? For this process it doesn't matter whether the 200 or 70k version is the starting point, all that matters is consensus not to edit during the discussion/criticism at talk and to implement the finalised version. Srnec (talk) 05:22, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Srnec. Thank you for your message. Per Wikipedia rules, the original article is the de facto consensus (it's been worked on by numerous editors over a period of 6 months now). Replacing that article with a short/abridged version developed by one single author is not acceptable per Wikipedia policy, and at the very least would require a very large consensus to be adopted. As Justin said above: "A lack of consensus = status quo". It has been shown extensively that there is not, far from it, a consensus to install Elonka's version. Therefore the original article stays, and we work from it. Now I agree, let's discuss content one part at a time so that we can improve the article. Best regards. PHG (talk) 05:52, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • This is one of the more ridiculous fights I've seen in quite some time. Anyone interested in some of the four month history of this silly dispute is welcome to take a look at a summary on my talk page (not indented, about 3/4 down that section). Essentially, what this boils down to is we have the original article, which PHG has been remarkably unwilling to allow changes to and we have the condensed version who's idea was supported even if people have not specifically supported *this* condensed version. The maddening part of this whole affair is that many of the editors who supported condensing and correcting the article haven't stuck around to help with the work and yet want to jump back in now and say they aren't sure about Elonka's version.
  • I really couldn't care less which version we start from. Elonka's condensed version looks like a more welcome starting point because it is not riddled with problems like: dubious sources, old sources, a painting title for a source, 401 notes with the majority being lifted quotes from sources, excruciating detail like listing the precise viewpoint of each of the sources used in an attempt to prove a discounted minority viewpoint -- and the list goes on. But if the consensus is to start with more problems so this absurd wikilawyering and reverting can end, that would be preferable. In the end, it may be worth pointing out that 3 editors have replaced "Elonka's" version while only PGH reverts to his. Shell babelfish 11:57, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I concur with Shell on each of the points above. I agree with her comments regarding the problems with the longer version; I have made similar statements myself regarding reliability, interpretation, original research and clutter. The shorter version, as I stated above, eliminates the bulk of this questionable material.
Given the nature of discussions so far, I don’t see that reverting to the longer version will be of any help whatsoever to cleaning up the article. I have yet to see PHG address specific issues when they are raised; he seems to have a very poor track record when it comes to working with other editors. Discussion of the opening sentence alone resulted in four solid months of debate: does anyone seriously expect that greater flexibility will be shown when it comes to the rest of the article? I’m also unclear why such a blatant violation of WP:OWN is being endorsed. It seems that no other editor’s opinions or assistance are welcome in working on this article. I think editors are hesitant to help with the article because they don't want to have their every edit turned into a protracted battle with its "owner," PHG. Kafka Liz (talk) 15:51, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Very simply the longer version had more content. The only problem with the long version was the overabundance of quotes. It would be better to revert back to the old version, crop the quotes and then start working section by section. The article was chopped entirely. The section by section solution is deductive and more logical.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 16:56, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
If that's the only argument for using the long version, its a poor one indeed. The "more content" is simply wrong in many cases -- how is this helpful to writing the article? We can either start from something with hundreds of problems and an "owner" who refuses to allow them to be fixed or we can start with something with a handful of problems which we can work on collaboratively and add back in properly sourced, historically accurate, relevant information. I'd prefer the latter version as I image the prior will involve more beating my head on a wall. Shell babelfish 19:47, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
More is not always better, Eupator. Numerous editors here have pointed out specific problems with the material that was removed; your comment shows little appreciation for the subtleties of this argument. Kafka Liz (talk) 17:33, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
It is in this case. I appreciate the subtleties that's why I propose to deal with the article section by section from the previous versio; however I don't appreciate unilateral actions without REAL consenus.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 19:06, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Every time someone calls an improvement unilateral, I want to point them at WP:IAR. Shell babelfish 19:50, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I think you know that I did not consider that an improvement. Seems like a desultory remark.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 20:36, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Quotes from books along with references shouldn't be provided at all. The reference is there. If someone wants to check it out they can do so. It is really not necessary and creates clutter.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 17:01, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
So you're arguing for using the longer version but admitting that it has an absurd amount of unnecessary clutter? I'm confused, because to me, that sounds like an excellent reason to go with the condensed version. Shell babelfish 19:48, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Clutter than can be dealt with easily.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 20:36, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Since a long dispute-resolution process is necessary, in this editor's opinion, it hardly matters what version we begin with, since both are disputed and both need community work to be top notch. The process ought to be designed to yield the best article from either start point, hence my suggested process above, which seems to have some support (Elonka, Ealdgyth, Eupator). If the 70k version is that much the greater, the ideal process will lead to it and will have indisputable consensus to back it up. (Remember that both versions have accuracy tags and so dispute-resolution is required either way, or see below about PHG.) In order to begin such a process, however, agreement must be reached on which version to start from and not to edit the article contrary to the conclusions of the community determined via the process or to engage in major edits during the process. I would be happy to just while away at the article section-by-section, but when I decided to start doing so, I found my first edit swiftly nullified by the 70/200k revert war.
To those who think article ownership is a serious issue here, may I suggest that you use whatever process Wikipedia has invented in order to get PHG blocked? If it is true that he will not accept compromise, then I think his behaviour warrants an extended block. Or he must be barred from editing this and related topics. If you are not willing to do that (and I care neither way), please just drop the topic (of his behaviour) and work to develop a dispute-resolution process that PHG will voluntarily agree to. In that case, if he did not, his behaviour would be indisputably in violation of the spirit of WP. Srnec (talk) 20:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
If you look at the history of the article you will see that he is quite prone to compromising. That being said, no editor that spends so much time and effort on gathering sources and writing an article will be happy with deletion of referenced material because someone else is not happy with the soucres or their applicability. Wikipedia rules prohibit doing so. In cases such as that BOTH sources must be presented, if one is more reputable then that fact needs to be cited as well. We can use our judegment to determine that but if we want it implemented in the article it must be sourced otherwise it's original research. This is the first time in the history of this article that there are a wide variety of voices regarding this matter, the atmosphere is less polarized so I suggest we simply get to work asap with the aforementioned section by section approach.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 20:36, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Eupator, I am well versed in the history of the article, and the statement that PHG is "prone to compromising" is absolutely not true. Instead, his pattern is to continue adding in more and controversial information, usually with deceptive edit summaries, as a way of getting the article back to whatever his WP:OWN version is. When he's removing things, he's usually removing something that someone else wrote, and saying that this is his way of "condensing" the article. And then he'll say he's "reverting" someone else's edit, when in actuality he's adding in even more biased information. See my post below for more details. --Elonka 21:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I disagree. He has compromised on numerous occasions, given equal weight (wrongly so as proven and displayed by me) for example to claims that Cilcia was a vassal state. He compromised regarding the title. He compromised regarding the invasion of Jerusalem by agreeing to essentially include everything you demanded so long as you didn't delete everything else. That's compromising. Also, adding more information is not a crime, he's doing what he's supposed to do. That's how you expand articles.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 22:50, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

SUMMARY

  • After one more day, it is still obvious that there is no consensus at all for Elonka's campaign to have the main article (195k) replaced by her own 75k summary version. The attempt at replacement, besides being rude and contrary to Wikipedia normal editorial practices, has nowhere been the object of an actual consensus, inspite of the efforts to canvass and misrepresent user opinions by Elonka (detail at the beginning of this paragraph). I do not see why 2 or 3 users continue to band with Elonka trying to impose an emended and pov version which is not the object of a consensus, when 6-7 users actually reject the replacement and prefer to start from the full version (Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance#False claim of consensus). As other users have rightly said "No consensus to change=Statu quo", and it is our responsibility to implement this most fundamental of Wikipedia rules.
  • The only sane solution is to work from the full version, in order to improve/split/condense through a consensusual and collaborative effort. As also said by several others, including Eupator above, I am actually highly intent on compromise (for example, my Mediation with Elonka, or my readiness to incorporate User:Ealdgyth's comments [51]), and it is rather the other party who has been dubbed "too firm", "far to dogmatic" and not "fair" by neutral Administrators such as User:tariqabjotu: [52]. I will therefore reinstate the full article, and please Elonka, Shell or Kafka Liz, stop edit-warring, and instead start to work on content from the full-content version. PHG (talk) 05:00, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
PHG, you've addressed one issue of a rather long set of questions. I hate to be a bother, but addressing one doesn't mean that the rest of them weren't asked or that they also don't need to be addressed. Might you spare some time to address the rest of my concerns? Everytime you reinstert the long version, you reintroduce the various errors, such as footnotes 383 and 385 being linked to the article, all the references that are in the footnotes but not in the References section, etc. Nor have the concerns with some specific sources, including the use of a 19th century painting as a source for a medieval battle been addressed Ealdgyth | Talk 05:13, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Ealdgyth, I'll be glad to follow you regarding the references as soon as we can get some stability to work on the full version. The 19th century painting is not really used as a source, but rather as an amazing illustration of the fact that 19th Europe greatly ellaborated and exagerated the role played by Jacques de Molay in the Levant (capture of Jerusalem). Best regards. PHG (talk) 05:35, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
PHG, you have once again used my statements on the RfM out of context to advance your position, despite the fact that I have corrected you and talked to you about this on multiple occasions. Because you have refused to stop, I have deleted the talk page of the mediation. And, I will repeat again, Elonka's conduct on the mediation is inadmissible and irrelevant in advancing your position here. -- tariqabjotu 05:59, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • PHG, perhaps you'd care to look at the three contibutions I have made to the main article ([53], [54], [55]) and tell me which of these is "edit warring"? Kafka Liz (talk) 08:53, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Relationship with Cilician Armenia

