Talk:Imam Fassi

definite articles should be lower case and hyphenised
Unless there is a very good reason not to follow the standard Arabic transliteration, we should follow Manual_of_Style_(Arabic): The definite article "al-" and its variants (ash-, ad-, ar-, etc.) are always written in lower case (unless beginning a sentence), and a hyphen separates it from the following word. There's a related discussion on this happening at Talk:Bait Al Fassi. Boud (talk) 08:36, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

do we need "Bait" or "Bayt" somewhere?
i merged Bait Al Fassi here. There's an article explaining Ahl al-Bayt. If there is a reference for "Bait al-Fassi", then we can mention somewhere that that's one way of referring to the family. Boud (talk) 20:57, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
 * If you feel like, then you can move the contents of descendants of Imam fassi to Bait al fassi page and keep this one dedicated for Imam fassi. Wasifwasif (talk) 10:46, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Done :). Boud (talk) 09:22, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Third-party references
Most of the references here or by a group closely related to the family or a family member. These are acceptable for sourcing certain kinds of information that are unlikely to be controversial, but they are not enough. Click on the links in the warning box at the top of the article to understand more. Boud (talk) 20:57, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Names
Could somebody please translate al-Fāsī's titles, to prevent them from sounding just gibberish to non-Arab speakers? My own Arabic unfortunately is not good enough. Curryfranke (talk) 22:09, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * i think someone of them give the patrilineal genealogy - "bin X" = "son of man X" - others sound like "from Mecca" or "from the Maghreb". But i agree: having an explanation of the names/title would be good. i think most of these names come from my rescuing an older version of the article. Maybe Wasifwasif could find some "serious" references, which state things in plain English and in some detail? Boud (talk) 00:17, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Wasifwasif: Another time when you add references:
 * Please use repeat references if the references are already used in the article e.g. . You can find the reference name by editing the reference section to see the source text, or by editing the section where the reference is defined - but without saving.
 * This immediately helps to see that there's no point having two different long names as two different short forms from one single source.
 * The information in the source needs to match what's in the article. You added a reference for the name ending with "Ta'ala Anhu" but i couldn't find "Ta'ala Anhu" there.
 * Boud (talk) 00:45, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

patrilineal vs matrilineal long names?
i've just tried to clean up with very limited knowledge of the naming issue. But my guess is that the versions we now have more or less matching the references (with the usual Arabic/Arabic-Persian-script -> English/Roman-script conversion ambiguity). But my guess is the reason why there's a paragraph long name in the "Birth of Sheikh Fassy" reference but we have a shortened "..." version is that most of the mothers' names are removed and the fathers' names are retained. Since the source does not seem to discriminate against women, IMHO either we can use the full nearly paragraph-long name, or we shorten it in some way that is not sexist. Or we just write something like
 * "Imam Fassi can also be referred to by a long name including many generations of his ancestry ."

That way the reader can go to the source if s/he really wants to know 30 generations or so of Imam Fassi's ancestry. (And it doesn't seem to be quite enough for tracing ancestry to Mohammed in a single name - childbearing at typically 20-40 yrs old makes about 900 Gregorian years back - which is not enough. Also, without inbreeding, we have about 2^30 great^28-grandparents, i.e. about 1 billion (10^9). We're not going to put 1 billion names of ancestors in a single Wikipedia article. There weren't even that many human beings alive 900 years ago... Boud (talk) 00:45, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Birth and death
The lead presently has the best we can get from the sources regarding Imam Fassi's birth and death dates - the version as of 00:17, 11 January 2012 (UTC) says:
 * born in Fes in 1173 Hijri (ca 1760 CE)[1] or 1218 Hijri[2] and died in 1280 Hijri, ca 1863 CE[1],

This has: As explained in Islamic calendar, the Islamic year is 12 lunar months, i.e. 354 or 355 days, slightly shorter than the time taken for our planet to orbit the Sun. 106 * 354/365 approx 102.8. So the conversions between Hijri and CE are consistent. Since this is straightforward arithmetic without requiring synthesis, we could add a note about this in the article, though it's probably not necessary. Anyonce clicking on "Hijri" should be able to read the article and work out the difference between the Islamic year and the Gregorian year.
 * 45 years (Hijri) uncertainty in his birth
 * age at death either 106 or 107 (Hijri) or 102 or 103 (Gregorian) for the first birth date (one year uncertainty depending on death before/after birthday of that year)
 * 61 or 62 (Hijri).

So the big question remains his birth date. Did someone mix up father and son or grandfather and grandson? In principle, the naming system with "bin X" is supposed to make all of this unambiguous, i would have guessed. Anyway, citation needed... Boud (talk) 00:17, 11 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Doing a small research . will get back with authentic info. Wasif (talk) 09:16, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Imam fassi or Muhammad al Fassi?
hi, thanks for your good faith edits. Imam is not an honorific but just a position which he held same like Professor Kennady etc. He His well known to the world of Sufism only through His common name Imam Fassi than His actual name Muhammad bin Muhammad al Fassi. WP also says ''Where an honorific is so commonly attached to a name that the name is rarely found in English reliable sources without it, it should be included. For example, the honorific may be included''. But this not being an Honorific i dont find any fault in having article with His common name than His actual name for wider understandability. please discuss if you have any other thoughts on this. But i have changed the lead to begin with His actual name.Wasif (talk) 15:08, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, I would disagree with you per WP:HONORIFIC on the status of Imam; both Imam and Professor as well as Doctor, Sheikh, Allama and so forth are honorifics. They are not part of a person's name and defer a certain social context. No traditional Arabic book on ansab will say, for example, that "Imam" is part of Al-Shafi‘i's name, just as in English discourse I cannot say that "Professor" is part of Wael Hallaq's name. They're both titles which people are not born with, unless a male person's actual name at birth is "Imam" which is existent but rare.
 * Now, you are 100% correct that if the honorific is so commonly attached, then it should be included. I think that is the question here. We need to check through the sources here because I am not sure. The few sources which I perused through didn't refer to the subject as simply "Imam Fassi." We don't have to restrict ourselves to English sources as I found out, but where are they in full? MezzoMezzo (talk) 04:19, 10 July 2013 (UTC)