Talk:Zahir al-Umar/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: FunkMonk (talk · contribs) 12:53, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

• Hi there, I'll take this one. FunkMonk (talk) 12:53, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
• "ʿUmar az-Zaydānī" Why accented transliteration only for this name?
  • Removed the marks because they're unnecessary in the article body.
• His approximate birth date could be mentioned under early life.
  • Done.
• "Zahir killed a man in a fight in Tiberias." More on this? Circumstances?
  • Changed the wording a bit to clarify what happened, but the source doesn't give me much other than Zahir was involved in a brawl, killed a Tiberian man and his elder brother decided it was best to leave Tiberias thereafter.
• "Zahir married Sayyid Muhammad's daughte" Name?
• What was his mother's name?
  • I could not for the life of me find his mother's name or the names of any of his wives. It could be that the names are out there somewhere and I haven't found them, but more likely than not, the names were not recorded in the primary sources. A sign of the times back then I guess. For some reason, I did find his sister's name so it's possible I could find the names of the other women in his immediate family.
• "village of Bi'ina was besieged by forces dispatched by the governor of Sidon" Why?
  • Clarified this a bit. Source didn't say Bi'ina was besieged, but that Zahir "played a major role defending the village against the rapacious governor of Sidon ... His heroic defense of the village, his dramatic escape ..." That's all that is said about the incident. I don't know why it was being attacked, but since the author used "rapacious", I assume that the governor was either extorting the residents for more money, attempt to collect high taxes from them, or maybe punishing the village for failing to pay sums to the governor. These are only my assumptions though.
• A lot of photos are clustered in the beginning of the article, perhaps they could be spread out a bit more evenly, for example some in empty sections such as "politics"?
  • Moved a few of them around. Hope it's better now. --Al Ameer (talk) 17:39, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
• "and Maghrebi forces" These are not mentioned before, how did hew get them? I see they are explained further down, but maybe it would make more chronological sense to list them before? Maybe near "and eventually maintained a brigade of 200 horsemen from his clan."
• "Jiddin had been ruled by Ahmad al-Husayn" From the clan of his wife?
  • No, his wife's clan was the al-Husayni, not al-Husayn. In any case, I think I may have made a mistake linking his wife's family to the al-Husayni clan of Jerusalem. I'll check the source again. "Al-Husayni" was a widely used name by Arab families who claimed descent from the prophet Muhammad through Husayn ibn Ali. As for Jiddin's sheikh, "al-Husayn" was most likely his father's name rather than the name of his clan or tribe. --Al Ameer (talk) 05:17, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
• "Yaqub was executed not long after" Why?
  • Hate to say it again, but the source simply does not say why. I couldn't find anything about Yaqub (or Ya'qub) Agha in searches, but that's probably because this is the Arabic transliteration of his name instead of the Turkish, which is probably more commonly used by sources. You wouldn't happen to know the Turkish transliteration of Yaqub, would you? I'll keep trying to find it anyway.

Seems to be Yakup: https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakup FunkMonk (talk) 09:40, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, still haven't found anything on the man yet in google books, but will see if the original source, Thomas Philipp's book, mentions him again or at least mentions the source he used for this. Might be able to access it, but I'm not counting on it. --Al Ameer (talk) 19:08, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

• Abu al-Dhahab is also spelled Dahab in the article, should be consistent.
  • Done.
• "Meanwhile, conflict between Zahir and his sons had reignited" There doesn't seem to be mention of conflict between them before this point?
  • I might need a day or two to decide how I want to tackle this point. I wanted to keep a separate section devoted to the conflicts he had with his sons, because they were a notable part of his career, but I might have to merge the info into the main "Rule" section in a chronological order.
    • I have now restructured the article by merging most of the material in the "Intra-family rivalry" section to the "Ruler of Acre" section. The remainder of the "Intra-family rivalry" section was merged into the "Family" section. It's much better this way. Lot of blanks have now been filled in the article's chronology. --Al Ameer (talk) 20:50, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
• There is a lot of overlinking to the same articles, it can be checked with the script here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ucucha/duplinks
• There is a lot of duplicate info about his forces under Administration, not sure how to handle this.
  • When you say duplicate info, do you mean it's duplicated in the same section or elsewhere in the article?

Different sections, the stuff about his cavalry and the Maghrebis is almost the same as that under "Consolidation of power in Galilee." FunkMonk (talk) 09:40, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

I tried to remove some redundancy in the "Consolidation" section because I prefer that the details of his military forces be mentioned in the "Administration" section. At the same time, for the reader's sake, some basic context about his military forces are mentioned throughout the article in a chronological order. Check these revisions I made and let me know if they were sufficient enough: [1], [2], [3]. --Al Ameer (talk) 19:08, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

• Many articles are not linked in their first mention, only further down the article, perhaps something to look into.
  • I finished (or at least I hope I did) taking care of the problems with overlinking and not linking the first mention.
• "during the mid-18th century,[1] during the Ottoman era." Two "during" becomes a bit repetitive.
  • Done.
• In the intro you say he founded Haifa, yet in the article you say "In 1757 he took control of the Mediterranean port cities Haifa" So it already existed?
  • He founded modern Haifa. Haifa had existed prior as a small port village, but Zahir had that village demolished, and transferred the population to the new town he founded and fortified 3km to the southeast. This is recognized as the establishment of modern Haifa. I just clarified in the article. --Al Ameer (talk) 19:08, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
• Article has 4 red links.--Human3015^TALK  07:13, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Removed the redlinks in the article body for now. Will create articles for them in the future. --Al Ameer (talk) 17:31, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

@FunkMonk: Thanks for the thorough review FunkMonk. It's always nice when a reviewer's concerns or suggestions could significantly improve an article. I believe I have addressed your points to the best of my abilities. Some things like the names of Zahir's female family members, or more details about certain incidents like Yaqub Agha's execution and teenage Zahir's deadly brawl, are a bit of a problem because of limitations with the sources. Not sure if or where info on these matters exists. Let me know if there is anything else that should be addressed. --Al Ameer (talk) 20:50, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• It all looks good to me, will certainly pass GA. The rest of the issues might be good to look out for in case of FAC. Nice work! FunkMonk (talk) 22:33, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
• Highly problematic article because, contra to the rules of GA, it presents a highly POV narrative drawn from the work of nationalist authors, several of whom are not historians. This is an example of WP:PLAGUE; not the sort of thing that should be at GA.E.M.Gregory (talk) 02:15, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

First, this review is over, so this is not the place to complain. Second, if you have issues with the sources, you need to point out which sources and what passages of the sources that are apparently "POV". Unspecific hand-waving won't get us anywhere. FunkMonk (talk) 14:14, 3 December 2015 (UTC)