Talk:Al-Tahawi

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I would appreciate if someone could smooth out Footnote #3. Thanks There are 10 kinds of people: those who understand binary and those who don&#39;t. (talk) 06:26, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

untitled
I merged Tahawi into this, since this was a larger the larger article --Striver 01:20, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
 * He is not known for his full name. He is known as Tahawi‎. --Islamic 05:28, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Tahawi redirects here. I will clarify it in the article. --Striver 16:11, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

His Creed
To avoid sectarian squabbling, we should leave his creed as "the Creed of Abu Hanifa", as he wrote his own creed and he states in it that it is of the methodology of Abu Hanifa and his students.

Please do not revert this to e.g. "Athari" or "Ashari/Maturidi". ParthikS8 (talk) 23:01, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Dispute resolution
Do not insist on your opinion, if you have reliable sources to support your view, then bring them in; otherwise you have no leg to stand on! See also: Neutral point of view & No original research.--TheEagle107 (talk) 01:30, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I haven't put forth any opinions, nor have I put forth any 'original research'. Below are the main points which you apparently take such serious issue with:

1. At-Tahawi's lineage/ethnicity: This contention, in reality, isn't even a contention. His lineage is well-known and recorded in reliable sources (such as adh-Dhahabi, whom you yourself even explicitly cited in the article) that you've already acknowledged in previous edits. At-Tahawi was an Arab from [|Banu Azd] who spoke Arabic, wrote his works in Arabic, and lived under an Arab administration in the Abbasid Caliphate. There is not even a "dispute" here; only an insistence on one party's part that at-Tahawi was instead "Egyptian", as well as the repeated deletion of references to his Arab ethnicity despite even your own sources in the article explicitly supporting that fact.

2. "Egyptian" as an ethnicity: As stated before, "Egyptian" is not an ethnicity. This isn't an opinion as you claim, but a widely-accepted and fairly incontrovertible view amongst academics that historical "Egypt" broadly did not comprise an ethnically homogeneous land, nor does it today (see: [|DNA History of Egypt]). Again, there isn't even a dispute here and the burden of proof that Egypt was at any point ethnically homogeneous is on the one who makes such a claim.

3. "Egyptian" as a nationality: The notion that the term "Egyptian" denoted in the 9th century what you termed in the article as a "nationality" is demonstrably anachronistic. Applying it to ancient figures such as at-Tahawi renders it virtually meaningless at best, or imparts the wrong connotations at worst. Labelling at-Tahawi's ethnicity "Egyptian" because he was born in historical Egypt is as false and misleading as labelling Herodotus "Turkish" because he was born in Asia Minor, or some of the Umayyad Caliphs "Saudi Arabian" because they were born in Hejaz. Even more blatantly anachronistic than this is to attribute the modern notion of "nationalities" to pre-modern figures such as these (see also: [|Anachronism]).

Furthermore: "Egyptian", not being an ethnic designation as clarified earlier, is ultimately a vague geographic term encompassing many ethnicities, cultures, and (historically) languages and religions. To describe at-Tahawi as ethnically and "nationally" an "Egyptian Hanafi Jurist" simply because he was born in Egypt is as insensible as describing him as an "African Hanafi jurist" – since he was born within the geographic confines of Africa, such a statement is technically entirely correct, but like "Egyptian" is vague to the point of being virtually redundant and reveals almost nothing about his ethnicity. It would be akin to describing Herodotus as ethnically and nationally "Asian" (complete with all the connotations and images that come with that) simply because he was born in Asia. — --03:21, 25 May 2020 (UTC)IBM93 (talk)

I'd also like to ask you to stop removing special characters (e.g. 'ā', 'ī', 'ū') from relevant words in the article. These are commonly used to aid transliteration of Arabic words into English and their removal from the article is not justified. --IBM93 (talk) 03:44, 25 May 2020 (UTC)


 * First of all, these sources specifically, clearly, and directly says that he is Egyptian:


 * And al-Dhahabi, in his Siyar A'lam al-Nubala', called him: al-Azdi al-Hajari al-Misri al-Tahawi al-Hanafi.

So please stop deleting sourced content again.--TheEagle107 (talk) 03:56, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

The first source doesn't even mention it. Regardless, however, that's not how Arab naming traditions work. A person's nisba (e.g. al-Misrī) has nothing to do with their ethnicity, especially when their ethnic origins are clearly stated immediately before their nisba (e.g. Al-Azdī), a fact which you not only overlook but have repeatedly deleted references to in the article (see: Arabic names & Nisba).

Another good example of a nisba not equating to ethnicity is Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani: while his nisba is "al-Isfahani", his nasab (ethnicity and lineage) is recorded as Arab descended from the tribe of Bani Umayyah. But according to your logic, this somehow makes Abu al-Faraj ethnically Persian, despite the fact that his lineage is explicitly recorded as Arab. In the exact same way, your argument for at-Tahawi being ethnically and nationally "Egyptian" flies in the face not just of reality but even your own citations. Put either "Arab" or "Arab Egyptian" in the article's introduction and leave the infobox's 'ethnicity' as "Arab", but don't be selective with the information you choose to utilise from sources, and please (for the love of god) don't add something so painfully anachronistic as "nationality" to a 9th century personage's wiki page. --IBM93 (talk) 04:57, 25 May 2020 (UTC)


 * The first source says exactly that, I quote:

"At the popular level, orthodox Sunni theology was articulated in the relatively short “creed” ('aqida) of the Egyptian scholar Abu Ja'far al-Tahawi (d. 321/935), a contemporary of al-Ash'ari and al-Maturidi."

- Ingrid Mattson‏


 * The second source says exactly that, I quote:

"the Kitab al-Buyu' of the Egyptian scholar Abu Ja'far Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Tahawi (d. 321/933)"

- Senior Editor Dr. Shafiq AbouZayd


 * Also Ibn al-Athir al-Jazari in his book "al-Lubab fi Tahzib al-Ansab", mentioned that he is Egyptian.

These sources confirm that he is Egyptian and your personal opinion is considered as an original research.--TheEagle107 (talk) 05:57, 25 May 2020 (UTC)