In several locations it is implied that Cilician Armenia and Georgia had an identical relationship with the Mongols. This cofusion rises primarily from the fact that Armenia proper under Georgian rule was conquered by the Mongols while Cilician Armenia was not. Georgians (and Armenians from Armenia proper) didn't have much of a choice when it came to fighting Mamelukes even though Mamelukes never posed a threat to Georgia. See Zakarid Armenia and Mongol invasions of Georgia and Armenia. Armenia proper and Georgia were under direct Mongol rule. Cilician Armenia's goals matched those of the Mongols, so even though they were not equal partners they were certainly not under Mongol lordship either as there was no Mongol rule there unlike in Georgia and Armenia proper. George Bournoutian (Bournotian, p. 109) talks about the Armenians from Armenia proper, not Cilician Armenia.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 16:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with this distinction. This is why Cilician Armenia is usually portrayed as an "Ally" (it was never invaded by the Mongols), and Georgia as a vassal, or even a simple region of the Il-Khanate. Best regards. PHG (talk) 13:03, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Based on my research, Cilician Armenia is usually depicted as a vassal state, not as an equal party "ally". I have collated multiple refs that say that King Hetoum submitted to the Mongols, and then persuaded his son-in-law Bohemond of Antioch to also submit. See User:Elonka/Mongol historians#Antioch. --Elonka 07:23, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Hello Elonka, my research actually points to the exact opposite. While I acknowledge your sources, most of them seem to be from amateur authors with the exception of Rene Grousset who supports the majority view. I have dozens of secondary, modern and up to date sources that only speak of an alliance. Some of the auhors who support the majority view include: Michael Angold, Richard G. Hovannisian, Elizabeth Redgate, Jaroslav Folda, Edmund Herzig, Jacob Ghazarian, Hans Eberhard Mayer/John Gillingham, Daniel H. Weiss/Lisa Mahoney and many more. I even have Steven Runciman stating this. I'll make a table like the one PHG and you have. To my surprise, during my research I encountered many of these authors also speaking of a Mongol-Western alliance, Franco-Mongol alliance etc.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 00:37, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
I'll be happy to review your sources, Eupator, but I think we may be comparing apples and oranges. And in terms of "amateur authors", well, you're just plain wrong. Peter Jackson, Reuven Amitai-Preiss, David Morgan, they're all very respected academics who are the most commonly-cited sources on this subject. Whereas among those authors that you listed, I've never even heard of them writing on this topic, so my guess is that your own sources are more about the Armenian angle? Or are you referring to a Byzantine-Mongol alliance, whereas this article is talking about the Franco-Mongol relations? Byzantine does not mean Europe, or at least not the Western Europeans/Latins. For example, here's a university reading list for the course "Mongols and Europe", and it doesn't mention a single one of those names you listed.[56] If you can give me something specific though, I'll definitely take a look. --Elonka 01:48, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
I was talking only about the Armenian angle as you put it. I mentioned above that while I was looking for sources regarding the Mongol-Armenian alliance I spotted some of the same authors also talking about a Mongol alliance with the West (sans Byzantium or Armenia). I'll separate the two. I'll prepare the table tomorrow and provide you with the link.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 01:58, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Here's this for starters: User:Eupator/Mongol historians. Comments would be much appreciated.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 21:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Eupator, thanks for compiling the information. Regarding the question of, "Did Cilician Armenia ally with the Mongols or submit to the Mongols," here's my own opinion: King Hetoum I of Armenia submitted the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia to the Mongol Empire, by sending his brother Sempad to the Mongol court in person to discuss the details. Many historians refer to this as an "alliance", but I think that they're just using the term "alliance" as a shorthand/synonym. But the relationship definitely wasn't an alliance of equals, and it was clear who was in charge (the Mongols). I have multiple sources that are very specific on this point:
  • Stewart, "Logic of Conquest", p. 8. "The Armenian king saw alliance with the Mongols -- or, more accurately, swift and peaceful subjection to them -- as the best course of action."
  • Jackson, Mongols and the West, p. 74. "King Het'um of Lesser Armenia, who had reflected profoundly upon the deliverance afforded by the Mongols from his neighbbours and enemies in Rum, sent his brother, the Constable Smbat (Sempad) to Guyug's court to offer his submission."
I can dig up more if you want, just let me know. I've also got more "submission" sources on my quotes page, but granted, they're more focused on Antioch than Armenia: User:Elonka/Mongol historians. Bottom line though, I think it is appropriate to keep the current "submission" wording in the article. I also think that we should rename the article Armeno-Mongol alliance to "Armeno-Mongol relations" or "Cilician-Mongol relations", or possibly even merge the information from that article into this one. --Elonka 04:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Specific concerns

Concerns with the article:

  1. Organization:

* I'm unclear why the Section "Christianity among the Mongols" is here. To me, it does nothing to add to the understanding of any alliances, nor does it seem to tie into the next section at all.

  • The concepts in the Early Contacts section seem a much better introduction to the article
  • Numerous footnotes are in shortened form such as "Foltz p. 111" but there is no corresponding entry in the References. According to WP:CITE, "With articles that have lots of footnotes, it can become hard to see which sources have been used, particularly when the footnotes contain explanatory text. A References section, which lists citations in alphabetical order, helps readers to see at a glance the quality of the references used." A small list is:
    • Hindley
    • Foltz
    • Pringle
    • Hobson
    • History In Dispute
    • Setton's Crusades
    • Morgan, David. "The Mongols and the Eastern Mediterranean"
    • Glenn A Lytell Chronicle
    • Knobler (which is given a full citation in a footnote, true, but it should be in the references also)
    • David Wilkinson, Studying the History of Intercivilizational Dialogues (which has a link)
    • Stewart, "Logic of Conquest", there is a Stewart listed below, but this is not the title
    • You refer to Grousett a number of times, but do not say WHICH of the two Grousett works are being referenced.
    • Same for Maalouf
    • De Reuven Amitai-Preiss Mongols and Mamluks,
    • The Islamic World in Ascendency: From the Arab conquest to the Siege of Vienna by Dr. Martin Sicker
    • Jean-Paul Roux, Histoire de l'Empire Mongol
    • Encyclopedia Iranica article (which ONE?)
    • Les Croisades Thierry Delcourt
    • Demurger, “Croisades et Croises”
    • "Le Livre des Merveilles"
    • Grandes Documents de l'Histoire de France Archives Nationales de France
    • Boyle in Camb. Hist. Iran V
    • Jotischky The Crusaders and the Crusader States
    • The Mongols by David Morgan
    • Mongol Raids - note this may be Reuven Amitai "Mongol Raids into Palestine" in JRAS, but as its in italics like a book, and the Amitai is a journal article, I can not be sure of this.
    • Receuil des Historiens des Croisades, Historiens Armeniens I....
    • Libro d'Ottramare 1346-135
    • Rancois Raynourd (1805) to a link
    • Malcom Barber The New Knighthood
    • footnote 356 .. is that quoting Ghazan's letter direct? It appears so, although the formatting on the footnote isn't clear
    • A. Mostaert and F. W. Cleaves "Trois documents mongols des Archives secretes vaticanes H. J. A. J. xv 419-506 and a link to Journal of Semetic Studies
    • I. Heath Byzantine Armies AD1118-1461 (Is this an Osprey Book?)
    • Footnotes 388 and 389 are wikilinked back to the Franco-Mongol alliance article
    • "the Eastern Origins of Western Civiliation John M. Hobson
    • "Istanbul" p. 16.
  • The Technology exchanges section is, like the Christianity section at the beginning, an odd fit. I believe it would be better off in a stand-alone article.
  • Too much quoting in the footnotes. This isn't a university monograph, it's an encyclopedia entry. Your citation covers the item, it doesn't need to be a full quote from the source.
  1. Sources:
  • Too much reliance on primary, medieval sources.
  • Some of the sources used are not scholarly at all. These include:
    • Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies (footnote 82 in the long version) It is not a referenced work.
    • Saudi Aramco World website for the Battle of Ain Jalut (footnote 95 in the long version.) This one can be cut, as it is only referenced to an sentence that has another citation (96)

**Citing a PAINTING that is hanging in Versailles? And it was painted in 1846? It's a SOURCE? Footnote 337 in the long version.

