User talk:Cuchullain/Archive 13

Anchor baby

I took out the words "natural-born" from your new opening text to this article. While I (and, I believe, most people) would agree that a US-born child of illegal alien parents is indeed a "natural born citizen", there is at least some amount of controversy over exactly what "natural born citizen" means (see the "Natural born citizen of the United States" article, which recently survived a call for deletion from someone who insisted it was obviously nothing more than a dictionary synonym of "citizen by birth"). Rather than drag the "natural born citizen" controversy directly into the "anchor baby" article, I believe it would be better simply to say that the children under discussion are US citizens via jus soli.

And, BTW, I do agree with you that "anchor baby" is a derogatory term and should not be treated as an ordinary expression (any more than the "N-word" should be). However, there has been prolonged and repeated controversy and edit-warring over this article for a very long time — with frequent instances of a consensus being built, only to be disclaimed and tossed aside by someone new who comes along with a hard-line view on one side or the other. So we may need to keep on working hard to find some compromise that, if not pleasing to everyone, is equally displeasing to everyone. Richwales (talk) 19:11, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Your change looks good. As for what I did, it wasn't much of a change over what had been there before a certain editor (who has a history of this sort of thing) altered the wording to make it appear the article wasn't about a term, but about a notably unusual kind of baby. His change had exactly the effect of changing the line "n***** is a derogatory term for a black person" to "... is a black person"; it's insane and no reasonable person could find that acceptable.

Other than that it was just combining some redundant sentences. I can see what you mean about the perennial edit warring; the article is on my watchlist now so I'll continue keeping an eye on it.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:00, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

An extinct church?

Can you make anything of this article? Sorting through the edit history, it looks like it was originally an abstruse attempt to (1) conflate some passages in primary sources to make it appear that the Indian church was connected to the Syriac Orthodox patriarchate rather than the Nestorian by way of a West Syrian "Orthodox Church of the East", and (2) to bolster the claims of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church regarding the title of Catholicos of the East. Later another editor came in and added a bunch of material concerning what is actually known about Christianity in India, which had the effect of making the article appear to be well referenced. A Google Books search returns nothing relevant to the subject of a phantom Oriental Orthodox church. Probably something that will need to be AFD'd, but I thought I'd check around before doing that.--Cúchullain ^t/c 19:20, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi Cuchallain,

The article seems to be talking about the Syrian Orthodox Church, or Syriac Orthodox Church, or whatever it calls itself nowadays. I think India is mentioned because most of the Saint Thomas Christians joined the Syrian Orthodox Church in the seventeenth century on the arrival of a Syrian Orthodox bishop in India, because they preferred to be part of a Syriac-speaking church than continue under Portuguese domination. This shift of allegiance involved moving overnight from the extreme right wing of the Christological spectrum (Nestorianism) to the extreme left wing (monophysitism), but seems to have caused no difficulties of conscience to those concerned.

I am sure that anything of value in this article is duplicated elsewhere, so if I were you I would delete it immediately.

Djwilms (talk) 01:20, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Nice work on the article Malankara Church. I've been trying to find out more about the Saint Thomas Christians in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when they virtually drop off the map, and I started reading this article. Good heavens, I thought. Firstly, it makes sense; secondly, it is sober and factual; and thirdly, it's well-written. I almost thought I was consulting the Encyclopedia Britannica ...

Why thank you, that's very nice to hear and very encouraging. The article isn't done yet, I've taken a bit of a break... I've found that even uncontroversial things (ie, things that appear in nearly every source I've looked at) may face resistance from certain editors who are part of the Thomas Christian community, so I was a bit dispirited by the prospect of having to deal with the things that are actually controversial. But I think I'll get back to it soon.

On Orthodox Church of the East, thanks for the input. I've done some more research, and I can't find any evidence that that name has ever been used in this way. I'll take another stab at it, but I think it will have to go to AfD sooner or later.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:43, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I think your instinct is right, that the author is trying to appropriate the hallowed terms 'Church of the East' and 'Catholicus' for the monophysites; which of course we can't possibly allow. The Nestorians may be repulsive heretics :-), denying as they do the title Mother of God to Mary, but they got there first with their titles.

Djwilms (talk) 01:19, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

You may be interested in the article Oriental Orthodoxy, which explains how the monophysite churches have invented the term 'Oriental Orthodoxy' in order to conceal the fact that they are heretical in the eyes of most Christians, in that they decline to recognise the decisions of that touchstone of true orthodoxy, the Council of Chalcedon. I suspect the title 'Orthodox Church of the East' was invented for the same reason.

The article claims the Orthodox Church of the East as a former member of this fold, so this will have to be deleted along with the main article. The author is clearly talking about the Jacobite church formed within the boundaries of the Sassanian empire in the second half of the sixth century, which made successful inroads into the Nestorian congregations until Christian activity in Persia was frozen by the Arab conquest. The Jacobite church in Persia was headed by a 'maphrian' (mafryono, the name derives from the Syriac for 'fertiliser'), who was subordinate to the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch. Most scholars regard this Persian branch of Jacobitism as an integral part of the Syrian Orthodox Church, and would not define it as a separate church. In my article Dioceses of the Syrian Orthodox Church I treat the Persian dioceses as just one other region of the Jacobite church.

Djwilms (talk) 01:08, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

That's the conclusion I've come to after doing a bit more reading on the subject. From what I can tell, the earlier version of the article contained a confused description that made a series of dubious assertions. First, it claims that the jurisdiction of the West Syrian Maphrian or Catholicos constituted a distinct church known as the "Orthodox Church of the East"; second, it claims that it was this church that spread to India, not the Church of the East or the Syriac Orthodox Church; and third, it insinuates that the heir to this Orthodox Church of the East and its illustrious history is the church whose head uses the title "Catholicos of the East", that is the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church. This is, at best, a major distortion of the history with a detectable agenda, and it appears to be quite unsalvageable. Ironically, the attempts of another user to add some sourced material probably prevented the article from being deleted earlier, as it now appears the thing is well sourced. I'm going to prepare an AfD when I have the time.

