Talk:The Nabataean Agriculture

Some comments and suggestions

First of all, I must say that I am thoroughly impressed by the quality and depth of this article. It is the best article on this kind of subject that I've ever come across, not just here on Wikipedia, but in any encyclopedic source whatsoever. All the comments and suggestions for improvement below should be read with this in mind.

• Ibn Wahshiyya was not from Kufa itself, but from Qussīn, near Kufa (the references can be copied from Ibn Wahshiyya).

 Done --Cerebellum (talk) 11:23, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

• Our article Occult mainly deals with 'occultism', which actually is a nineteenth-century phenomenon that mainly evolved as a reaction against secularism and modern science (see especially Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 2012. Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). The term "occult sciences", on the other hand, is already attested in medieval Arabic and Latin sources, and originally appears to have referred to sciences dealing with 'hidden causes' (such as, e.g., alchemy, which deals with the invisible elementary ingredients of things, or astrology, which deals with the unseen movements in celestial mechanics and the imperceptible workings of subtle starlight on terrestrial phenomena). However, the medieval concept of "occult sciences" has not yet been the object of a dedicated study, and until then it is perhaps better to avoid its use entirely. What I tend to do is to name the specific sciences involved in each case, even if that is not always so much clearer (what is alchemy, really? or worse, what is magic? future research will hopefully be able to subject these blanket categories to some serious revision). In any case, what should absolutely be avoided is the substantivized adjective "the occult", which appears to be a late twentieth century innovation (see Occult#The occult). Also note that we have an article called Occultism (Islam), which is quite defective, but still better than Occult for medieval use.

 Done --Cerebellum (talk) 11:23, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

• The English word "Arab" refers to ethnic Arabs only. When referring to people writing in Arabic, "Arabic writers" (who may be Persians, Berbers, Turks, etc.) should be used.

 Done --Cerebellum (talk) 11:23, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

• The following may be just a personal preference, but when dealing with historical topics, I think it's better to link to the article 'history of x' rather than to the article 'x' (e.g., botany rather than botany).

 Done --Cerebellum (talk) 11:23, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

• I know that this is discussed at the end of the article (where "Orientalist controversy" is perhaps a bit too loaded an expression for what was just a regular scholarly debate), but it may be useful to already note in the section on 'Composition' that only Arabic copies of the work survive, and that throughout the twentieth century, most scholars regarded the work as a pseudo-translation (i.e., originally written in Arabic, and only falsely claiming to be a translation from an ancient work), with many scholars even doubting Ibn Wahshiyya's historical existence, supposing that the Nabataean Agriculture was written by Abu Talib al-Zayyat. I'm not sure about the position taken by Toufic Fahd (the major authority on Ibn Wahshiyya in the eighties and nineties), but I believe that it was only Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila who first extensively argued that the work was an authentic translation from a Syriac original (a view that can probably be trusted, but which still needs confirmation from future experts, and should perhaps never be stated as an indisputable fact, especially since no traces of such an original exist). Some more information about these earlier views can be found in Hämeen-Anttila's introduction to his 2006 book (The Last Pagans of Iraq: Ibn Wahshiyya And His Nabatean Agriculture, pp. 3-9).

 Done, although the composition section is not very good, I need to rewrite it. --Cerebellum (talk) 11:23, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

• Personally, I find Hämeen-Anttila's use of the word "nationalism" misleading and ahistorical. It is true that, just like modern nationalists, the shu'ubiyya movement was struggling to preserve the use of native languages and cultures. However, the struggle of the shu'ubiyya movement was not at all linked to any geographical region supposed to be politically controlled by, and to serve as a 'home' for, a particular culture (a 'nation'), which is an utterly modern concept that simply did not exist before the nineteenth century. In any case, although Persians were certainly an important part of the shu'ubiyya movement, it was not at all limited to them, and so Ibn Wahshiyya's extolling of Mesopotamian culture was not analogous to, but rather part of the shu'ubiyya movement (see Hämeen-Anttila 2006, pp. 33-45).

 Done --Cerebellum (talk) 11:23, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

• I know that you copied this from the old Ibn Wahshiyya article, but the word "superstition" is inherently pejorative, and so not really appropriate, unless it is explicitly used by the relevant sources (which it of course isn't). Perhaps "and its associated lore"?

