Talk:Ja'far al-Sadiq

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.
Biography Portal
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
Photo request It is requested that a picture or pictures of this person be included in this article to improve its quality.
Maintenance An appropriate infobox may need to be added to this article, or the current infobox may need to be updated. Please refer to the list of biography infoboxes for further information.

This article is part of the article assessment section of WikiProject Muslim scholars, a WikiProject for all articles about Muslim scholars.
Note: The project includes non-Muslim scholars of Islam.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

Contents

[edit] Biography assessment rating comment

The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. Needs references. Sayings should be in wikiquotes, not in the article. An infobox and picture(s) would bring it up to B class. -- Psychless 03:38, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arabic-to-English Transliteration

  • The word "al" means "the".
  • The word "sadiq" means "truthful".
  • Therefore, "al-Sadiq" means "the truthful".
  • In the Arabic language, the "l" in "al" is removed, and instead, the "s" in "sadiq" is pronounced twice, to produce a strong "s" sound. However, for the sake of clarity, and in accordance with Wikipedia standards, it should be written as "al-Sadiq" rather than "as-Sadiq". Adamcaliph 3 October 2005, 20:21 (UTC)

[edit] Al or al?

I think that generally AL is written Al and not al when it is prefexing a capetilized name .

[edit] Revision

I copyedited, tightening up and removing undue praise. I also removed the claims that the founders of three schools of Sunni jurisprudence were students of Ja'far. I don't think that the Sunni accept those claims. I am not completely "up" on this controversy, but what googling I did suggested that Sunni would object. If material on this claim is to be re-introduced, it should be in a separate section and the controversy should be outlined. Zora 09:42, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Sub-article"

Striver, you've been creating articles without any consultation with other editors, and then going through Wikipedia labeling other articles as "sub-articles" of your own articles. So far as I know, "breakout article" is used informally, but it isn't a formal description of articles that elaborate a point treated more generally elsewhere. I have never seen "sub-article" used by anyone else to describe articles. Usually, the nexus between articles is either the link, or the "See also" section. It seems like utter egotism for you to take articles created by other editors and then annex them, as "sub-articles", into your grandiose schemes. I'm going to raise the issue of your "sub-article" schema as a policy issue. I'll give you a link on your talk page after I raise the issue. Zora 09:03, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Name

Is his full name "Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr al-Siddiq"? --Striver 16:18, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

No. His grandfather wasnt Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr, but his grandfather was Imam Ali ibn Hussein (as). Imam Jafar's (as) father wasn't al-Qasim, but his father was Imam Muhammad al-Baqir (as). "Abd al-Rahman" has no basis, to the best of my knowledge (which is limited). Thus, his name is Imam Jafar ibn Muhammad ibn Ali as-Sadiq (as).

[edit] Academic line?

I removed the whole dang academic line section, as it's seriously misleading. I took the list of names and put it in the scholarly attainments section, and said that these people attended Ja'far's lectures. Zain, you had just restored the old material that seemed to claim undue influence for Ja'far. This is just a restatement of old Sunni-Shi'a polemics.

I'm still not sure that even that list of names should stand. I'll have to think it over. Zora 02:23, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

How does it claim undue influence to Al-Sadiq? If you're a student, it simply means he taught you, whether for a day, or for many years. Zain 02:29, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

No, not necessarily. Sometimes teacher-student relations are formal and perfunctory, but sometimes they are like the guru-chela relationship. This is particularly true of religious study.

In those days, there was no university, no course of study, no certification -- a scholar would just give lectures and people would show up to listen. I think it's OK to say that those Sunni scholars attended Ja'far's lectures. Did they have a closer relationship to him? Do they owe everything to him? Was he their guru? I don't think that can be proven. Shi'a tend to claim guru-ship and Sunnis to claim that they attended lectures. If the Sunni admit that, then it's safe to say it. Further than that starts to be controversial.

If this is a big problem, you might want to collect cites that say that Ja'far was their guru, and I'll look for the cites that say he was just a lecturer. Or can we just leave it the way it is? Zora 03:01, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm fine with the way it is, but I think it's safe to say that Musa al-Kazim (as) did more than attend a few lectures. Zain 04:00, 15 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Al-Sadiq or As-Sadiq?

I think the title shoud be Ja'far As-Sadiq. Bidabadi 12:02, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I think there should be a sub-title called Sunni View since Sunni's do not consider him to be a Shia and they also regard him highly.

[edit] Improvement of this article

The article of Ja'far al-Sadiq needs more improvement , I have added an infobox and re-write some lines . I would like to invite interested users to add more information to this article and more references .Brokenlove 20:17, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Islamic Research Center in Strasbourg?