On "Oriental Orthodoxy", I wouldn't say that most other Christians consider OO churches heretical; my understanding is that at this point the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches specifically accept them as orthodox (and vice versa). But on the name "Oriental Orthodoxy", it seems like just one in a long strain of names designed to make sure no one will know how to talk about the subject. I've come to the conclusion that Christian groups - especially smaller ones - must spend a very considerable percentage of their time on the issue of what they should be called. Names that people might recognize (Nestorian, Monophysite, Melkite, Mormon) are inevitably considered the very worst options, for the very reason that people not of the church may use those names. As such across Wikipedia we call the Syriac Orthodox Church several things - Jacobite, Monophysite, Miaphysite, Oriental Orthodox, West Syrian - but we have an objectively shoddy article that wasn't even linked from Jacob Baradaes. I tried to explain that the lack of a consistent terminology is impeding progress at Talk:Saint_Thomas_Christians#A lot of work, but you can see how far that got. It's going to take a lot of work to get all our articles on the Church of the East, the Jacobite Church, and the Saint Thomas Christians in line, which is a shame considering that we clearly have a lot of competent English-speakers from those communities around. But one thing at a time, I suppose. Cheers,--Cúchullain ^t/c 03:06, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Dear Djwilms,Cúchullain

I am the one who u talking about.... Now i challenge u back... i think u people have some hidden agenda... why because there are evidences....

ok lets start... u have to command on this....

1. Have u ever heard a book named "paesi nouamente Retrouati" (Novus Orbis) published in 1507 AD. In that book in Chapter 5 its clearly mentions that the Catholicos connected with the Patriarch of Antioch rules the Indian Church. Can u get some thing more authenticated than that??..

Discuss first on this.... Then i ll come with other points....

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexyalex (talk • contribs) 09:19, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

History of the Saint Thomas Christians

Dear Cuchullain,

Wow, I had no idea that the Saint Thomas Christians were capable of writing such rubbish about their origins. As far as I am aware, all reputable modern historians accept without discussion the proposition that the Malabar Christians were an offshoot of the Church of the East. Purely for your information, here is what I will be saying about the Indian church before the sixteenth century in my forthcoming book (it's still work in progress, but there's nothing like cutting and pasting to get one's views across quickly):

A. Parthian Period

There were also Christians at this period in India. In one of his rare notices of Christianity beyond the Roman empire, the fourth-century Roman ecclesiastical historian Eusebius of Caesarea mentioned that Pantaenus, an eminent Christian scholar and Stoic philosopher, left Alexandria in about 180 and went as a missionary to India, where he found Christians who traced the origin of their community back to the apostle Bartholomew. They owned a copy of Matthew’s gospel, supposedly given to them by the saint. Pantaenus, who knew neither Hebrew nor Syriac, clamed that this gospel was written in Hebrew, but it is more likely to have been an early Syriac translation. Shortly afterwards the Christian teacher Bardaishan, working at Edessa, wrote authoritatively on the brahmins of India. He may well have derived his information on India’s caste system from Christian friends who had been to India.

It is not surprising to find Christians in India at such an early date. Goods and art objects from Roman Alexandria and Syria were certainly reaching the Indus River and its upper reaches in the first century AD. Traders tended to land on the Malabar coast of India, and carry goods overland to the east coast, and it is probably significant that the first Christian communities in India were founded along this coast. The Malabar coast also had a settled colony of Jews and this, more than any other single factor, may have encouraged early Christian missionary work in India. As elsewhere, the first Christian converts were made from Jewish communities. Christians could also be found in the Punjab, in the city of Taxila. There, uniquely in the ancient world at this date, Buddhists and Christians could have mixed freely, without the intervening barrier of the pagan gods of the Roman and Parthian empires.

B. Sassanian Period

Persian Christianity in India, implanted during the Parthian period, prospered and grew during the Sassanian period. The Nestorian monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, who visited the Christians of India around the middle of the sixth century, mentioned three distinct areas of Christian settlement: in northwest India, around the trading port of Calliana near Bombay, from which brass, sisam logs and cloth were exported; along the Malabar coast in southern India ‘in the land called Male, where the pepper grows’; and in the island of Ceylon (Sielediva). By the fourth century the Church of the East had begun to send out bishops to these communities. According to the Chronicle of Seert, the bishop David of Maishan left his diocese in 295 to go to India, where he preached the faith among the Indians. Other bishops surely followed in his footsteps, though the supply of Persian bishops to the Christians of India was never easy, and there may have been long periods when no bishop was available. Cosmas noted that the Christians of Calliana had a bishop appointed from Fars, while the Christians of the Malabar coast and Ceylon had priests and deacons but not bishops. By the end of the Sassanian period the Christians of India had accepted the leadership of the church of Fars, which also claimed Saint Thomas as its founder. The connection with Fars went back at least as far as the late fifth century, when the metropolitan Ma‘na of Rev Ardashir sent copies of his Syriac translations of Greek devotional works to India for the use of the Indian clergy.

D. Abbasid Period

After several centuries of dependence on the Persian-speaking metropolitans of Fars, who also boasted of their descent from the apostle Thomas, the Saint Thomas Christians of India were finally brought under the authority of the patriarchs of Seleucia-Ctesiphon towards the end of the eighth century. The patriarch Timothy I, who was determined to break the power of the bishops of Rev Ardashir, detached India from the province of Fars and made it a separate metropolitan province. There is a tradition in the Indian church, recorded by the sixteenth-century Portuguese writer Diogo do Couto, that two ‘Syrian’ bishops, Shapur and Peroz, were sent to Quilon from Mesopotamia in 823, the year of Timothy’s death. They were accompanied by ‘the famous man Sabrisho‘’, perhaps a metropolitan consecrated by Timothy for India. As he had done in Fars, Timothy doubtless took care to appoint progressive churchmen for India to eradicate the undesirable practices introduced into the Indian churches by conservative Persian bishops. He may well have tried to promote the use of Syriac in preference to Persian, but if he did he was not immediately successful. A number of copper plates belonging to the Malabar church have survived from the second half of the ninth century, recording certain privileges extended by the local Hindu rulers to the Christians of Quilon. The main text is in Old Tamil, as might have been expected in an official Indian document, and the signatures of the witnesses (Jews, Moslems and Zoroastrians) were in Hebrew, Arabic and Persian respectively. None of this is surprising, but it may be significant that the Malabar Christians did not insist upon a Syriac translation of the text. Towards the end of the ninth century, in response to an appeal from the Indians, the patriarch Enosh or a near-contemporary consecrated another Syrian metropolitan, Yohannan, for India, along with two suffragan bishops. On his arrival in India Yohannan may well have met an exotic foreign visitor, the English bishop Sighelm of Shireburn, who was sent in 883 by king Alfred to offer thanks at the shrine of Saint Thomas near Madras for his great victory over the Danes at Edington five years earlier. Sighelm’s impressions of the Nestorians of India would have been of great interest to the scholarly Alfred, but have unfortunately not survived. One of Yohannan’s suffragan bishops, ‘Dua’, was consecrated for Soqotra, and the other, Thomas, for ‘Masin’, a region traditionally identified with southern China. If this identification is correct, the consecration of a bishop for southern China, easily accessible from India by sea, might be connected with the collapse of the Nestorian mission in northern China several decades earlier.