 Done --Cerebellum (talk) 11:23, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

• When mentioning Sabians (in two places in the article) it should always be made very clear (unfortunately, our article on the subject does not) that this is a Qur'anic label of which it is unknown (and probably unknowable) to whom it originally referred, and that it has historically been claimed and used by a great variety of completely unrelated religious groups. In Qur'an 2:62 (perhaps also in 5:69 and 22:17, but this is not clear) the Jews, the Christians and the Ṣābiʼūn are implied to belong to the ahl al-kitāb or the "people of the book" (i.e., those religious groups to whom God has revealed a Scripture), of whom the Qur'an elsewhere says that they should be treated with a certain degree of tolerance at the hands of Muslims (see dhimma). Now in the first two centuries of Islam, this did not really come into play, since the Muslims were a very small minority in all of the territories they conquered, which made tolerance of other religions, 'people of the book' or not, a bare practical necessity. Throughout the Umayyad period (661–750), it was more or less an official policy to keep it that way (since non-Muslims could be more heavily taxed, see jizya). However, with the advent of the Abbasids in 750, it was made much easier for non-Muslims to convert, and as a result, rates of Islamization slowly started to rise. It is in this context that, at a certain point in the ninth century, it became a necessity for some non-Muslim religious groups, especially those geographically close to the center of power in Baghdad, to be able to demonstrate that they belonged to the 'people of the book', and so were deserving of tolerance. Though some perhaps claimed to be Jews or Christians, this would be quite risky, since there were enough Jews and Christians around that could point out the falsity of their claim. The label of Ṣābiʼūn, on the other hand, was more or less free for the taking (we have an abundance of sources dating from the ninth century, but none of them seems to know to whom the label originally referred, and it appears that this knowledge was already lost at the time). The two major groups that we can more or less identify as having claimed the label of Ṣābiʼūn are the Mandaeans (a Jewish-Christian Baptist sect which still exists in the marshlands of Southern Iraq) on the one hand, and the much more obscure Sabians of Harran (a city in Upper Mesopotamia, today in Turkey) on the other. These two are completely unrelated (whereas Mandaeism, much like Manichaeism and Islam itself, originally was one of the many Jewish-Christian sects that emerged in late antiquity, the Harranian religion seems to have been a late survival of Hellenistic polytheism), but in fact the term was soon used generally to refer to any established religious group which wasn't Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. It is in this latter sense that Ibn Wahshiyya is probably using the term (in the few places where he actually does use it): to refer to unspecified Iraqi pagans (by the way, the word 'pagan' originally refers to the religion of peasants, which is quite appropriate here, since Ibn Wahshiyya is talking about religious groups in the Iraqi countryside). All of this merely to say that the Mesopotamian paganism described by Ibn Wahshiyya was not "a branch of the Sabian religion" (which, if it ever existed, is utterly unknown, and certainly had no known branches), and that it is very misleading to state that it was related both to the Harrian religion and to Mandaeism, which it was only to the extent that all religions of the period were interrelated (containing Abrahamic, Hellenic, Manichaean, etc., elements; this also holds for Islam itself). [Most of the above is based on Van Bladel, Kevin 2009. The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 64-118 (the best recent treatment of the term 'Sabian') and (for Ibn Wahshiyya) on Hämeen-Anttila 2006, pp. 46-52; cf. pp. 20 n. 42, 37 n. 91.]

For now, removed the term "Sabian". Maybe later I'll reintroduce it and mention the Mandaeans and Harranians for context, but as I read in another article: "There is no possibility and no need to enter here into the nebulous traditions about the Sabians." --Cerebellum (talk) 11:23, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

• The rest of the section on 'Religion and philosophy' seems OK, although I believe that both Hämeen-Anttila's and Fahd's knowledge of ancient and late antique philosophy is seriously lacking, and that their analysis of Ibn Wahshiyya's philosophical views should therefore be approached with much caution.
• The Ghayat al-hakim (Picatrix) is now widely considered to be written by Maslama al-Qurṭubī (died 964, the references can be copied from Ibn Wahshiyya#Works; our article on the Ghayat al-hakim still needs to be updated). Note that the Ghayat al-hakim is normally described as a work on 'magic' which, though certainly vague, is still more specific than Western esotericism.