    • Citing the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, while not exactly wrong, gives the impression that you are reaching for something to cover the citation. And as the fact being sourced to the Catholic Encyclopedia is the accession date of a Mongol Khan, it looks decidely dodgy that a more modern history of the Mongols isn't being used.
  • Didn't Budge die in 1934? Surely there is something more recent than his 1928 work.

I think that's enough for now. Are these specific enough discussions of the long version of the article? I tried to discuss specific points, but if I haven't been clear enough, please feel free to ask for clarification. Ealdgyth | Talk 07:58, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Eep, I'm sorry for any wasted effort Ealdgyth, but you do realize that you just reviewed the old version of the article? I'm sorry that PHG is edit-warring over this when we have such a clear consensus at #Rewrite 2 for the updated version. I'll revert back to the new version, and then if you could comment on that, it would be very helpful? Many of the above concerns that you brought up, are already addressed in the newer version. Thanks, Elonka 09:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Elonka, the reality is that you actually have no consensus to replace the ful 200k version by your 70k summary (Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance#False claim of consensus). Please stop being so polemic on this, and allow us to spend time to discuss content from the full version. PHG (talk) 06:07, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Equal opportunity time

I am nothing if not an equal opportunity carper... For the shorter version Organization:

  • Christianity section seems tacked on the front. Doesn't tie into the next section in any meaningful way.
  • Same complaint about the Technology exchanges section, doesn't tie into the concept of the article well at all.

Sources:

  • Still a few sources that are not in the References:
    • Mongol Raids (footnote 19) I'm assuming this is the Amitai "Mongol Raids" but it's listed as a book in the footnotes, and an article in the References. Without an author in the footnote it's hard to be sure it's the same reference
    • Mantran Robert "A Turkish or Mongolian Islam" in the Cambridge Illustrated History of the Middle Ages
    • "The Eastern Origins of Wester Civilization" John M. Hobson
  • I'm uncomfortable referencing the "France" article in an encyclopia about Iran for French History. Surely the information could come from a scholarly work on France.
  • Same for the Cambridge Illustrated History of the Middle Ages. These aren't quite scholarly works, they are more designed for the general audience.
  • Some of the sources are quite old. Grousset is from 1935. Runicman is from 1954. With Tyerman, Richard, Nicholle surely some of this can be cited from more modern works.