E. Seljuq Period

Little is known about the Nestorian metropolitan province of India during this period. Sporadic contact seems to have been maintained between the Saint Thomas Christians and the Mesopotamian heartland of the Church of the East, but it was not always possible for bishops to be sent to India. A manuscript note of 1007, recopied in 1138, mentions that the province of India had been suppressed, ‘because bishops were unable to reach it’. Clearly the province was later revived, as it was again in full communion with the Church of the East at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

F. Mongol Period

In 1301 a manuscript was copied in the church of Mar Quriaqos in Cranganore on the Malabar coast of India. An elaborate colophon to this manuscript mentions the patriarch Yahballaha III and the metropolitan Ya‘qob of India, demonstrating that links between the Saint Thomas Christians and the Church of the East in Mesopotamia were strong at this period. Cranganore, described in the colophon as ‘the royal city’, was evidently the seat of the Nestorian metropolitans of India, indicating that the main strength of the Indian Christians was by now along the Malabar coast. Nevertheless, there were still Nestorian communities around Bombay, which were noticed by Franciscan and Dominican missionaries in the early years of the fourteenth century. There were also Nestorian communities on the Coromandel coast, around Madras and in Meliapur, with its celebrated tomb of Saint Thomas. Their numbers, however, were modest. The Latin missionaries mentioned only fifteen Nestorian families in Tana, a port near Bombay, and another fifteen families in Meliapur.

Those are the main facts which reputable historians deal with. Half the stuff quoted in the replies to your posts is completely new to me, and (if I may say so) totally off the wall. We do indeed have problems ahead. Maybe the best way forward is to give up on attempting to edit existing articles, and instead write new, well-sourced articles, thus paving the way for the eventual deletion of the problematical stuff.

Djwilms (talk) 09:03, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I've just read the Saint Thomas history stuff again more attentively. The rewriting of history seems to be driven (a) by local differences among the Indian Christians; and (b) by the understandable (if deplorable) wish of the present Syrian Orthodox hierarchy to play down their church's shady Nestorian past. The older I get, the more convinced I become that the writing of true history is a noble calling.

Djwilms (talk) 09:17, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

One more point, while I'm thinking about the Indians. In 1490 an Indian delegation came to Iraq to beg for the Church of the East to send them bishops (which it did). (See Dioceses of the Church of the East, 1318–1552) The Nestorian bishops arrived just in time to record the arrival of the Portuguese, and there is an excellent book to be written one day on Portuguese colonial expansion in India as seen through the approving eyes of Iraqi fellow-Christians. They wrote a long report to the church authorities in Baghdad, which would make a fascinating subject for a book.

Djwilms (talk) 09:22, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Mar Thoma – redirect

Hi Cuchullain,

I am not sure how far it is correct to redirect Mar Thoma to Mar Thoma Church. Mar Thoma means Saint Thomas (the Apostle) and Mar Thoma Church is the name of a Church. Neduvelilmathew (talk) 16:45, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

That's a good point. I've created a Mar Thoma (disambiguation); it would probably be best to move that to Mar Thoma. I'll do that now.--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:08, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

DYK for Malankara Rite

On April 16, 2010, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Malankara Rite, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check ) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Victuallers (talk) 21:44, 15 April 2010 (UTC)) 18:03, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Mar Thoma Church

Dear Cuchullain,

Sorry for reverting your edit. The Bible translation in 1811 was from Aramic language and not from King James Version. A copy of this book is now with me.

I have copies of those books from which I took the references. The authors are from around Kottayam where these events happened. So many books, records research papers written by people who have had access to original records are available now, but I tried to avoid including that many in this article. Hope you will understand.Neduvelilmathew (talk) 15:42, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Undo Revisions re: "Muslim Conquest of Iran"

With regards to undoing revisions on the Muslim Conquest of Persia....

It looks like you done so with stating your reasons. Please cite reasons as to why you think that those revisions are "not an improvement" for each and every reason. There was a good number of revisions done, in the interest of increasing the accuracy of the article.

1) Iraq is a term that is anachronistic when used to refer to the eastern portion of the Sassanid empire. The area that is now known as Iraq was under Sassanid control, and previously part of the Achaemind Persian Empire, when the Arabs invaded and then conquered the area. Many of the revisions sought to address that issue.

2) The article as, it now stands, is riddled with unsupported statements, statements that I qualified for accuracy. For example,

“Historians have propounded the idea that Persia, on the verge of the Arab invasion, was a society in decline and decay”

No support is provided for this statement, and the fact that it says “historians” seems to imply that this is the predominant belief among historians. Thus, I revised it to “some historians” which is, in fact, more correct given the fact that no historians has even been provided to support that statement.

Another example, in the same paragraph:

“However, some other authors have, for example, used exclusively Arab sources to illustrate that "contrary to the claims of some historians,

I revised this to say: “however, some other HISTORIANS have, for example…”

This was done to a) bring appropriate parallelism (historians and historians instead of historians and authors), and b) to be more accurate because a great many historians argue that the Persian fought vigorously and adamantly against Arab and Muslim influence and control. In addition, the sources provided in the article support this revision.

Therefore, I will be restoring the aforementioned revisions. Please edit each and every disputed item individually, instead of the large scale changes that you’ve assumed. Moreover please provided actual explanations and reasoning instead of using short blanket statements such “inferior edits.” Use the talk page, as well. Thanks.