 Done --Cerebellum (talk) 12:11, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I hope this helps. Any questions are always welcome.

Sincerely, Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 21:47, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

@Apaugasma: Thank you so much :) Really appreciate the encouragement and feedback, I'll incorporate these suggestions in the coming weeks. --Cerebellum (talk) 08:27, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:The Nabataean Agriculture/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Extraordinary Writ (talk · contribs) 06:24, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

I'll be glad to take a look at what appears to be a very thorough and interesting article. I should have some comments within a day or two. Cheers! Extraordinary Writ (talk) 06:24, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Review

@Cerebellum: I have to confess that this is going to be a rather light review, simply because the article is so exceedingly well written that I have little to point out. You should seriously consider taking this article to FAC, in my humble opinion.

• First paragraph of "Contents" section - per WP:INTEXT, you should probably provide in-text attribution for quotes that express opinions, such as "repetitive", "baffling", "learned and perspicacious observer," etc.

Done for now, I'm thinking about rewriting that paragraph to not use direct quotes. --Cerebellum (talk) 11:03, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

• I would briefly summarize the "modern scholarship" section in the lead, if only just to say that "modern scholars have shown increased interest in the book's authenticity and impact" or something like that.

 Done --Cerebellum (talk) 11:03, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

• Definitely a nitpick (and one that isn't required for GA purposes), but I would hyphenate "xth-century" when used as an adjective or a noun. See MOS:HYPHEN. So, for instance, "10th-century Iraq", "14th-century copy", etc. (The fact that I have nothing to do but point out hyphen errors tells you something about the quality of this article.)

 Done --Cerebellum (talk) 11:03, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

• played a part in sparking the Andalusian Arab Agricultural Revolution. - I don't think you explicitly make this connection in the body, so I would add it there as well, presumably with a citation.

Good point! I may have dreamed that up myself, I can't find a citation for it at the moment. Removed for now, I'll add it back if I can find something. --Cerebellum (talk) 11:03, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks again for this remarkable article. I'll have more comments soon. (That is, if I can think of any.) Cheers, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 20:16, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

• It was the first agronomical work to reach al-Andalus - I'd clarify that this refers to modern-day Spain/Portugal.

 Done --Cerebellum (talk) 11:03, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

That's about all I have for you, so I'll put the nomination on hold. I'll be glad to pass it once these decidedly minor issues are addressed. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 06:58, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

@Extraordinary Writ: Thank you for the review and the kind words! I've never taken an article to FAC but hopefully I'll get my act together and nominate this one soon :) --Cerebellum (talk) 11:03, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

@Cerebellum: Before I let you go, I'd just like to ask one thing. The article essentially says (once in the lead and once in the "composition" section) that most of the scholarly community believes the work to have been a genuine translation. Hämeen-Anttila (in Artificial man, p. 38) seems to say precisely the opposite, writing that "the majority of scholars take the text as a 9th/10th century forgery." Since I don't have all the sources, I can't really assess this one way or the other. But I would be interested to hear why you conclude that modern scholarship has coalesced around the viewpoint that it's genuinely a translation. Cheers, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 00:04, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Sorry to butt in here, but I think this may be of some help. Yes, this is something to which I already pointed earlier in my comments on the talk page. What Hämeen-Anttila 2003b ("Artificial man ...", p. 38) states is the scholarly consensus in 2003, which still firmly held (as it did throughout the 20th century) that the work is a pseudotranslation, originally written in Arabic though based on older Greek and Syriac sources (like much early Arabic literature of this type probably was). As Hämeen-Anttila noted there (note 10), the most significant exception at the time was Toufic Fahd, a leading scholar on the subject, whose "discussion of the text is, however, not critical and he seems to base his opinions merely on a firm belief". The turning point is really Hämeen-Anttila's 2006 book (The Last Pagans of Iraq), in which he extensively argued that the work may well be an authentic translation. Since Hämeen-Anttila is the leading expert on the subject today, and since his views on this have, as far as I know, not yet been challenged, I believe that we should mainly follow him. However, I also believe that the article currently overstates this, as though the work was somehow definitely proven to be an authentic translation from the Syriac, which is certainly not the case. I think we should try to make it clearer that the question of authenticity is fundamentally speculative in nature, and that the current view is that though some doubts remain, the work may actually have been an authentic translation. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 01:55, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

