Talk:Ibn al-Haytham

Persian origin of Alhazen
I added "or Persian" to the lead section based on the below source:

The source in page 129 says: "One field in which mathematics played a prominent role was optics. The master of this branch of science was Alhazen, a Persian who lived in 10th Century."

Also in the beginning pages of the book it writes: "THE AUTHOR: Desmond Stewart is a British writer who for many years has lived and traveled widely in the Middle East. He completed his studies as a classical scholar at Oxford in 1948; in the same year he received an appointment as Professor of Literature from the Iraqi Ministry of Education, and subsequently taught in Lebanon. He has contributed articles on Middle Eastern affairs to British and American publications and is the author of The Arab World and Turkey in the LIFE World Library."

About the Consulting editor it writes: "THE CONSULTING EDITOR: Leonard Krieger, University Professor of History at the University of Chicago, was formerly Professor of History at Columbia and Yale universities."

I mean the Authors are experts in the field of history and the Middle East. But unfortunately my edits were reverted. I want to start a fresh new discussion here. --Academal (talk) 18:58, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
 * This has shown up in the discussion before. Please see Archive 5,Archive 4, and so forth, in the archive links above. --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 19:19, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
 * BTW, don't get me wrong. If I'm not responding and you see no activity by me, it doesn't mean I accepted Alhazen is not Persian, but it is because I don't have enough time to put effort on this matter. Before writing the above message, I had already gone through the Archives. I leave this matter for future generations. There are books from around 1500 AC, which specifically call Alhazen, a Persian. I hope once other researchers covered that part in secondary sources, and it became a solid fact, the Wikipedia article also be corrected. But I still believe, even the current sources are enough for "or Persian", like the one I mentioned above, or the ones collected in Archive 4. But future research might show ONLY "Persian" without "or". --Academal (talk) 16:27, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Ibn al-Haytham's origin
Hi and firstly, a happy new year full of joy and health to everyone. I'm pinging you because you have edited this article or this talk page during the past months. Few months ago, some editors suggested to add a possible Persian origin in the biography section, some sources were added accordingly, i took those sources to WP:RSN because, humbly, i thought that they were weaker than the sources that claim an Arab origin (Vernet, Sabra, etc ...). WP:RSN's conclusion is that these sources are indeed weaker than the sources claiming an Arab origin for this scholar and suggest that we discuss the matter here, thus i suggest to either reword the beginning of the biography section and make clear that he was probably of Arab origin even though he has also been described as Persian or simply remove the Persian origin (or relegate it to a footnote). Thoughts ?  ---Wikaviani  (talk) (contribs)  18:37, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, thank you and likewise Wikaviani. I am pretty ignorant about this person, but it does look like the Persian claim is WP:UNDUE and thus I would support having it removed. --HistoryofIran (talk) 20:04, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Hey, Wikaviani. Yeah, I was involved in a discussion a few years ago over this issue. Then as in now, the sources are non-specialized and only mention his "Persian"-ness in passing. I see no reason to mention Persian using these sources. --Kansas Bear (talk) 20:47, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @Wikaviani I didn’t remove that some sources claim him of persian origin, I did included it in a note. I just applied what you said here as per the RSN and WP:DUE as you said here:
 * i took those sources to WP:RSN because, humbly, i thought that they were weaker than the sources that claim an Arab origin (Vernet, Sabra, etc ...). WP:RSN's conclusion is that these sources are indeed weaker than the sources claiming an Arab origin for this scholar
 * thus i suggest to either reword the beginning of the biography section and make clear that he was probably of Arab origin even though he has also been described as Persian or simply remove the Persian origin (or relegate it to a footnote)
 * two IPs in the discussion even supported the outright removal of the persian origin in the first place, while one wanted it to stay
 * So all i did was just applying the consensus of this discussion and what the overall people here agreed upon. Anyway its up to you, i am not into getting to a debate about that. But i would say i suggest removing the non-specialized sources claiming a persian origin or at most mention in a footnote that some less reliable sources claim a persian origin as I already did before you revert me. Chafique (talk) 19:50, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That was before additional sources added by, some of them are historians, as i said below. ---Wikaviani  (talk) (contribs)  21:08, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * So all i did was just applying the consensus of this discussion and what the overall people here agreed upon. Anyway its up to you, i am not into getting to a debate about that. But i would say i suggest removing the non-specialized sources claiming a persian origin or at most mention in a footnote that some less reliable sources claim a persian origin as I already did before you revert me. Chafique (talk) 19:50, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That was before additional sources added by, some of them are historians, as i said below. ---Wikaviani  (talk) (contribs)  21:08, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, when I compared both articles (Arabic and English) I noticed that the English article is more biased than the Arabic article it says only that he is Arab however the authors who wrote the Arabic article mentioned that there is a possibility that he has Persian origin so I took the English source from Arabic Wikipedia and put it in English Wikipedia no need to remove the possibility of Persian origin because even Arabic Wikipedia says historians are divided about his origin and the same source was cited there, I don't understand why some want to remove the possibility that he has Persian origin, we didn't mention one theory that he is Persian without mentioning the possibility of Arab origin we're not historians to doubt what historians says no need to make the article biased again and worse than the Arabic article, Westerners should stop thinking that anyone from the Middle East is Arab because a huge number of medieval scientists in the Islamic world were Persians however Westerners thought they were Arabs because they spoke Arabic I added additional 3 sources that says Persian origin and one source that supports what the article says (either Arab or Persian origin) --Ernne (talk) 10:58, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I would follow the advice given by RSN, and so I do support to remove the claim. Concerning the handling of sources by the Arabic Wikipedia: different Wikipedias do things differently, and inclusion in one doesn't mean it has to be done the same way on any other Wikipedia. We will reach a consensus here, and act accordingly here. Lectonar (talk) 11:26, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Comment : "Westerners should stop thinking that anyone from the Middle East is Arab because a huge number of medieval scientists in the Islamic world were Persians however Westerners thought they were Arabs because they spoke Arabic" If it was true, then Iranian mathematicians like Al-Khwarizmi, Nasr addin al-Tusi and many others would be described as "Arabs", which is not the case. Also, i don't speak Arabic, but Google translate helped me to understand that while the Arabic Wikipedia mentions both origins, its wording seems to favor the Arab origin ... WP:RSN's conclusion was not a clear cut "remove", one editor said that the sources are reliable per se, but wasn't sure that they still are for the specific claim, the other said that since these sources contradict stronger ones, then they should either be removed or relegated to a footnote. I'm not sure about the other sources added by, but they seem weaker than the sources that support an Arab origin. To be honest, before i took the sources at WP:RSN, i thought that removing the Persian origin was the best thing to do and i was almost certain they would say that those sources are unreliable, but since their answer was not so clear, perhaps relegating to a footnote or rewording the sentence in order to comply with due weight could help to achieve a consensus with . ---Wikaviani  (talk) (contribs)  19:45, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