Hi ArdeshirBozorg. Unfortunately, your edit introduced a number of style and wording problems, so it had to be reverted. I'll explain more on the article talk page.--Cúchullain ^t/c 23:55, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Aisha Talk

I find it disturbing and arbitrary that you have chosen to remove a valid and interesting discussion from the Aisha talk page. This smacks of censorsism, especially when you use "personal attacks" reasoning when the interested party already stated that they did not mean to attack and appologised for such. Just because you disagree with others views is no reason to actually physically remove their contribution from a talk page...after all the talk pages are designed for discussions. I have reverted this. Thanks! 122.148.217.86 (talk) 12:37, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Please read WP:No personal attacks and Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. Your comments to HelloAnnyong were entirely inappropriate. And talk pages are for discussing improvements to the article; they are not for expressing your personal opinions of the subject. I'm removing again; you are asked not to restore those comments and to focus instead on improving the article.--Cúchullain ^t/c 12:42, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I told you it was not a personal attack, and I appologised to HelloAnnoying for offending him. you are right, "pedophile-portecter" was entirely inappropriate, so I have put it all back except for that inappropriate comment. Thanks for your time. 122.148.217.86 (talk) 12:52, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

The Schism of 1552

Dear Cuchullain,

Just to let you know that I have reverted an attempt to replace my account of the schism of 1552 in the article Church of the East with a sanitised, inaccurate and badly-written paragraph by a scandalised Chaldean Christian. His version revives the old myth that the patriarch Shemon VII Ishoyahb died in 1551, and cites an old and out-of-date source. It is now generally accepted in scholarly circles that Sulaqa's supporters lied to the Vatican to bolster their claim that Sulaqa had been legitimately elected, and my account of the schism of 1552 in EOCE has not been challenged since it appeared ten years ago. I was not the first scholar to point out that Sulaqa's supporters lied, but I was able to provide detailed colophon evidence for the appointment of minors by Shemon VII Ishoyahb which helped to put the schism in context. I am sure that my version of the schism of 1552 will be reverted in its turn by some frothing Chaldean, and am just giving you a heads-up now to say that I might be needing your help once an edit war begins.

On the same subject, and in an attempt to spread truth and enlightenment further on Wikipedia, I have added a paragraph on the non-existent 'Shemon VIII Denha' to my article Patriarchs of the Church of the East. You might enjoy it.

Djwilms (talk) 02:01, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

P.S. I've just seen the latest outburst of spleen against you from some foaming Iraqi who has a thing about maggots. It's really an uphill struggle trying to reason with Assyrian nationalists, isn't it? I'm seriously beginning to wonder whether the attrition is worth it. I seem to be spending half my time on Wikipedia just trying to hold the line against destructive edits. I've just had a query on how I know the invented 2nd century patriarchs were fictitious. No doubt that will start an edit war before long. Trying to explain HOW I know just takes too long ...—Preceding unsigned comment added by Djwilms (talk • contribs)

I left some comments at Talk:Church of the East. I don't think an edit war is unavoidable, Carlaude is a reasonable person. So far their only real complaint has been that the material didn't have sufficient citations (meaning, so far as I can tell, that the individual sentences didn't carry cites). Once that is done that should be the end of it. The stuff on Shemon VIII Denha is really interesting. Unfortunately, as you say, certain elements will probably not take kindly to

On the ACOTE article, fortunately people who act that way are easy to deal with. If they keep going, they can be blocked. It's the well-meaning but incompetent editors - the ones who don't really break any rules, and who clearly think they're helping out, but whose edits deteriorate article quality - who are the real problem.--Cúchullain ^t/c 15:33, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

West Syrian rite articles

I don't know if you knew this at the time or if there was a masterplan involved here, but the West Syrian liturgical rites article you started about a month ago is definitely redundant to the already-extant West Syrian Rite article that you linked from. (the existing article already covers the whole family of rites, which are usually considered less seperate rites and more localized usages of the same rite.) I could understand if that was missed in the reading of the older article, as it is overloaded with Roman Catholic POV, as most of the text is copied verbatim from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia. (I still don't get why anyone thought a near-100 year old work written with a decidedly POV slant was a good source from which to text-dump.)

Anywho, I think that a merge might be in order, though I honestly recommend that the shorter, more straightfoward and decidedly less POV language of the newer article should be the basis of the combined article. A significantly less-detailed and jargon-filled version of the outline of the liturgy(ies) and the list of the Anaphoras are really the only things unique to the West Syrian Rite that I would retain. That is, unless you have a particular plan that I stumbled upon mid-execution.oknazevad (talk) 20:03, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I didn't have a real master plan in this, I just found our current treatment inappropriate when I was writing the Malankara Rite article. The problem was that the sources I used in the Malankara Rite and West Syrian liturgical rites articles (as opposed to the West Syrian Rite article, which has almost none) treat the (West) Syrian Rite, the Malankara Rite, and the Maronite Rite as three distinct rites in the same family. In all the sources, the rite of the Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholic Churches (the West Syrian Rite, Syrian Rite, Syro-Antiochene Rite, etc.) is listed separately from the other variants. The Maronite Rite is quite distinct, and the Malankara Rite is roughly identical to the West Syrian Rite now, but historically had been very different. This is also more or less how the original Catholic Encyclopedia article the Wikipedia article is based on did it; it identifies the "West Syrian Rite" specifically as the rite of the Syrian Orthodox and Syrian Catholic Churches, and had a separate article on the Antiochene Liturgy which discussed the whole family of liturgies that descended from Antioch.

Bottom line is, no source I can find outside of Wikipedia uses the term "West Syrian Rite" for all the "West Syrian" rites. As such I thought it best that West Syrian Rite return to discussing specifically the Syriac Orthodox/Syriac Catholic rite, and then wrote up a separate stub on the family of rites. At first I considered doing this at Antiochene Rite, but by definition that would also include the Greek rites that descended from Antioch, including the Byzantine Rite. I would not oppose a merge, but we need to be sure we have the clearest and best title, as currently our treatment of all of this is horribly confused.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:12, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I see what you're saying. I think a thorough revision of the West Syrian Rite article would have been preferable to a new article. As for content, I've seen both descriptions, three separate rites in the same family, or three variant usages of the same rite. I definately agree with not putting it all under the Antiochene Rite, since, as you note, that branched into the Byzantine, East Syrian, West Syrian and, to a certain amount, the Armenian rites. oknazevad (talk) 22:51, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

The problem with a rewrite of West Syrian Rite is that for it to include all three rites, it would have to be totally rewritten and retitled, thus resulting in a new article, while if it was rewritten to only include the one rite, we would have no place to discuss the other two rites. At any rate, why don't we move the discussion over to West Syrian Rite? I'll comment further over there.--Cúchullain ^t/c 12:49, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Saint Thomas Christians

Dear Cuchullain,

You asked me earlier whether I was going to write an article on India as a metropolitan province of the Church of the East, and I said yes.