I'll try to take a peek at some of the sources through Amazon and Google Scholar at some point and see if I can see anything about them. Ealdgyth | Talk 15:33, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, Ealdgyth, and great job reviewing this stuff! You've got a good eye for detail. :) Here are some replies:
  • Regarding the Christianity section, I think it's reasonable to keep a brief mention of it, because many reference works about the topic do make a point of how there was some religious affinity. Especially as regards some Mongol attacks on cities, where the inhabitants were slaughtered but the Christians were spared, by intervention of the Khan's wife
  • Regarding the Technology section, I'd be okay on removing that, since I don't think it's relevant to the topic of an alliance. However, if we change the scope of the article to "Relations" as opposed to alliance, then it might make sense to keep it ...
  • "Mongol Raids". Fixed. And yes, they were both referring to Reuven-Amitai's article (which is a really nice piece of scholarship and well-worth reading) :)
  • Hobson's book. Yeah, that got missed because that paragraph was copy/pasted from History of gunpowder. I have since added his book to our refs
  • Mantran's article in Cambridge Illustrated History, it was in the refs, under Mantran. It's one of those situations where the book is sometimes listed under the editor, but different articles within the book were produced by different authors. It was used to source the statement "Europe no longer as interested in the Crusades." It seems reasonable to include it since it's a general statement, but I'm also okay on removing it. BTW, Google Books seems to have trouble pulling it up (maybe because it's an English translation of a French work), but here's the link at worldcat.[57]
  • Grousset & Runciman. Yes, the complaint that these are older and somewhat outdated scholars has been used from the very beginning.[58] I (and I hope PHG?) will continue to work to find more modern refs.
  • Regarding the "France" article at the Encyclopedia Iranica,[59] that seems to me to be pretty well-sourced. Could you please explain a bit more about your concerns there?
  • Also, what are your thoughts about the Wilkinson ref? I'm ambivalent about that one.
Thanks again, Elonka 01:20, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Generally, I'm uncomfortable with using Encyclopedia type works. I use them, understand, but they need to be understood in terms of how historians think of sources. (Begin History Sources 101 lecture) Generally, a historian thinks of works/books/articles/etc as falling into one of three groups. Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary. Primary is contemporary records, or things like tax registers, birth certificates, etc. Secondary are based on primary, and are what most people think of as "scholarly". They will also be based on other secondary sources, but a really GOOD historian will not just rely on the secondary source for something, but will go to the primary source cited in the secondary source to confirm that the citation is correct. Thus, a true secondary source cites where it is arguing from. It gives the underlying source, usually as a footnote/endnote, but sometimes as a direct quote. More modern works tend to be less filled with large blocks of quotes, and if you're using say a Victorian-era history, it'll be filled with more blocks of quotes. That style of writing has gone out of favor in historical circles, although you still see it. Tertiary sources are built from secondary sources. They may or may not be footnoted, but they don't usually rest directly on primary source reading, but rather on scholarly secondary works. Good encyclopedia's are tertiary. Something like the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is actually secondary, since they (in theory) use specialists in the time frame to compose the biographies. (By the way, I highly recommend subscribing to them if you can't get access through your library card. It's been the best $200 I ever spent, to be able to access that from home.) Of course, the above stuff is based on the medievalist point of view. A medievalist takes "contemporary" in reference to a primary source with a bit of leeway. Ancient historians often have to give their primary sources a LOT of leeway. Modern historians give very little leeway.(End History 101 lecture)
Ideally, Wikipedia is at best, a tertiary source. Because we don't allow Original Research, that's the best we can ever be. All secondary source writing requires that you make interpretations of the source material. To give an example from more my field of expertise: King Richard I of England. Everyone uses the same primary sources, which in this case are a number of chronicles, a big pile of writs and charters, and some tax rolls. And some other sources, but those are the main ones. From those same exact sources, you can find many scholarly works that judge Richard either as a repressed homosexual, an asexual military fanatic, a man with a mother complex, etc. etc. Those historians are doing what they are supposed to be doing, interpreting the sources to make an argument about what they believed happened and more importantly, WHY it happened that way. But because Wikipedia is supposed to use NPOV to put forth the scholarly views, it can't possibly be secondary, and instead is tertiary. Thus we cite everything, and we say WHO had WHAT opinion. And try to give due weight to the arguments, and try to (most importantly) not cherry pick the argument to present OUR opinion. So if I wrote on Richard, I would need to present ALL the views that are held by mainstream scholars (Luckily, I don't have to present some view that might say that Richard was really a space alien from Mars, since that would be a fringe view). I can't give undue weight to whatever might be MY opinion, I have to present it neutrally. And I have to take due care that when I go through a secondary work to summarize it for the article, I get the WHOLE picture the author is talking about. And I can't let ANY of my opinion creep into the article. So if I wrote about Richard, I would have to be careful to make sure I didn't give undue weight to my own opinion. (which, btw, is that Richard was probably more asexual than homosexual, but that's my opinion. Note that the late Angevin time frame isn't my area of study so I'm not totally familiar primary sources.) This, btw, is why I haven't and probably won't write articles about Anselm of Canterbury and Lanfranc, because personally, I don't like the subjects and I've studied them too much, and it would be too hard to write neutrally about them.
The problem with encyclopedia's is it's hard to tell sometimes how well they are composed. Some don't give bylines. Some don't give the secondary sources they used. Some do both of those things. Any that are specialized in a subject (such as Iran or Armenia or Mongolia or Anglo-Norman England) are going to be better references for the subject they are covering than they are for subjects that are peripheral to their subject, like "France" for a encyclopedia focused on Iran. If we were quoting somehting about IRAN, I'd be less concerned about using it as a source, but for something about France, it makes me more concerned. To be frank (oooh, bad pun) it makes it look like any scholarly works on France did NOT say whatever it was that you are sourcing and you had to go outside the subject area to find a source to back up whatever you wanted to say. In other words it looks like reaching. At the very least, you should use something like Morgan or Parker or Tyerman for that. (Btw, if you want a good basic textbook level French History book, if you have NONE, I can recommend a good overview book that would be great to have on your shelves for citing for basic French history facts. Hallam's Capetian France is what I used and abused in college. It was what my upper level college classes used as a textbook for that sort of thing, and she's updated it to a second edition.)
The single best way to find NEW books is to look in the bibliographies of your current books. That's the first thing I do when I've acquired (or am thinking about acquiring) a new book. Look at the bibliography. See who is cited in the back. See the level of detail cited. Do they just list a few books? Or does it stretch for pages. And investigate the citations. Are they to a bunch of non-scholarly presses and Time Magazine? Or are they to University Presses and Scholarly Journals? The reason I have a good eye for detail in bibliographies is that is what I was taught in college. That's the big evil secret of historians... look at the sources. THEN read the book. That's what you learn in history classes at the higher levels, how to evauluate sources and how to stay current in things.
Does that explain things a little better? It boils down to ... using an encyclopedia (which I admit looks scholarly and well done) on Iran for Iran is good. Using it for stuff on France is... less good and makes the historian in me go "Hm... what is trying to be hidden here?" Ealdgyth | Talk 03:33, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Oh, another dirty little secret. Most good scholarly secondary works are reviewed in scholarly journals. I say reviewed here with a grain of salt. Picked to pieces by jealous rivals works just as well. Find those reviews if you want to know about a book/paper. If there isn't one, that tells you something also. JSTOR here is your friend.
The first thing that popped into my head when I pulled up the Wilkinson link was "He's a political scientist". And then I slapped myself for being a historian-elitist. (I have a strong tendency towards that.) After glancing through it .. it's a 'compare and contrast' paper. I think I wrote fifty million of them in college. They are given all the time at conferences. Did this one manage to get published in a peer reviewed journal? I see it was given to a UN Diversity Conference, so it might not have gone through a peer review at all. Journal articles are peer reviewed before publication. Conference talks are peer reviewed in person (Ohh.. THAT's a fun experience... NOT.) Scholarly books are peer reviewed AFTER publication when your jealous riv... err. friendly fellow historians read it over and write to a journal (or five) and explain every single error they found with your reasoning and reading of the primary sources. Thus, if this talk didn't get done at a historian's conference, and it didn't get published in a historical journal, but instead was published on the web, it hasn't gone through a historian's peer review for accuracy. It may have gone through a political science peer review, but that's not quite the same as a historian peer review. (Historians and Political Scientists don't get along that well. I think the historians are jealous that Poli Sci folks can become talking heads on TV. When was the last time you saw a historian (especially an ancient or medieval historian) on the evening news?)
Anyway... back to Wilkinson. Okay first twinge is that he's covering Mongols (1200's), Amarna Letters (1300ish BC), Japan and the Sui (700AD), the Conquest of Mexico and Peru (1500's), and Akbar (late 1500's). That's quite the time range. He can't possibly be a specialist in all of those time frames, so somewhere in there he's treading in areas he's not as familiar with. Which one is it though? No clue. So that's a concern for me. But to get to the specific topic that deals with the Mongols, he basically lists all the gifts and exchanges. Says they wanted to work together, but things didn't work out. And that in the end, nothing came of it. If we're citing it for dates of when things went back and forth, it's not the greatest source. Morgan, Jackson, Grousset, Richard, etc. will be better because they are specialists in the area. If we didnt' have access to them, then this would work, but we do, so citing Wilkinson for basic facts is getting our facts from a tertiary source (since he's citing secondary sources) rather than from a secondary source. If it's being used for his conclusion, I guess it's good, but wouldn't a historian be better? Wilkinson seems more concerned with the concept of a "globalization potential" (whatever THAT means... silly poli sci folks!) than with determining what the short term effects of the diplomatic efforts were. Ealdgyth | Talk 03:33, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Okay, we're on the same page as regards the definitions of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. I'm also in agreement with you about the jealous rivalpeer-reviewed secondary sources.  :) I'm not sure I'm following you though on the idea of excluding tertiary sources, since that would mean that we wouldn't even be allowed to use Encyclopedia Britannica as a ref? In the case of the Encyclopedia Iranica, though yes, it's the article about France, it still ties in to this subject, since the center of Mongol power in the area was in Iran for quite awhile, so it would make sense that an Iranian source would be used for discussing that subject. As for Wilkinson, I agree that even though it's a good lecture, it's not wise to use a lecture as a source, so we should pull that one.
Lastly, on "medieval historians" on TV, yes, I can think of a couple.  :) In fact, we've got one right here in St. Louis, Dr. Thomas Madden, who was quite the "historian poster-child" right after 9/11. He's also been on History Channel documentaries and whatnot.  :) But yeah, I agree that he's the exception rather than the rule.  :)
I'll get to work on the other stuff... Elonka 03:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm not saying don't use encyclopedias, I'm just saying that there are better sources. Britannica is a generalist encyclopedia. Encyclopedia Iranica is a specialist encyclopedia. A better souce for events in France would be a French specialist encyclopedia or a secondary source on French History. The one now works, it could be improved, that's all. I looked at where it's used. The first one is to reference a reply from Mongke to Saint Louis. The second is sending David Ashby to the court of Hulagu. (I'm unclear on where Ashby was sent FROM. Acre? If that's the case, is that really in the France article? The word "Franks" covers a lot of places as used in this article) The third is about Louis asking for Hulagu's conversion to Christianity. The fourth one is for a letter to Edward I of England (is this REALLY in the France article?) from Ghazan. I've got that one covered somewhere above with the Prestwich book. The fifth one is for letters from Oljeitu to Philip the Fair. (It also seems to cover the first sentence of that section, about Oljeitu's conversion, once again, I ask, is that REALLY in the France article?) The sixth is for the signing of the Treaty of Aleppo between the Mongols and the Mamelukes. (And again.. is that REALLY in the France article?) The last is for exchanges of letters between Tamerlane and the West. I think that explains some of my concerns with the usage of the source. Ealdgyth | Talk 04:07, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
I went back and double checked the France article against those citations, they all are actually in the France article, and the France article is remarkably enough sourced inline. However, it's sourced to Jackson and Richard mainly, so wouldn't it be better to use them direct rather than through a middle part? Ealdgyth | Talk 14:47, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for doublechecking, and if you want to tweak those refs, I've got no trouble with you sourcing things to Richard and Jackson directly, no. Ditto with the other sources, if you'd like to update them to something more modern, that's up to you. But I don't think it's really necessary to scan every single statement in the article that's sourced to Grousset or Runciman, and spending the time to find a modern reference "just because they're old." My own feeling is that if there's a fact in Grousset or Runciman, and it's non-controversial, that they are perfectly fine as sources for a project such as Wikipedia, and indeed, that they are in the top tier of sources, considering a lot of the other stuff that gets used here.  ;) Though, if we're sourcing something to Grousset/Runciman, and there's a conflict between what they said and what more modern historians are saying, then in that case we should definitely go with the modern sources, as "the consensus of modern scholarship." --Elonka 17:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't own Jackson or Richard, so I can't ethically go in and source the items. And I certainly don't plan to go through all the Grousset or Runciman refs, especially the ones for facts, and double check them. I'd more suggest that as the article is revised and rechecked, if you run across something sourced to an older source and you happen to find it in a more modern source, you change it out as you find them. Does that make sense? If nothing else, it cuts down on the rather large number of sources being cited, helping to cut down bloat in the article, always a good thing!Ealdgyth | Talk 17:57, 23 January 2008 (UTC)



Reliable sources

(starting new subthread)

Fair enough. What I recommend is that we make a list of sources by category, so that we know what to prune and what to keep:

  • A: Sources that we're all in agreement are "solid", meaning they're modern academic sources that everyone agrees are reputable
  • B: Solid academic sources for their time period, but are since outdated and should be updated to modern sources if possible:
  • C: Sources that were written for mass market, were written in a highly speculative manner, and/or are not well footnoted, and should be either removed or used with great caution
  • D: Tertiary sources, which are acceptable, but should be updated to secondary sources where possible:

I haven't listed every source here, just some of the ones that we're either using extensively, or are being used to source controversial information. It's my recommendation that we concentrate on looking for information sourced to "B" and "C" categories, and either updating the information to better sources, or removing the information entirely.