I think the references feels very dubious. I can't find any information about this so called Islamic Research Center in Strasbourg. Are they a part of the Univesity? Why doesn't their published articles have any references? Doesn't feel very academic to me. Is this whole article just an invention to promote Islam? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joe hill (talk • contribs) 05:25, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

The Encycopedia Britannica article on al-Sadiq would appear to confirm that he is sufficiently notable to warrant a Wikipedia article, so I think your question about whether the article is an "invention to promote Islam" is uncalled for. However, the single source cited for all but one of the claims made in the section As a scientist and philosopher appears to be a work self-published by its translator, Kaukab Ali Mirza. If the extracts quoted on the web-site cited in the article are accurate, Mirza's book also makes many completely unsourced exceptional claims, several of which would seem to disqualify it from being considered a reliable source. To cite just one, it asserts that al-Sadiq "refuted" the theory of geocentrism at age 11, but the argument against geocentrism which it attributes to him is nonsensical. Given that al-Sadiq appears to have been a highly respected Islamic scholar, it doesn't seem likely that he would have proposed such an obviously fallacious argument as a refutation of the then universally held notion of geocentrism.
The source purports to be an English translation from a Persian (presumably Farsi) translation of a French original, claimed to have been a "thesis" published by a "Research Committee", variously described as being eiher "of Strasbourg" or "of Strasbourg University". I would remain highly sceptical of these claims until someone can provide a traceable citation of the supposed French original.
None of the contributions to Astronomy and Cosmology which the article claims al-Sadiq made is mentioned in either J.L.E.Dreyer's History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler or C.M.Linton's From Eudoxus to Einstein, both of which have extensive chapters on oriental astronomy, most of which are devoted to Islamic astronomy. Also, the only mention which the Encyclopedia Britannica article cited above makes of al-Sadiq's contribution to science is that the alchemist Geber credited him with being the source of many of his own ideas. In view of all this, I believe the section As a scientist and philosopher should either be deleted, or at least rewritten from scratch using reliable sources, and Kaukab Ali Mizra's book should not be used as a reference.
—David Wilson (talk · cont) 17:01, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
You can find more about him here:
Thanks for the references. They look quite interesting and authoritative. Unfortunately none of them appears to me to provide any support for the specific claims from Ali Mirza's book that have been made in the As a scientist and philosopher section of the article.
—David Wilson (talk · cont) 01:21, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
I found Imam Jafar Ibn Muhammad As-Sadiq A.S. : The Great Muslim Scientist and Philosopher. What's your idea about it.--Seyyed(t-c) 18:38, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
That's precisely the same book whose reliability I have questioned above. My thoughts about it are given there, and, in more detail, here.
—David Wilson (talk · cont) 04:13, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Peace to him who deserves it

This article is a pice of the history of the world! And the world insn't only the western ideologie. To much knowledge is destroyed in the past by ignorant people, who don't want accept the realitiy of a giant knowledge of mankind.

I donn't know who is so ignorant, to delete this article. This article is an eminent part of the history.

Wikipedia is a Lexikon, it schould be a source of knowledge. The concern of anyone who want to delete this articel is undoubtful a personal problem of some ignorant people.

For me it is a part of a very bright article to understand the development of the whole mankind in the whole history, not only in a small epoch (kommunismus, imperialismus, rassismus) like you lern in the western school.

It's real - a part of reality. I for my part enjoyed this. Now I see how little the Knowledge of the western schools are really were.

Thanks for your reading.

[edit] As a scientist and a philosopher

Since no-one appears to have come up with reliable sources for the material taken from Kaukab ali Mirza's book via this web site (see discussion above), I have deleted it in accordance with the Wikipedia policiy on verifiability.

However the remaining material in this section also seems to be just as poorly sourced. The editor responsible for the single remaining reference (The Minister, 11 (10), p. 5-7, 1984) has confirmed that he has not been able to check it himself, but obtained his information about it from the web site indicated. This website contains an article on theories of alternative medicine and includes many poorly sourced extraordinary claims. In my opinion it can by no stretch of the imagination be regarded as satisfying Wikipedia's criteria for reliable sources. The journal it cites for the claim included in the Ja'far al-Sadiq article (namely, The Minister) is so obscure that I have been unable to locate a library anywhere in the world which carries it, and the editor responsible for its inclusion has been unable to throw any light on where a copy might be found. I have therefore also added a {{verify credibility}} template to this citation. Unless someone can locate a copy of the given reference and provide some details to confirm that it's a reliable source (or alternatively provide another reliable source to support the material) within a reasonable time then I believe this material should also be deleted. —David Wilson (talk · cont) 13:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Since no-one has been able provide a reliable source for this material I have now removed it.
—David Wilson (talk · cont) 13:10, 15 May 2008 (UTC)