I have just been reading the various depressing discussions you have had with these guys, and it seems clear that there is a movement among the Saint Thomas Christians to downplay their earlier dependence on the Church of the East. This is the sort of thing, as you can imagine, which raises my scholarly hackles. Having just scored a rare victory for enlightenment with Schism of 1552, I am now in the mood to take on the forces of obscurantism again.

What is needed, I think, is not a frontal attack on the existing articles on the Malabar church, but a new article, India (East Syrian Ecclesiastical Province), which will fit nicely into the series of articles I have already done. With luck, this article will escape notice for a few weeks, until it has been sufficiently buttressed with citations to have some chance of withstanding the inevitable attacks that its existence will provoke. One of the more unnerving aspects of contributing to Wikipedia is that you often don't get the chance to finish what you are saying before the attacks begin.

I've found this outflanking approach helpful on other occasions. Once we have a few properly footnoted indisputable facts up and running, it's much easier to repel knee-jerk criticism. I need to get all the stuff on India straight for my forthcoming book anyway, so it would be fun to kill two birds with one stone by putting it all together in a worthy Wikipedia cause.

I've just started the ball rolling.

Djwilms (talk) 03:46, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Looks very good for a start. Excellent work, David. Once you're at a stopping point I'll go through and add some of the sources I've been using for Malankara Church and other articles. I've basically given up on the main Saint Thomas Christians article; it is in an abhorrent state, and we have literally dozens (or perhaps more) of forked articles that just duplicate each others' content. See, for example, Syrian Malabar Nasranis, which, as the intro says, is just another (virtually unknown) term for Saint Thomas Christians. Unfortunately, on topics that don't get seen very often by our "quality control" Wikipedians, well-meaning but not particularly competent editors can often take over. Hence changes like this one are allowed to stand. I think we're getting over that hurdle with the broader Church of the East subjects, thanks to diligence by informed and dedicated folks such as yourself, but the Saint Thomas Christian articles are going to be an uphill fight.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:49, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I've just skimmed through the article Saint Thomas Christians. It's awful, isn't it? One of the problems, of course, is Christian piety. Some people are never going to accept the fact that the legend of the evangelisation of India by Thomas is a legend, i.e. it didn't actually happen.

But if you think that the Saint Thomas Christians are intractable, wait till I get going on the early centuries of the Church of the East. Three of the disciples of Mani, the third-century founder of Manicheism, were called Addai, Mari and Thomas. One possibility is that Mani pinched those names from the Christians, in which case we have evidence for the early spread of the Christian legends of these three apostles. But it seems far more likely, given that Mari and Addai only really enter the consciousness of the Church of the East in the sixth century, that the Christian myth-makers instead pinched their names from the Manicheans, and undermined their considerable brand recognition in Persia by relaunching them as Christian missionaries. I do find that a very seductive argument, but I think I'll wait for a few weeks before inserting it in the lead paragraph of the article Church of the East.

Scholars can reconstruct the development of the various layers of legend that are a substitute for a history of the early centuries of the Church of the East by dating them, noting where the legends disagree amongst themselves, and identifying successive strands of elaboration. 'Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive.' Unfortunately, it's difficult to demonstrate that sort of thing in an encylopedia like Wikipedia without getting too technical.

Ah well, press on. I've just established email contact with an Assyrian contributor from Iraq, a member of the family that provided over ten metropolitans of Shemsdin since the sixteenth century, who is giving me accurate dates for a whole raft of twentieth-century Assyrian bishops. Such details gladden my soul, and there, at least, certainty is attainable.

Djwilms (talk) 04:06, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

P.S. I enjoyed the suggestion that the cross used by the Saint Thomas Christians derives from the Jewish candlestick (see Nasrani Menorah and Ancient Crosses of India). What a load of total bollocks, as we Brits say.

Did you really mean to do a vandalism revert on ANI?

You reverted Beyond my Ken's edit with a vandalism revert on WP:ANI. Did you mean to do that? Syrthiss (talk) 13:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Certainly not. I have no idea what happened; I wasn't even looking at ANI. Thanks for pointing it out.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:03, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Hehe, not a problem. Syrthiss (talk) 14:10, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Your changes to article I wrote on Broadhaven Bay, Erris, North Mayo, Ireland.

Hi, I note that you adjusted my article on Broadhaven Bay. I don't have a problem with anybody adding constructively but I did take some exception that you added links which didn't have (internally linked) pages to back them up. For example - you made my Kilmore into Kilmore Erris. Nobody has done a page for either and as I live in and specifically worked on my own parish (Kilcommon and all its various components such as Glengad, Rossport, Benwee Head, Broadhaven Bay, Sruwaddacon Bay, Rundale, Brian Rua etc etc... I don't really intend to make the page for Kilmore or Kilmore Erris, so why did you highlight it? It only makes a mess of the page, linking to pages that don't exist as they stick out like sore thumbs, highlighted in red, in the article. Also you added 'Kid Island' and highlighted it (it came up in red as a page doesn't exist - probably because I didn't make it - I don't consider Kid Island to be notable! or let's put it another way - there are a lot of things in Kilcommon much more notable before we get down to the level of Kid Island, nice place as it is for a wilderness lover like myself). Kid Island is a rock with some grass on it on which a couple of local farmers graze a few sheep which I see out of the window of my house every day. It's hardly highlightable. Somebody in a book somewhere might have described it as the other side of Broadhaven Bay but I believe that Broadhaven Bay goes further along the North Mayo coast than that - along by Kilgalligan, Benwee, Portacloy, Porturlin, Glinsc etc... I even got told by an Wikipedia administrator when I did "Erris" (a Barony) that it was barely notable. How notable therefore can Kid Island be? Erris has four parishes within it - I have done some articles on two of those (Kilcommon and Kiltane - someone else did Ballycroy). Some day I may get around to Kilmore or Kilmore Erris as you call it, but for now, there are plenty of others who could do it if they wanted to and I don't live in it, so its a long way down my list of priorities. Maybe you would like to do it so that my "Erris" article will have all its parishes given a Wikipedia page??? Then maybe people will start to take "Erris" seriously. The stub on Blacksod Bay could do with a lot of work too - again, out of my immediate area, so its a long way down my list of priorities.