Does that sound reasonable? And if anyone else wishes to question a source, please bring it up here. For example, which category would Richard Foltz's Religions of the Silk Road[60] fall into? --Elonka 20:11, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I haven't actually seen the Oldenburg book that is in the long version, but she's usually a mass market writer. I have her Massacre at Montsegur, and is not "scholarly". I'd put Payne in that category also. Tuchman, if we used her, or Seward or Weir are others of that category. Great reading, not so great to use as a citation in a scholarly work. Ealdgyth | Talk 20:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)


Sources

I'm trying to read through the footnotes and having major issues finding out what some of these sources are. Who is Hindley? It's referenced a number of times in the Edward I section, but I have thus far been unable to find it listed in the References section (where it should be) or find the full citation in the footnotes. I suspect if the footnotes weren't full of long quotations I might have an easier time, but will I have to resort to copy-pasting the article into Word to use the find function to find the full citation? Also, along the line of disputed sources, the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913 is outdated (and some would argue POV) and there definitely shouldn't be a reference to an unfootnoted essay at the Online Refernce Book. The Catholic Enc reference is footnote 27 in Elonka's version, 39 in the version up right now. The Hindley is referenced in footnotes 89 and 97 in Elonka's, 163 and 179 in the current live version. The ORB is footnote 36 in Elonka's, 82 in the current. And this is certainly not the best reference [61] for footnote 60 (elonka)/95 current. Those are just the things that jumped out at me immediately, on top of the issues I've already brought up about primary sources. Ealdgyth | Talk 06:38, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, in the above statement, change Elonka to Current version, and current version to PHG version ... Ealdgyth | Talk 06:42, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Other sources present in the footnotes, but not resident in the References section:

  • Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire
  • Nicolle, David, The Mongol Warlords
  • History in Dispute: The Crusades, 1095-1291
  • Nersessian, "The Kingdom of Cilician Armenia" in Setton's Crusades
  • Morgan, David. "The Mongols and the Eastern Mediterranean"
  • Burger, Glenn A Lytell Chronicle
  • The Norris 2003 and the Chase 2003 footnotes are wikilinked back to the start of the article, so I have no idea what they are

Those are the glaring questions I have at the moment. Without more information on the works being referred to, it is hard to judge the reliablity of sources. Ealdgyth | Talk 06:57, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I hadn't copied over all the references from my rewrite yet. I know you can find some at my subpage User:Elonka/Franco-Mongol alliance. The problem was that I didn't want to do a fullscale copy/paste from my version to the live version, because I really was trying to be sensitive to the work that PHG had done in the meantime. I see that he reverted all my changes within an hour, anyway.  :/ I'll see what I can do about improving the sources, in the meantime. --Elonka 07:13, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
(update) Okay, I think I've got things sorted out:
  • I've added expanded references for all the works you identified.
  • Saudi Aramco World, it looked like it was an "extra" source, which I agree is not necessary since we have so many other reliable sources we can use instead. I removed that one.
  • On the Online Reference Book, I agree that that's not a good source, and have removed it.
  • Regarding the Catholic Encyclopedia, it's being used to source the accession date of the Mongol khan, Guyuk. To my knowledge that's not in dispute, but if you want, I can check to see if I can find a better source?
Let me know if you spot any others, and I'll take a look, Elonka 09:46, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
I use the Catholic Encyclopedia for things it's clearly a interested and good source for, catholic dogma, feast days of saints, what a saint patronizes, etc. Leaving aside the issue that it was written to detail Catholic topics, it is also almost a 100 years old and is a tertiary source to boot. It's not that I object to using it as a source, but it is rather odd to be sourcing an accession date for a Mongol Khan to a Catholic Encyclopedia, you must admit. One would think that there should be a modern work (Morgan? Barber? Jackson? Saunders?) that state the date also. I don't have the current edition of Morgan's work on the Mongols, I have the first edition. Likewise, somewhere in my moves I lost the third volume of Runicman's work, and haven't been able to replace it yet. I just don't have that much on the crusades, it's never been a major interest of mine, and especially not this late. (Yeah, this is a LATE period of history to someone who studied Anglo-Norman England) I'll try to look through what I have on Saint Louis and Edward I to get some different views and/or citations for those sections. Ealdgyth | Talk 14:53, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Okay, on Louis IX, looking at Hallam's Capetian France Second Edition (ISBN 0-582-40428-2), she discusses Louis' first crusade (including the prepartions and the events in France while the king was gone) on pages 275 through 281 and then again at 286 and 287. Nothing is mentioned of Louis' contacts with the Mongols. The only mention of Mongols comes on page 278 "By 1248 the position of the Christians in the east seemed precarious in the extreme. The pattern of power was changing rapidly and in 1244 Jerusalem was taken from the Christians by Persian and Egyptian forces, who were retreating in their turn from the advance of the Mongol hordes from Asia. The confused politics, the weknesses and divisions of the Muslims in Palestine, in fact made it a suitable time for the western Christians to invade the area." This is from 2001, and by a very reputable scholar. The work is intended to be a college level overview, designed for high level college courses. I already pulled out all of the revelant quotations from Prestwich's biography of Edward I. As a note on the weight he gives to the information, the index entry for "Mongols" lists page 75, 77-8, 83, 330-332. The whole body of the work (not counting index, bibliography, notes, etc.) is 567 pages. This is in the scholarly monograph on Edward, designed for the historian, not the everyday reader.
Earlier on this page I listed a few quotes from Payne The Dream and the Tomb. On page 374 he says in relation to Edward I in the Holy Land "He was the first Englishman to send an embassy to the Mongols: Refinald Russell, Godfrey Welles and John Parker went to the court of the Ilkhan to see aid, which was promptly forthcoming. A Mongol army sewept out of Anatolia and captured Alleppo. Baibars, with a huge army set out from Damascus to give battle to the Mongols, who withdrew wisely. But the Mongol alliance had been strengthened and there was hope that they would return at a suitable time." Later on the same page, discussing Edward after his return to England in 1272 (He never dates the return, but from Prestwich we known the time.) "He returned to England to be crowned. In England, he continued to give long-range support to the Christian alliance with the Mongols." However, there are no footnotes or indications of where Payne got this data. No footnotes at all on the page, which is normal for the book since it's very lightly footnoted, mostly for direct quotations from the primary sources. I double checked with Prestwich's Edward biography, and no where in that does Prestwich say that the alliance was strengthened after Edward left, instead he points out that the Mamelukes and the Mongols were negotiating, hardly something that leads one to believe that any alliance between the Christians and the Mongols was strenthened. Prestwich cites the sources of his information as Makirizi, Historie des Sultans Mamlouks, a primary source that was published in an edition edited by M. Quatremere and published in Paris in 1837, and Ibn al-Furat, Ayyuids, Mamlukes and Crusaders another primary source that was edited and translated by U. and M. C. Lyons at Cambridge in 1971, and "L'Estorie de Eracles Empereur" another primary source published in Receuil des Historiens des Croisades published in Paris. Prestwich on pages 330 through 332 discusses Edward's diplomacy with the Mongol envoys in 1289 and 1290, but the only mention of any sort of support would be the dispatching of Geoffrey de Langley to Arghun. Edward made verbal declarations that he was going to go on crusade, but never even began organizing forces, as he was short of funds. The crusading tithes that he was supposed to have received were never actually turned over by the Italian bankers. (See Prestwich page 332). Prestwich cites the following (among other sources):
  • Chabot, J. B. "Notes sur les relations du roi Argoun avec l'occident" Revue de l'orient Latin vol. xi 1894
  • Spuler, B. History of the Mongols Berkley 1972 p. 141-2
  • Ryan, J. D. "Nicholas IV and the Evolution of the Eastern Missionary Effort" Archivum Historiae Pontificum xix (1981) p. 79-95
  • Howarth History of the Mongols iii p. 367
  • The Schein article already in the article, p. 805-819
  • Lunt Financial Relations of the Papacy with England to 1327 p. 339-341
  • Kaeuper Bankers to the Crown p. 211-212, p. 219-220
From Prestwich's Plantagenet England 1225-1360 part of the New Oxford History of England series ISBN 978-0-19-922687-0, p. 140 "In 1287 Edward [Edward I] took the cross. There were ambitious hopes of winning the support of the Mongols (thought, wrongly, to be Christian), and of launching a concerted attack to rescue the Holy Land. The fall of Acre in 1291 did not galvanize the West as it might have done. An English embassy to the Persian Il-Khan in 1292 achieved nothing. Though Edward remained determined on a crusade, the problems he faced in Scotland and, from 1294, France, made that impossible."
Given the weight of cited and referenced information on the one hand by Prestwich, against an uncited and unreferenced statement by Payne on the other hand, I have to lean with Prestwich's statements as setting forth the scholarly and mainstream view here. At least that is how I'd judge it.Ealdgyth | Talk 19:21, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I also strongly oppose this current "rewrite" aka removal of perfectly referenced material. Such a rewrite would be acceptable until all parties are satisifed. Unilateral moves such as this are not constructive and hinder further development of the article.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 22:09, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Just for the sake of transparency, I think it's worth pointing out that Eupator (Ευπάτωρ) is under ArbCom editing restrictions on Armenia-related topics. This includes a restriction on "assumptions of bad faith." --Elonka 23:17, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand why people go so crazy about "referenced material". If 10 sources say the same thing, it's no use referencing all 10. I'm sure I've said this before, but historiography is a continuum, everyone builds upon someone else. There might be 3 really up-to-date sources and a dozen out-of-date ones, and certain people don't seem to appreciate this; if you quote absolutely everything, it's a huge mess and it looks embarrassingly amateur. It's perfectly fine to remove referenced material, referenced material is not the absolute end-goal of all existence. Adam Bishop (talk) 22:16, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Adam. By the way, in case folks are thinking I'd expect all those references to go into the article, I don't. One or two references per point is quite enough, and they need to be current. I'm just trying to show folks that the weight of modern scholarship has to be taken into account, preferably scholarly works when possible. Ealdgyth | Talk 22:21, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Excellent points, Adam and Ealdgyth. Kafka Liz (talk) 22:44, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Indeed I agree it is not necessary to have 10 references saying the same thing. I believe it is only usefull to have a few sources on the same subject if a specific point is challengeable. For example, since a few users staunchingly dispute that there was an alliance, I think it is necessary to say that at least 30 reputable historians say there was (from the little I have been able to read), although it could be mentionned in passing if the matter finally rests. Regards. PHG (talk) 05:40, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Ealdgyth, FYI, I replaced the Catholic Encyclopedia ref with one from David Morgan's 2007 The Mongols, which both improves the ref, and gave me a good excuse to include Morgan's book, since I felt bad that we weren't including it, it's such a standard text on the topic.  :) --Elonka 06:58, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Another question, Grousset's 1935 book Histoire des Croisades III, 1188-1291, is that the one that was translated into English as The Epic of the Crusades? I picked it up used just recently, and couldn't find a blurb on the original title in French, just that it had been translated. It's the 1970 editon by Orion Press. I have his Empire of the Steppes also, somewhere.Ealdgyth | Talk 07:43, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Grousset's Empire of the Steppes is an amazing work of scholarship.  :) I've checked it out from the library a couple times, because of the wealth of information in that book. As for Epic, my impression is that that's a translation of L'Epopee des Croisades,[62] which is a condensed single-volume, perhaps more "mass market" version of his multi-volume Histoire des Croisades. So some information from Histoire is in Epic, but not all. Also, thanks for the tip on Dream and the Tomb. I'll swing by a local library tomorrow and pick up a copy. --Elonka 08:51, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
The Dream and the Tomb is not the best source...it's like Maalouf, or that book about Richard I by James Reston. I don't think it's a good idea to use it for an article like this. Adam Bishop (talk) 04:40, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
I would oppose citing it for anything in the main body of the article, but unfortunately, it's a popular book. Kinda like Holy Blood, Holy Grail. (or gods forbid The DaVinci Code) You're going to get people who have only read it that believe it, and it's a view held by some. If there is going to be a "controversy" section or whatever, it would fit in there, I would think. Of course, nothing I write on HAS controversies, since who here can name a medieval bishop of rochester off the top of their head? (You don't count Adam, you'd skew the average) I'm not the best judge of how to handle a controversy section. Speaking of popular historians, didn't Barbara Tuchman write on the Crusades? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ealdgyth (talk • contribs) 05:00, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Haha! I don't know if Tuchman wrote about the crusades but she wrote about the 14th century or something. For Payne etc, perhaps a "popular understanding" section? Or "in popular culture" (come on, surely the alliance is a pivotal point in some video game?!) Adam Bishop (talk) 06:55, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
You must have seen the newest additions to Edward III of England, huh? Ealdgyth | Talk 08:02, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the great information regarding the various historical accounts of Edward I (especially by Ealdgyth). It may be a good idea to differentiate between documented facts and the various modern accounts about the period or specific rulers of the period. What are the facts?:

