Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Al-Mu'tasim/archive1

Blurb review

Pinging the nom and supporters, @Cplakidas, FunkMonk, Attar-Aram syria, Jens Lallensack, and Ro4444: hi guys, this one was just promoted. Could three or four of you take a minute to read the following suggested TFA blurb, and feel free to make changes or ask questions? Even a quick vetting process might help us deal with problems at WP:ERRORS. If all goes well, I'll make a more formal proposal at WT:TFA in a couple of weeks. Thanks. - Dank (push to talk) 21:54, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi Dank, did some tweaks below, looks fine to me. Cheers, Constantine ✍ 22:42, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, but that gets us up to 1150 characters; the upper limit is 1075. Can you cut something? - Dank (push to talk) 22:54, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Trimmed away a bit, at 1070 characters now. Constantine ✍ 23:06, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Looks good, but I don't remember reading anything about the "Arabic translation movement" in the article itself? Maybe an easter egg link that needs to be de-easter egged?FunkMonk (talk) 08:25, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

I apologize, but it looks like we're going to have to reduce the upper limit to 1025 characters. The advertised range has been 925-1075 for a while now, but I rarely went over 1025, and that's what Main Page people are expecting. Many of these blurb reviews are pushing the count close to 1075. That would require renegotiation, and this would be exactly the wrong time to be asking for more room on the Main Page.

So, I just made an edit. Undefined foreign terms are one thing that can set the ERRORistas off, so I deleted the half a sentence with Mu'tazilism and the mihna, along with the "Arabic translation movement" that FunkMonk mentions above. We're down to 931 characters now; further edits are welcome, but please don't go over 1025. - Dank (push to talk) 20:38, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

I would say that four things need to be mentioned regarding Mu'tasim: a) the disenfranchisement of the old elites and the rise of the Turkish slave-soldiers (his most lasting legacy), b) Mu'tazilism (which highlights the continuities with his brother in ideological/intellectual pursuits), c) the foundation of Samarra as a new capital (a major act for any monarch, and one that inaugurated the entire "Samarra period", or even the "Samarra model" of governance), and d) Amorium, the major (and most publicized) external military campaign of the reign, one that Mu'tasim is probably most famous for among the ordinary Muslims to this day. I've made a rewrite based on this, up to 992 characters now. Constantine ✍ 11:55, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Works for me. - Dank (push to talk) 13:35, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Al-Mu'tasim (796–842) was the eighth Abbasid caliph. A younger son of Caliph Harun al-Rashid, he rose to prominence as a key lieutenant of his brother Caliph al-Ma'mun after forming a private army composed predominantly of Turkish slave-soldiers. When al-Ma'mun died on campaign in August 833, al-Mu'tasim succeeded him and continued many of his policies, including support for Mu'tazilism. The traditional Arab and Iranian elites were weakened in favour of a new elite drawn from among the Turks, while the government was centralized around the caliphal court and a new capital founded to house it at Samarra. Al-Mu'tasim also achieved lasting fame as a warrior-caliph by sacking the Byzantine city of Amorium in 838. The rise of the Turks would eventually lead to factional strife and the collapse of Abbasid power in the mid-10th century, but the slave-soldier system inaugurated by al-Mu'tasim would be widely adopted throughout the Muslim world for centuries to come. (Full article...)