As for what you have done with all my Latin names on some plant species I listed I don't know yet. I havn't got round to fixing them yet as I have been busy. All I know is that I went to some bother to link them all to the relevant pages within Wikipedia and that you have unlinked them all again. Why??? I don't think that red highlights on the pages I have made look good and I try to take some pride in making my articles interesting and looking reasonable.

I look forward to seeing you make the article on Kilmore and all its various components. There are already articles on some of its components - ones I can think of are: Belmullet, The Mullet/Mullet peninsula and Erris Head, so they will give you some start on making the article on Kilmore. Somebody has even made out that there is a Belmullet aerodrome - I never heard of it nor have I ever seen it, but with the secretive nature of some things around here (Corrib Gas) who knows what little secrets there are hidden in the landscape unknown by most of the inhabitants???

Comhar —Preceding unsigned comment added by Comhar (talk • contribs) 08:59, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Good to hear from you, Comhar, and thanks for your work on the article. To answer you questions, red links can be good for Wikipedia, as they encourage editors to create pages on notable topics that we just don't have yet. In other cases, like the Latin names of the marine life, it can indicated that a redirect to the appropriate article can be created. That is why I linked to Kilmore-Erris - if three parishes are notable, there's no reason the fourth wouldn't be. I don't have any plans on writing the article, but someone easily could, just a simple Google Books search reveals a lot of potential sources to use. On the Latin names, it is always better to link to appropriate Wikipedia articles (or potential Wikipedia articles) rather than include external links within the article body. (Aesthetically, I don't think the soft blue external links look any better than red links). This is especially true if the external link is just an image on one of Wikipedia's sister projects.

Also, I didn't add Kid Island, I just hyperlinked to it. I did that because we have a rather nice picture of it on Wikimedia commons and it sounded from the description in the article that it might be notable enough for its own article, or at least a redirect to another article. If Kid Island is not the other side of Broadhaven Bay, we shouldn't mention it.

Again, thanks for your work on the article, it's shaping up very nicely. I'm sure we'll run into each other again.--Cúchullain ^t/c 12:58, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Prester John

Hi Cuchullain,

I've just drafted a paragraph for my book on the Prester John legend. Most of it came from Saunders. I don't have space to go into more detail, so I've contented myself with simply making the Nestorian connection. You know far more about Prester John than I do, and I would be grateful if you could take a quick look at the draft below and rescue me from any obvious blunders. I skimmed the Wikipedia article, but didn't get a very clear sense of the chronological development of the legend. Perhaps I didn't read the article attentively enough.

Besides winning over the Kerait, Nestorian missionaries also succeeded in converting the neighbouring Naiman tribe. Some conversions were also made among the Uighurs, the Oirat and the Merkit, who also lived in the vicinity of Lake Baikal. Further to the southeast the Onguts, who lived around the great bend in the Yellow River, also accepted Christianity. These conversions may have been encouraged by a major defeat inflicted by the Kara Khitai in 1141 on the Seljuq sultan Sanjar of Khwarizm. In the wake of their victory the Kara Khitai occupied Samarqand and Bukhara, and pushed forward to the river Oxus. To the east of the river, mosques were replaced by Buddhist pagodas and Nestorian Christian churches. The news of this startling, if temporary, check to Moslem ambitions in Asia became distorted and exaggerated as it travelled westwards through the caliphate into the beleaguered Crusader kingdoms in Palestine. In 1145, pope Eugene III was told of a mysterious eastern kingdom, ruled by the Christian king 'Prester John', who was aware of the Crusaders' struggle against the infidel and was coming to their aid. This confused story attested to a dim knowledge of the missionary activities of the Nestorian church in Asia, and it has been suggested that the name John is a garbled form of the title borne either by the Kara-khitai khans (gur-khan) or by the Christian rulers of the Kerait (ong-khan). In later centuries the legend of Prester John developed, grew and ramified. European explorers, failing to locate his fabled kingdom in Asia, transposed it successively to India, to Ethiopia and to south America. It always remained just beyond the horizon. But there was a kernel of fact at the heart of the legend. Although he was never the priest or king of a mighty Asian empire, 'Prester John' may have been a twelfth-century Nestorian ruler of a considerable Tartar tribe.

Thanks for your help,

Djwilms (talk) 03:52, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

David, I would be honored to double check this for you. Give me a little while, and I'll get right back to you.--Cúchullain ^t/c 12:29, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Looks quite good. The only possible issues I see are very minor. I'll try to lay them out:

• First, Otto of Freising, the first person to mention Prester John by name, is not clear that Pope Eugene actually heard the Prester John story. He just says he heard it from Hugh of Jabala while the latter was visiting the papal court.
• Otto's account does not say that Prester John was coming to the Holy Land at that time. He says after defeating the Persians, he had moved on to "aid the church of Jerusalem" but couldn't get across the Tigris and had to return home. This is minor but significant, as it has made some scholars believe that Otto was specifically trying to encourage Westerners not to rely on the idea of Prester John coming back. I'd just say he "was trying to come to their aid" or something like that.
• The sentence beginning "European explorers..." has the chronology slightly wrong. Europeans actually thought Prester John was in India before they thought he was in Central Asia. The story Otto tells is clearly a muddling of what the Kara-Kitai were doing, but Otto is unspecific about the geography. However, the accounts that immediately followed Otto, the most important of which is the "Letter of Prester John", localize him specifically in India.
• European "explorers" per se didn't play much role in this era. There is only one account of an expedition to find Prester John in India at this time that I know of (Pope Alexander III sent his emissary Philip to India with a letter).
• It wasn't until the Mongol era that Europeans began imagining Prester John as an identifiably Central Asian king. At this time, he was often identified with Wang Khan, the step-father of Ghengis, and as you know there were a number of well-documented expeditions by Westerners into Asia at this time.
• It is correct that from the 14th century or so Europeans began to associate Prester John with Ethiopia. However, I know of no tradition that ever placed him in South America.