  • 1) Edward I is indeed documented to have sent an embassy to the Mongols as soon as he arrived in the Holy Land, even the names of the ambassadors are known,
  • 2) The Mongol ruler is indeed documented to have replied by promissing he would send help under the Mongol general Samagar (the letter is known, excerpt quoted in the full version)
  • 3) Samagar indeed invaded northern Syria and fought against the Mamluks.

All this is documented as fact. Now maybe some historians chose to write about it and some not: this does not substract from the fact that these actions occured nonetheless. As far as I know, a history article is supposed to be first and foremost factual (the facts brought forward and corroborated by secondary sources). Now, some modern accounts may mention these facts and some not, by they are known facts nonetheless. And regarding the various modern accounts, per Wikipedia rules, I don't think we are supposed to editorialize and draw conclusions based on what historians don't say, but only what they do actually write. Regards. PHG (talk) 07:43, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

The actual section on Edward is not too bad, although it's long and wordy (and the whole bit about inspired by his uncle is just.. ugh, unencylopedic sounding to me.) I would be more comfortable if the article used say.. Prestwich's biography of Edward, which is current (or at least more current than Runciman) and applicable to the subject. However you asked for specific concerns, and I have listed them below. Ealdgyth | Talk 07:57, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
BTW, I got my hands on the Payne book Dream and the Tomb today, and I strongly concur that it's a bad source and should not be used to source anything controversial, except possibly an "in popular culture" section. It looks like Payne read a lot of books, and read a lot of primary sources, and then wrote his own book from memory, without any discrimination as to which sources were good, and which were false. And where he couldn't remember things, he just filled stuff in with guesswork. :/ --Elonka 23:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Why is the "longer version" get even longer?

Can someone explain why, in the middle of all this discussion the "reverting" to the longer version is adding large chunks of POV claims that have been adamantly under dispute for four months? For instance, the "reinstatement" and "restoration" of Jan 20th added 49 new paragraphs? [63], [64] How about the fact that when the article was updated to "removed" the Christianty section "per the talkpage" [65] it was replaced in the next edit further down the article? [66] The earlier 141k version that desperately needed shortening is now 197k! Shell babelfish 20:31, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

That's how it works with PHG. I guess no one said anything because it wasn't surprising. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:37, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi PHG, it would be best to leave the article as is for now and discontinue editing. Here's why, this is the version that includes all that you think should be included if i'm correct. Right? As such it is time to start working for a solution by dealing with one problem at a time and not the entire article like it was done before. This might take more time but the solution will be final. Also, the section by section approach will invite more participation as some users simply cannot get into this when so many issues are being discussed at the same time.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 20:43, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

