Talk:Al-Wishah fi Fawa'id al-Nikah

Title
Obviously wrong to capitalize both al and wishah and nothing else. Per the titles of all our other Arabic books, the inconsistency of caps in printed works about this book, &c., this should be in Title Case and not Sentence case. — Llywelyn II   18:55, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Name
I guess medieval Arabic is like Latin in that the proper names always include the word "Book" (Liber, Libri Tres, Kitāb, Kutub, &c.) to the point that the name leaves it out as understood from context.

There's no reason to clutter the if that's always understood, but
 * (a)it would be helpful if you make more articles like this if you could do the redirects from Kitab al-'Arabic Name, Kitāb al-ʾArābic Ṇame , &c.
 * (b)A lot of these names are so poetic in meaning that they appear completely random in English translation. The Encyclopedia of Pleasure, On Old Age, and The Metamorphoses are pretty self-explanatory but "The Sash on the Merits of Sex/Wedlock", "The Mirror of Princes", or "The Ring of the Dove" might benefit from #Name or #Names sections that explain what the title is trying to say.
 * (c)If you have a #Name section to park it in, it might be worth adding the Kitāb al-ʾArābic Ṇame version of the title there for people unfamiliar with medieval Arabic manuscript naming traditions.

— Llywelyn II   20:09, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
 * (d) This book has Kitáb al-Wisháh fí fawáid al-Nikáh. I think á for ā was pretty common in the 19th century since the printers all had accents for French lying around. I'm not sure how helpful it is to do those versions; it probably depends on how famous the book is and if it's likely readers might see that version and try to find it. The same source also translates the title as "Book of the Zone on the Coition-boon", which makes even less sense than the Sash one. xD

— Llywelyn II   20:24, 7 May 2022 (UTC)


 * @LlywelynII: Ah, ok, I see - until you provided that example, I was a bit confused. Kitab seems to get used arbitrarily in some Arabic book titles and not others, but I will keep a look out now for versions of the names prefaced by "Kitab..." The further irony of course being that these are not books at all, but manuscripts. Many titles are simply obscure though. An example is Tahafut al-Tahafut (Incoherence of the Incoherence), which only means anything to those that already know its obscurely titled subject: Tahafut al-Falasifah (Incoherence of the Philosophers). Iskandar323 (talk) 20:32, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
 * P.S. It's a very metaphorical sash, so yes, I should probably install a #Name section ... no idea what Richard Burton was up to, or on at the time. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:34, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Sure, kitāb is inclusive of meanings like work or book (of the Bible) so it includes scrolls and whatnot. Your example seems straightforward: The Incoherence of the Incoherence or The Incoherence of the Incoherence [of the Philosophers]. I know what you're saying, though: we can't just make up a meaning if people aren't sure what the reference really is. Might be worth having a #Name section just to say that when it's true and can be sourced. In related news,


 * (e) The dictionary seems to think لوشاح is inclusive of meanings that make more sense in context, like 'headscarf' and 'veil'. We can't actually use that to translate the name if no scholar has noticed that yet, although we could talk about those meanings if there were enough info to fill out a #Name section.
 * — Llywelyn II   20:42, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Myrne says sash, and an Arabic acquaintance has told me the meaning is more than likely metaphorical, but Myrne offers nothing on the interpretation. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:07, 8 May 2022 (UTC)


 * @LlywelynII: How on earth did you find the Arabian Nights reference by the way? It pops up in the preview, but it's not searchable, so I just have no idea... Iskandar323 (talk) 20:10, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Seems extremely likely that it's talking about the garment of feminine modesty (usually veil in English description but usually headscarf in modern practice) but yeah it's probably better to just leave that information here on the talk page until we can find someone knowledgeable who mentions agreeing with the idea.


 * As for your other question, I can't remember specifically at this point but (1)I was trying out various spellings on vanilla Google and Google Books to see how different people formatted the name, skipping the obviously untrustworthy stuff like random Islamic blogs. I think that's all there was to it, but I'll go into a little more detail since you seem like a force for good here: (2)Sometimes papers that vanilla Google blocks or only links to sales pages on behalf of Elsevier and similar rent-seeking asshats (scholarly publication previously cost money and served a purpose–it's now just a complete market failure because the academics can't trust each other to leave the "prestige" journals all at once) are made available as preprints or privately by the authors. It can be helpful to search with the additional term ".pdf" or (3)look at the Internet Archive. It still has some copies of works that were digitized and made available by Google before they settled with the publishing companies and blocked access to most things they'd already thrown open, including nonsensically treating books from 1804 as under copyright when random "publishers" claimed to have "brought editions back into print" solely in unmodified, unedited ebook versions created by Google in the first place. That's what's going on with the 1001 Nights edition. It's maddening.


 * (4)Publishers still want their works accessible for indexing by Google. Some services like Google's search cache and 12ft.io provide direct access to the versions crawled by Google. Neither usually works for scholarly articles or books, although (5)you can "crawl" along Google's digitizations to the ends of paragraphs or pages by moving around within the snippet they give you. For example, if I'm looking for Indonesia's old "Grand Mail Road" and get the snippet
 * ... flows by this place, over which a substantial bridge of boats is thrown , to join the former avenue to the grand mail road to Kandy.
 * I probably can't get any more information by changing my search to "mail road to Kandy" because I hit the end of that indexed section and there's no way of knowing what the next sentence will be. On the other hand, if I open a new tab and search for "flows by this place, over" then I'll get the new snippet text
 * The broad, full river , called the Kalani Ganga , flows by this place , over which a substantial bridge of boats is thrown , to join the former avenue to ...
 * Same problem: I've now hit as far back as this paragraph will let me go. On the other hand, I have the full money quote around what I was looking for (The broad, full river, called the Kalani Ganga, flows by this place, over which a substantial bridge of boats is thrown, to join the former avenue to the grand mail road to Kandy.) and (6)I've found that the original 1847 work that I was looking at first is actually exactly copying another 1840 source through this section. Sometimes the first one you were looking at is blocked because of the rent seekers but the other editions aren't or one is available at HathiTrust even though the other isn't. — Llywelyn II   21:36, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
 * @LlywelynII: Thanks for this. I'm editing more and more articles that wander into esoteric topics with obscure sources, so should be helpful. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:44, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Bringing awareness of halal medieval Islamic sex manuals? You're doing G-d's work, m'child. — Llywelyn II   20:56, 10 May 2022 (UTC)