This is all horribly pedantic, I know. My comments are a lot of text for what are really a few very minor wording changes. At any rate I hope it helps in some small way. I can get you some citations for any of this if you'd like.--Cúchullain ^t/c 20:13, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much for that, it is most helpful. Not at all horribly pedantic; simply exact, which is what I should have been.

Over the weekend, while I was away from my computer, I decided to expunge South America from my account. Your reply has now amply confirmed my suspicions that I was confusing Prester John with Eldorado. So only India, Central Asia and Ethiopia.

I also realised that I had taken too much of a liberty by assuming that pope Eugene III was personally involved, and you have confirmed my sense of unease there too. I can get round that easily enough, with a suitable form of words; maybe 'the papal court at Viterbo heard ...'

I see I have managed to conflate several stages in the development of the legend. I'll find a way of weasel wording it so that I can keep in most of it. I wasn't convinced at all by PJ as a deformation of Gur-khan, but I can see why they might have tried to identify him with Ghengis's step father.

Thanks again for catching those mistakes for me before they found their way into print. I'll return to the Nestorians in India shortly, when I have some more ammunition.

Djwilms (talk) 06:22, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

P.S. I've now done a redraft of the second half of the paragraph. Does this do the trick?

In 1144 an envoy from Raymond of Antioch told the court of pope Eugene III (1145–53) of a mysterious eastern kingdom, ruled by the Christian king 'Prester John', who had recently defeated the Persians and captured Hamadan. This prince was aware of the struggle of the Crusaders against the infidel, and had tried to come to their aid. This confused story clearly originated with the recent exploits of the Kara Khitai, but it also attested to a dim knowledge of the missionary activities of the Nestorian church in Asia. In later centuries the legend of Prester John developed, grew and ramified. John became the powerful ruler of an eastern kingdom who would deliver Christendom from the Moslems. European explorers sought for this fabled kingdom in India, in Asia, and finally in Ethiopia. Until its final removal from the maps in the seventeenth century, it always remained just over the horizon. Once or twice, fact and fiction intersected. In 1203 Genghis Khan defeated his foster father Toghrul, the Nestorian Christian king of the Kerait. Toghrul bore the suggestive title wang-khan, and Marco Polo was therefore encouraged to identify him with Prester John. His Travels contain a long and circumstantial account of the war between Genghis Khan and Prester John. This account, distorted and exaggerated as it was, contained a kernel of fact. Although he was never the priest or king of a mighty Asian empire, Marco Polo's 'Prester John' was a genuine Christian ruler of a considerable Tartar tribe.

Having pasted that paragraph in, I've just noticed a discrepancy between the date 1144 for Hugh telling his story to Eugene's court at Viterbo, and Eugene's reign-dates, which put the first year of his reign in 1145. Can you shed any light on this discrepancy?

Djwilms (talk) 08:50, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

That looks excellent, especially your section on Marco Polo's "Prester John". I've always been intrigued how little pieces of historical reality managed to get embedded in this legend. I am also not convinced by any of the explanations of the name "Prester John" coming from "gur-khan" or other names that I've seen (I've also hear it came from a medieval Georgian figure, who wasn't a king or a priest, but he did happen to be named John.) But that's a matter for men and women smarter than me to figure out.

On the date for Otto of Freising, 1145 is correct (it's what you had in your first version). Hugh of Jabala came to Viterbo after the Siege of Edessa, which ended December 24, 1144. He spoke to the papal curia in November 1145, according to Otto. (here is a source attesting to this).--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:12, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that; I've changed the date back to 1145.

These distorted medieval tales can be fascinating. I've collected a whole pile of stuff on the 'tomb of Saint Thomas' in Meliapur, including the take by John of Mandeville. If you arrange the various accounts chronologically, you can see how the legend developed over the years. The Nestorians always had a problem with Thomas's tomb, since an alternative tradition (equally false) said that his body had been taken back to Edessa, and there's also a tradition that says that bits of it (his left arm, I think) are somewhere in Italy. They first seem to have started making money out of pilgrimages to the tomb of Saint Thomas in the ninth century, when king Alfred sent his bishop there; at least, there is no earlier reference to the tomb. My belief (completely unproveable) is that it was one of Timothy I's many bright ideas. Having detached India from Fars, he decided to make a bit of profit from the Indian connection. It would certainly fit in with what we know about Timothy's character ...

Djwilms (talk) 01:17, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Hwntw

I found your name on the Wikipedia:Welsh Wikipedians' notice board. Could you take a look at this article? I'm concerned that the article could be a hoax because only one (a blog) of the article's sources mention the name. If the term actually exists and any of the article's claims are remotely possible it would allay my concern. Any help you could offer would be appreciated. Thanks Tiderolls 03:08, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

As you can see, the article has been deleted. I would appreciate your input to satisfy my curiosity, though. Thanks Tiderolls 01:47, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Isn't that just a nickname for someone from South Wales? Cavila (talk) 06:38, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Looks like this was taken care of before I got back in town. I don't see anything on a "Hwntw movement" that implies it's notable, so by all indications deletion was probably the best solution. As Cavila says, Hwntw is a fairly long-established term for someone from South Wales; most hits on Google, Google Books, etc refer to that nickname or to a local villain known as "Yr Hwtnw Mawr", never to this supposed movement.--Cúchullain ^t/c 12:30, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Is it pronounced "hoontoo"? Tiderolls 13:06, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, more or less. I have no idea where it comes from, in case that was your next question ;) --Cúchullain ^t/c 13:14, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

You've been more than helpful. Thank you very much. Tiderolls 14:14, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Happy to help.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:30, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Bewnans Ke

I left a comment on the Talk page. -- Evertype·✆ 14:25, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Your recent editing of an alternative meaning for G-Spot

Hi,

I am new to this 'ability to edit wikipedia' phenomenon - please forgive me if I am being impertinent but I was wondering why you removed my edit regarding the above subject? It seems to be a valid description of this particular type of vehicle immobilizer - and there is no attempt at making a profit from the redistribution (sharing) of the knowledge contained within the website cited, as far as I can determine.