PHG's edit summaries have been enormously deceptive. For example his summary will say that he is "reverting to longer version", but in actuality he is adding more POV information. Look here at the edit he did a few days ago, as I compare it to what the article was like before I started working on it.[67] His edit summary said he was "reinstating" an old version, but he was actually adding a new and very biased sentence to the lead: "According to various historians, these attempts evolved into a regular alliance, complete with military cooperation., which is just another attempt by PHG to dodge consensus from the "Introduction sentence" threads that we already discussed (see archives). Also, take a look at his new ref #1, which is pages long. Neither that ref, nor his new sentence in the lead, were ever in the article before, so it was completely bad faith for PHG to be inserting them with an edit summary of "reinstating". Then on his next "revert" he used the edit summary of "complete version restored," but in actuality he was adding another section, this time about his alleged conquest of Jerusalem by the Mongols.[68] As Shell pointed out above, and anyone can see for themselves by looking at the article history, PHG's "reverts" were expanding the article from 141K[69] to over 200K![70]
I am getting really tired of these actions by PHG. He needs to disengage from the article and let other people work on it. I would also point out that over the months that this dispute has dragged on, that there have been occasional requests for the parties to disengage, which I have always honored, but PHG never has. It doesn't matter if I leave the article alone for two weeks or six weeks, PHG keeps camping on it, in violation of WP:OWN, and when I try editing the article again, he's immediately reverting me again. It's obvious that PHG is not going to release his hold on this article voluntarily, and that he is going to have to be pried off by force. If no administrator is willing to help, I guess we'll have to take this to ArbCom, though I was hoping we'd be able to find some way to avoid that. From my point of view, this is a really obvious case: PHG's actions have been deceptive, bad faith, tendentious, and highly disruptive, and it's a shame that so many other good editors are having to waste time trying to talk to him in good faith, when it's obvious that he is not listening to anyone and is just going to keep on edit-warring and adding more biased information. --Elonka 21:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I have restored the latest short version of the article and agree that the present "owner" ought to take a break from editing this article. Perhaps he ought to consider publishing his original research in peer reviewed journals. Aramgar (talk) 22:01, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
You reverted to a version that contains original research unrelated to PHG. For example the first two sentences of the secton "Dispute about the existence of the Franco-Mongol alliance" are unsourced, deceptive and constitute original research. Deceptive lines (deceptive because the cited references do not say what is claimed) are a major problem with this version among other reasons. Here's one random line: "However, despite many attempts, there was never any long-term successful military collaboration.". This line clealry refers to ALL events in the span of that century yet the reference talks about one single event (disputed by other sources btw).-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 22:24, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Eupator, please stop assuming bad faith. Just because there are no refs on the first two sentences, doesn't make them original research. If you think they need cites, we can definitely add them. See anything you like at User:Elonka/Mongol historians? Or if you think the sentences need rewording, we can do that too. What do you suggest? But let's not go justifying a revert from an 80K article to a 200K article, simply because you disagree with two sentences. --Elonka 22:30, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
How am I assuming bad faith? Please stop labelling other editors contributions with colorful words like above. This is assuming bad faith: "PHG's actions have been deceptive, bad faith, tendentious, and highly disruptive". I don't disagree with two lines, I think those two lines and pretty much half of this version is misleading and contains original research not to mention that it's incorrectly cited for the most part. The current version did not simply reduce the size of the article, it also added original research supporting one version with undue weight.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 22:39, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
FYI, your most recent refrence once again talks about a different period (end of 13th/start of 14th). That is the period of time when the alliances were either failing or not even coming to fruition unlike the mid 1200's. This current version makes no chronological distinction whatsoever. The people were different, the circumstances were different etc.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 22:58, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Eupator, I added that ref three minutes ago, with more refs on the way. Please take a breath, I'm working on the article as I can.  :) Perhaps it would be helpful if you disengaged and worked on something else for awhile? --Elonka 23:20, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Fine, take your time. I'll examine them once you're finished.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 23:28, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Dear all, it's a glorious day today in Paris! I wish you were all here for a chat about the Mongols... This discussion is really a no-brainer: we should all work together from the data already compiled over 6 months (195k!) so as to make the best possible, highly documented article. Let's start to work! Best regards. PHG (talk) 09:21, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Dear all, it's a glorious day today in Paris! I wish you were all here for a chat about the Mongols... This discussion is really a no-brainer: we should all work together from the data already compiled over 6 months (195k!) so as to make the best possible, highly documented article. Let's start to work! Best regards. PHG (talk) 09:21, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Article size: the answer is obvious and there is no need for inflamatory statements. Following Elonka's insistent request for split/reduction [71] [72], I went to split the 195k article into sub-articles by dates, in order to move it down to about 140k. Now, the creation of the sub-articles was then opposed by Elonka and a few others, claiming "POV-forks", so that these sub-articles, with their content have been deleted (Franco-Mongol alliance (1258-1265), Franco-Mongol alliance (1265-1282), Franco-Mongol alliance (1297-1304)), which is fine (I don't mind either way). As the split did not work out, I simply returned the main article to its before-split status with its normal 195k content [73], so that no information be lost.
Regarding content, the only other thing I did is, following comments by User:Ealdgyth that the "Christianity among the Mongols" chapter was not really needed, that I reordered 2 or 3 sources into alphabetical order, and suppressed the "Christianity among the Mongol" intro paragraph [74] to replace it by a 4 line condensate [75] in "Preliminary contacts". Best regards to all. PHG (talk) 04:28, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to put this diplomatically, so I'm just going to come out with it. PHG is lying. Why he's lying, I don't know, but he's lying. He lied in edit summaries, and he is lying in the above post. He obviously used the opportunity of a "revert" to insert new biased information into the article.[76] He didn't just restore old information, he put in information that had never been in the article in the first place. This is glaringly obvious, just by looking at ref #1, which is about two pages long, and appears to be little more than a copy/paste of his entire page from User:PHG/Alliance. In his series of "reverts," he didn't just add a few bits and pieces, he added entire sections.[77] In total, about 50K of new information, but used only deceptive edit summaries such as "reinstating" and "restoring." This is very disruptive. --Elonka 07:22, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
What you are refering to is not even material addition per se: it is only a re-balancing of the introduction to integrate your now-preferred introduction sentence. I did not want to reinstate the full article with my preferred introduction sentence and again go into disputes, and instead introduced your sentence "Many attempts...", and added after it that some historians consider that the "attempts" led to an actual alliance, and some don't, with attending references (isn’t that compromise by the way?). You are the only one actually lying here: I never ever added 50k of new content as I reinstated the original content (detailed hereunder “Again, misrepresentation”). You are lying by mis-representing and making false accusations, as you lied when you claimed that you had a consensus to impose your own pov 70k version (Talk:franco-Mongol alliance#False claim of consensus). If it can help, I am ready not to edit anything on Franco-Mongol alliance for a while, if you agree, Elonka, in line with Wikipedia's policy to maintain the status quo when there is no consensus to change, to reinstate the full article and to start working together on improving the content. Best regards. PHG (talk) 09:43, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
PHG, Elonka may have no consensus, but she has more support than you. I now support the shorter version as a startpoint, since it matters little either way: a well-designed process will straighten it all out. Besides, the info from the longer version is still available in the edit history during the resolution process. Srnec (talk) 14:59, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


AGAIN, MISREPRESENTATION
Elonka and Shell Kinney have been claiming that I added a huge amount of new material to the original article as I reinstated it (49 paragraphs? 50k?), but this is highly untrue. During these 2 weeks, the original article only increased by 6k, due to more references, and a new referenced segment on the removal Golden Gate of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Mongols. The article was initially 191,965 bytes, and only ended at 197,697 bytes. Here is the documented reconstruction of the steps I took:

  • 191,965 bytes: initial January 14th size of the article (which had been built up to this size over a period of 6 months) [78], before I started to split/condense it upon Elonka’s requests: [79], [80].
  • 155,549 bytes: reduced size as I started to split main content to reduce article size on January 15th [81]
  • 141,914 bytes: reduced size once I had finished splitting content on January 15th [82]
  • Then the various splits came under attack as “POV-Fork”, from Elonka and a few others.
  • 80,887 bytes: Elonka started to impose her 80k version without an actual consensus [83]. No consensus: Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance#False claim of consensus
  • 198,591 bytes: as the split articles were being deleted, I reinstated the original version of the article on January 20th, to its state before the splitting [84]. I also made two modifications to facilitate discussions: I replaced in the same edit the list of references to the “Franco-Mongol alliance” claim with a more complete one, and rather than reinstating my “minority” introduction sentence (“An alliance, or attempts towards an alliance”) , I rewrote the introduction to better balance it and accommodate Elonka’s preferred introduction sentence, so that it could become a proper basis for discussion. Edit summary: “Reinstated complete version as basis for discussion”
  • 199,985 bytes: I added a new paragraph about the “Removal of the Golden Gate of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Mongols (1300)” [85]; edit summary: “Removal of the Golden Gate of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Mongols (1300))”
  • 197,517 bytes: On January 24th, I suppressed the “Christianity among the Mongols” introduction chapter, following User:Ealdgyth’s suggestions [86]; edit summary: “Removed "Christianity among the Mongols" as per Talk Page”. I then replaced it with a 7-lines summary [87]; edit summary: “Short section on Christianity ».
  • 197,766 bytes: I removed details of a quote to the William of Rubruck article [88]; edit summary “Moved detail and quote to William of Rubruck article”.
  • 197,697 bytes: Last reinstalment of the full version on January 25th [89]

So, all these claims about adding a huge amount of new content (50k, 49 paragraphs) as I reinstated the original version is therefore totally fabricated. Between the time I started to split-out content to reduce article size (the article was originally 191,965 bytes) and the time I finally reinstalled the full content after the splits were deleted for alleged POV-forks, the article only increased by less than 6k (to 197,697 bytes), mainly due to the addition of references to the Franco-Mongol alliance claim, and the addition of a segment on the Golden Gate of Jerusalem. I also eliminated some content following Talk Page suggestions by other users. My edit summaries are also generally highly descriptive of the actions taken. Elonka and Shell, please stop mis-representing and distorting reality to smear those who don’t agree with you, this is really quite a shame. You don’t have a consensus for forcing Elonka’s 70k emended version (Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance#False claim of consensus), so you have to accept the rules and acknowledge working from the original, full, highly documented version (195k, 400 academic references). Regards. PHG (talk) 14:41, 26 January 2008 (UTC)