is not responding, thus i've left the article as it is, i just fixed some spacing issues, however, the current wording can stand only if the new sources added by Ernne are reliable enough for the Persian origin claim, i confess that i don't have a clue about that, as far as i have seen, some of the sources are labeled historians, like this one : "Visiting Professor, University of Tuebingen, Teaching "History and Evolution of Concept in Physics"" or that one and others, but i don't know if they have expertise for this specific topic. ---Wikaviani  (talk) (contribs)  17:48, 15 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Well, it is also worth mentioning that Encyclopedia Iranica does not consider Alhazen a Persian in its article on Optics which summarizes Persian scholars' contribution to the subject. 212.2.129.42 (talk) 08:06, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * There is no need to mention what Iranica says, we have several expert sources like Vernet or Sabra who spport an Arab origin. ---Wikaviani  (talk) (contribs)  04:46, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Scientific method in book of optics section
The sub section "scientific method" should be removed from the section "book of optics" of this article as it is not related to optics. It deserves its own section or it should be placed in the section that discusses other works of ibn al haytham Hu741f4 (talk) 13:14, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * He revolutionized the subject by overturning previous theories in optics using scientific method. --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 13:19, 4 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I am just saying that this topic deserves a separate section because the section 'Book of Optics' is about his contributions to optics like visual perception, Alhazen's problem, camera obscura etc

Hu741f4 (talk) 06:48, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Heavy emphasis on theory of vision
This article doesn't mention Alhazen's contributions to catoptrics and dioptrics and focuses exclusively on Alhazen's contributions to theory of vision. Alhazen studied the nature of images formed by mirrors and lenses. He demonstrated that the incident ray, normal and reflected ray all lies on same plane. None of these things are mentioned in this article Hu741f4 (talk) 13:35, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Be Bold and add the citations to the article. --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 14:15, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Proposal for new sub section
A fellow editor Wikaviani just reverted my edit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1139870581 I belive his/her concern should be addressed :

1)Alhazen's statement of coplanar law of reflection doesn't fit in the subsection 'Theory of optics' because that section is about visual perception and image formation 2) The law of reflection isn't just a mathematical formula. It consists of three statements as stated here in this article(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_(physics):
 * 1) The incident ray, the reflected ray and the normal to the reflection surface at the point of the incidence lie in the same plane.
 * 2)The angle which the incident ray makes with the normal is equal to the angle which the reflected ray makes to the same normal.
 * 3)The reflected ray and the incident ray are on the opposite sides of the normal.

The first statement was given by alhazen as mentioned in the source. So, There must be new sub section for this passage. Hu741f4 (talk) 17:16, 17 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi ,
 * i believe i misread your edit, i thought you were talking about the law of refraction (or Snell's law, which is a mathematical formula), not law of reflection. Please accept my apologies and feel free to reinstate your edit. Best. ---Wikaviani  (talk) (contribs)  10:47, 18 February 2023 (UTC)