I look forward to reading your reasonings.

Regards,

FreeThinkerer (talk) 07:54, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia, FreeThinkerer. I removed your link in accordance with the style guidelines on disambiguation pages. These guidelines are clear that external links don't belong on disambiguation pages. There are good reasons for this; disambiguation pages are for listing Wikipedia articles that have the same name, or are often called the same name, they are not for listing all possible uses of a term. If you have any other questions feel free to drop me a line.--Cúchullain ^t/c 12:10, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Celtic Doo-daa

Cu, please stay tuned and, since you largely share User:Johnbod's view on the matter of Bede and Augustine, please argue the case productively, since the said user is becoming from day to day more abusive, delusive and irrelevant. Especially, please let's consider hiving off a chunk to a new page Early British Christianity, since, as I wrote, there's a huge amount of info missing. Regards and thanks. Redheylin (talk) 00:53, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

That's now 3 pages you've posted to with personal attacks on me. I leave it to Cuchullain to decide who is being "abusive, delusive and irrelevant"! Johnbod (talk) 01:07, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, J's tried to forbid me to edit, latterly on the grounds that I am a "troll", so it is best to disengage and to seek a third opinion. He suggested you and so I have contacted you. By "abusive" I mean "troll", "dog", "misty suggestive flim-flam", "nonsense" and so forth; by "delusive", I mean the said continuous attempts to "forbid" me to edit and by "irrelevant" I mean an inability to engage with issues, sustain assertions and answer arguments. And I take it that the reciprocal accusation rests on my requests to desist and to strike these abusive comments. I am therefore attempting to disengage, having notified J, who now appears to be stalking, requesting that you provide a third opinion and notifying you of the preliminary to a content and etiquette action. If you feel too involved, please let me know and I'll ask someone else. Thanks. Redheylin (talk) 03:11, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry guys, I've been busy the last couple of days. It's clear we've hit the stage where the atmosphere of the talk page is no longer conducive to resolving this issue in a meaningful way. Red, you say you're going to disengage for a bit - that's a terrific idea. We should all step back a bit, take a breath, grab a beer, and come back later with clear heads. I am confident we can work it out in this way, without having to step up the dispute resolution. After the break, if it is still felt necessary I would be more than happy to give my opinion then.--Cúchullain ^t/c 21:47, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

OK Cu - sorry for the..... Redheylin (talk) 00:54, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Not a dictionary

Please check out Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lady. Thanks.Kitfoxxe (talk) 02:10, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Ambrosius Aurelianus

Just ran across this. I'm travelling, no time to work on it, but it has questions in it, the use of 'we', OR, etc. So if you ever have time.... Dougweller (talk) 05:00, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Sigh. I'll add it to the to do list, but a lot of things are on that list about now.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:46, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Jacksonville notability

I'd like your opinion on an issue regarding the Jacksonville, Florida article. The City-data reference used to support the "largest city in the continental US" claim now shows that a bunch of small towns have annexed huge tracts of land. The largest, Newberry-Baker, California (7988.5 sq. mi.), has a population under 16K. Would you say that Jacksonville can no longer make that claim? Mgreason (talk) 15:59, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, in the least we certainly can't use city-data.com as a source for that statement anymore. The reason we say Jacksonville is the largest city in the continental US is that there were municipalities in Alaska that were larger; by the same standard, all the towns now listed at city-data.com are now much bigger than Jacksonville (assuming it's accurate). I'd like to see some other information on it.--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:19, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Infernal Death

Thank you for your generous offer to Userfy the page for Infernal Death. You'll find that, from the moment it was listed for deletion, I began adding sources. The problem is that there are indeed additional references, but they are in magazines that have not been placed on the net and I must take the time to dig through hard copies. Thank you for this courtesy and assistance. Best, A Sniper (talk) 14:59, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

No problem. I'll move it to a subpage of your user space.--Cúchullain ^t/c 15:10, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Done. It's now located here: User:A Sniper/Infernal Death--Cúchullain ^t/c 15:54, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

response

thanks for visting my profile if you think material poorly written, then work to improve rather than delete. thanks Kushsinghmd (talk) 12:39, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

All the material provided are sourced. Therefore any deletion for relevant well sourced material is to be considered Vandalism. Kushsinghmd (talk) 12:45, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Who said that Commentaries and Biography books are primary sources?. Even in worst case scenario if you considered them as primary sources, WP is not against primary sources, thanks Kushsinghmd (talk) 12:55, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

FYI

To read old pages go to history on your right upper hand corner, and choose the version you like. Kushsinghmd (talk) 13:05, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Now what?

I see that you have already encountered User:Kushsinghmd, as I did, at Muhammad's wives. At this point you and I have engaged him on the article talkpage, and his personal talkpage. Further, at least two other editors have reverted his POV material in the article as well. He seems to have a bad case of "I didn't hear that". I note that you are an admin and it's obvious he has violated 3RR; can you act on that, which will at least give us a break for a bit? I'm not sure what else to do, but am open to suggestions. Thanks, Doc Tropics 13:58, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I should not block him, as I've been involved in the dispute. I've reported him at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring, so hopefully that will take care of it.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:59, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I went to file a report and you beat me to it. I understand why you chose not to act directly and commend you for your wisdom in a frustrating circumstance. Thanks for your help. Doc Tropics 14:11, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Kushsinghmd

Pls have a look at the conduct of User:Kushsinghmd at the article Forced conversion; he's probably made a whole lot of reverts in the last 24 hours. Thanks and Rgs.Arjun^codename024 14:04, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, his behavior is very troubling. I've already started a report at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring; hopefully that will deal with it.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:08, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Regards

You removed my edit here. Your reason was that Aishas age was already cited in the article, but there is no quote from the hadith though is there? Do you think i could revert your edit? Someone65 (talk) 16:58, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

It's already covered in the footnotes. I don't think it's necessary to give only one of the several places in the traditional material where her age is given.--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:08, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Jagged 85 sock puppet case

It's now up. You should probably edit the signature to your comment so that it post-dates the initiation of the case. Given the changes I have made to the statement of the case you might also want to edit your comment as well.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 20:44, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Done. I will be out of town this weekend so I won't be able to participate any further, but I'll check up when I get back.--Cúchullain ^t/c 22:09, 18 June 2010 (UTC)