Editing piece by piece

I've looked at the lead a couple of times and it seems like we need to settle the other sections, before we can rewrite the lead properly. Given that we can't really start at the top that way, does anyone have any suggestions about which section to tackle first? Shell babelfish 14:34, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

That's exactly what I think! (And think I said...) Elonka suggested "Christian vassals", which is fine with me, I think it's where the major disputes begin. Srnec (talk) 14:56, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I let Elonka know last night, but I have a large pile of Crusades books headed my way (thank you Amazon!) so hopefully I'll be able to actually do some editing soon, rather than just pester from the talk page. Should be here next week early.
And might as well start with the first section past the lead section. Ealdgyth | Talk 15:39, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Leave the lead untouched until disputes have been resolved. We can start with the first section (Early contacts), I personally don't dispute anything in that section. The lead can be modified as we go along, or left alone until we're done.-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 17:49, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I too am fine with the "Early contacts" section, and the "Papal overtures" section. In fact, I'm fine with all sections as they are at the moment, though am definitely willing to keep talking with anyone who feels otherwise. I think that the "Christian vassals" section is probably the first one (working down from the top) where we're going to run into some disagreement. For example, could someone list a particular sentence that they're unhappy with, and/or how they think it should be changed? Or, we could try a bold, revert, discuss cycle, meaning that if someone's unhappy with the section, that they just go in and change it, and we try to do some back and forth with text modifications (note I said modifications, not reverts), to see if we could find a consensus version. --Elonka 00:08, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Sorry about that, I didn't mean that there was any reason to change the lead at this point, just that looking things over, I wasn't quite sure where the real disputes started so I was asking other opinions. Sounds like Christian vassals is a good starting point... Shell babelfish 00:43, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, probably Christian vassals is our first spot of issue, from just a quick glance at things. Oh, I just dropped a few more spun-off articles onto our list. Some of them I was unsure about, so I didn't annotate them. Ealdgyth | Talk 00:55, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Early contact and Papal overtures sections

Just a few quick questions, nothing contentious, more stylistic/prose tweaking:

  • Papal overtures section. Did Innocent IV issue more than one bull? Or just one?
  • Same section, "Innocent sent another mission, through another route, led by..." is the "through another route vital? Otherwise it just seems like fluff in the article.
  • I removed the bit about the "Nestorian Christian princesses"... changed it to "had Nestorian Christians among them"

Also, should we be doing ." or ". with our punctuation? It seems rather inconsistent to me so far. Nothing I saw in those two sections screamed "wrong" to me. Ealdgyth | Talk 01:17, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

According to List of papal bulls, Innocent IV issued multiple documents. On punctuation, I normally use ." with sentence quotes, and ". when just putting quotes around a single word or term, as described in the MoS at WP:PUNC. The other suggestions look fine to me, and/or I can go either way, so do what you think is best.  :) --Elonka 03:34, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Hm.. but did he issue multiple bulls on the subject of the embassy? My experience with papal bulls has been they issue one per subject. Of course that's for a time frame over a 100 years before this, so I could be wrong. And that list shows bulls in 1247, 1252 and 1254, but none in 1245. The 1252 one is for the Inquisition, authorizing torture. Hm.. wonder what the others listed there are for. Anyway, the source there is Richard, and I note that this sentence is in both the long version and the short version of the article. Maybe we'd better double check the reference. The list of bulls could be off, but it'd be nice to be able to update it if Richard gives a name for the 1245 bull. I'll go dig on the shelves. The books I ordered shipped (except the God's War, it's backordered, drat it!) so hopefully we'll all be on the same source page soon. Ealdgyth | Talk 03:43, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Okies. Is the text of the 1247 bull, it has to with the rule of Mount Carmel (not sure where it's located, but it's clear it's not Mongol related). JSTOR Article which I'll get tomorrow, you can count on it. Translation of 1252 Bull which is the one about torture, Bit about Papal bulls on the treatment of Jews that briefly mentions Innocent and some bulls. (Very intersting article, btw) List of some bulls relating to Scotland has two bulls of Innocent, Information on the Council of Lyons which gives the decrees of the council (handy!), Papal Encyclicals and Councils more listings, including council decrees, and Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Innocent IV. Heh, I got a bit long winded. (Big surprise). Some of those sites are pretty nice, well worth bookmarking for later.Ealdgyth | Talk 04:30, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
The JSTOR article lists six bulls for 1245 and another either 1244 or 1245. Only two were issued post-Lyon (July and August). Only the 17 July bull Ad apostolicae dignitatis, which excommunicated Frederick II looks like it may have even the slightest bearing on Mongol relations, but none of my online searches reveal one. Srnec (talk) 06:21, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Ah, I see where you're going with this. Yes, multiple Mongol-related bulls were issued, including two in March 1245 by Pope Innocent, Dei patris immensa (waxing on Christianity, and urging Mongols to accept baptism), and Cum non solum, an appeal to the Mongols to stop attacking Christians. Pope Innocent expressed a desire for peace in the second one, but according to Peter Jackson, Innocent may have been unaware that the Mongols didn't really have a word for "peace". Their word for "peace" was the same as the word for "submission"! I've added both bulls (and a few others that I'm finding in Jackson's book) to List of papal bulls. If you need more info, let me know.  :) --Elonka 06:35, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Beware historians getting lost in the details! Yeah, looks good. I like the tidbit about the Mongols not having a word for peace, that should probably go in the article somewhere. I'll see what else I pull from JSTOR tomorrow, I've finally gotten a real librarian to speak with me, and have permission to acquire all the articles I want, so tomorrow while all the college kids are off drinking and sleeping, I'll be buried in the library. Any subjects that I should plug in besides the obvious "Mongol" "Crusaders" "Diplomatic relations" "Innocent IV" etc.? Ealdgyth | Talk 06:56, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, confirm for yourself if or how much Mongol presence (if any) was in Jerusalem in the latter half of the 13th century, as that has been an important issue to PHG. Also, check anything you can find on Cicilian Armenia (under Hetoum I, also spelled Hethoum, Haithon, Hayton, Het'um, etc.) to get a sense for yourself whether he "allied" with the Mongols or submitted. And, since you're really good at researching sources and determining which ones are most reliable, it would be a good idea to get a sense of the authors such as Alain Demurger and Laurent Dailliez, since we have had disagreement on how much those two can be used for controversial claims that are not backed up by other historians. So if you can track down a copy of Dailliez's Les Templiers (1970s editions) to see them for yourself, that could be helpful.  :) Check out the discussions at Talk:Laurent_Dailliez for more. And good luck!  :) --Elonka 09:42, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Going to have to go to the University of Illinois' library for some of this. The dinky little local university chose to be cheap and didn't do the full JSTOR sub, just some of the journals. They missed Speculum, Journal of Medieval History and Journal of Ecclesiastical History, so you can bet they didn't subscribe to Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and the others. I did get the Schein, and a couple of intersting looking things that turned up while I was poking around. Dang I miss having Rice University and the University of Houston right around the corner! Ealdgyth | Talk 23:14, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

In your libraries defense: JSTOR is not cheap at all (multi thousand $ a year), and not many people go to local libraries for old scholarly papers; good luck finding the relevant ones. Arnoutf (talk) 23:33, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
This isn't my local public library. This is a well known regional university library. Liberal arts in fact. I would HATE to be a history professor there, trying to publish or perish (grins). But they do have some so I gathered a couple of articles (65 in fact, but most aren't on the Mongols). Now to get them processed from the .gifs to something readable... ugh. Ealdgyth | Talk 00:05, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Even university libraries can't afford everything (my University has subscriptions with Elsevier for about 1 million Euro a year which obviously covers only Elsevier journal; and that is only one of the publishers they have subscriptions from...... For the academic staff member the trick is to lobby for the journals you really need and buy the single papers (about 20$ in general) when needed. Sounds expensive; and I agree it is, but often cheaper then having the whole bunch. But I think this is getting a bit off-topic;I have no access to all these sources either so dropped out of this article long ago. Good luck. Arnoutf (talk) 00:13, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
If you need anything from Speculum I have JSTOR access for 1926-2002; for JMH I have the whole thing (1975-2007). For JEH I can apparently access only 1999-2007; I'm sure I've used older volumes online in the past but maybe it changed. (Also, if you need anything from the past 7 volumes of Speculum they are handily on my shelf, although I don't think there is anything in them about the Montols.) Adam Bishop (talk) 12:32, 27 January 2008 (UTC)