That's very helpful; thank you, Apaugasma. It would be useful if some post-2006 opinions on authenticity could be found, although I certainly understand if none can be located. Barring that, I recommend reflecting both positions in the lead (e.g. "Scholars debate whether...") and then explaining in the body how that debate has progressed, reflecting essentially what Apaugasma says above. By the way, I read (in Mattila's article) that Fahd supported a somewhat earlier date ("somewhere during the first Christian centuries"). That might be worth mentioning as well, although it seems to be a minority view. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 06:20, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you Apaugasma! For post-2006 opinions on authenticity, the only sources I'm aware of are Hämeen-Anttila's 2018 article in the Encyclopedia of Islam 3rd ed., and filaha.org. Having gone through the Encyclopedia of Islam editorial process, I think the 2018 article is pretty reliable. It skirts the authenticity issue for the most part but says, "Ibn Wahshiyya claims that the work is a translation of an ancient Syriac text written some twenty thousand years earlier. Despite the exaggeration, it does seem that the work goes back, in part, to late antique sources, probably in Syriac." Filaha.org says, "Nearly a hundred years later there was a revival of interest in the work with scholarly opinion tending to regard the work as ‘authentic’." I'm not sure how reliable it is, apparently it is "coordinated" by someone named Dr. Karim Lahham but it does not say who wrote the individual pages. This evening I'll see if I can find any other sources. I wish I spoke German and had access to Fuat Sezgin's GAS, apparently he devoted ten pages to Ibn Wahshiyya.

If I can't find more recent sources I'll change the lead to something like, Modern scholars believe that the work may be an authentic translation from a Syriac original, although the question has not been fully resolved. For the composition, I'll make it clear that Last Pagans of Iraq was a departure from the prevailing viewpoint at the time. Apaugasma, if you have a better way to phrase it I'm all ears! --Cerebellum (talk) 11:39, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Sezgin isn't really helpful here, because as is well known, he always argued for early datings and for the authenticity of textual claims, most often against the complete assembly of other scholars. Hämeen-Anttila 2003b dismisses Fahd's views on the basis that most of his arguments boil down to proof by assertion, but Sezgin is really the unacknowledged master when it comes to this. I just read Sezgin 1971, GAS, IV, pp. 318–329, and unsurprisingly enough, according to Sezgin the work is an authentic translation from a 5th- or 6th-century original. Anyways, I have incorporated Sezgin's views in the article, and changed the formulations elsewhere so as to be a bit more cautious. Please feel free to reword if you think I have tipped the balance too far in the other direction. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 15:15, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Ah, ok, I appreciate the context on Sezgin. Your changes look good to me. Extraordinary Writ, what do you think? --Cerebellum (talk) 21:35, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Closing comments

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

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As explained below, I am of the opinion that this article meets the GA criteria.

1. Is it well written?

   A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

   The prose is clear, correct, and engaging.

   B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:

2. Is it verifiable with no original research?

   A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

   B. All in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines:

   The article incorporates a range of diverse and reliable scholarship, consisting mainly of books and peer-reviewed journal articles. Almost every sentence is cited in-line.

   C. It contains no original research:

   D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:

   Earwig's tool raises no concerns aside from duly-cited quotations.

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

   The article looks at the text from a wide variety of angles, addressing its agricultural, religious, political, and historical value.

   B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):

4. Is it neutral?

   It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:

   Based on the discussion above, I conclude that the article appears to provide due weight to all relevant scholarly perspectives.

5. Is it stable?

   It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:

6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   All images are tagged as free-use, and the tags appear to be valid.

   B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

   Adding alt-text to the images, while not necessary for GA purposes, would probably be required were this article ever taken to FAC.

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   This article is easily the best one I've reviewed at GAN, and I laud the nominator's great work on it. Cheers, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 22:02, 8 March 2021 (UTC)