Talk:Ismail Ibn Sharif

Untitled
I really cannot find any Internet resource about Moulay Ismail that doesn't just mention him in passing. Does anyone know of other sources? --cprompt

White Gold by Giles Milton
Just having read "White Gold : The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves" by Giles Milton, I think you'll find plenty of references to Moulay Ismael in that book. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 131.130.120.218 (talk • contribs).

I also read "White Gold", which makes me curious about the wording of this Article. "Christian prisoners" vs. "slaves from sub-Saharan Africa". The Christians were slaves as well. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 168.75.97.126 (talk • contribs).


 * I have read some of White gold by Giles Milton. too many unreferenced lines and many story about Moulay Ismail sounds like fable rather than historical biography. as example:

"Moulay Ismail slaughtered a wolf at the maingate. killed it with his own hands. it head was chopped off and built into the centre of the gate"Ahendra (talk) 19:57, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Milton gives references in the endnotes to his book. It would not be possible to check the source of this particular story without reading about 10 books cited by Milton for pages 100-109.  It is obvious that Milton is not vouching for the historical accuracy of all anecdotes found in the sources.  One can only say that if even a tenth of the stories about Moulay Ismail are true, he was one of the great monsters of history.86.141.32.73 (talk) 17:50, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Some facts
According to this page he reigned from April 14, 1672 to March 21, 1727. Also, many sources say he was born in 1646 (couln't find an accurate date). This goes along with the statement that he died aged 80, but the 1645 given here doesn't.

Later editions of Guinness put the number of his offspring at 867 (525 sons, 342 daughters) as of 1703, also mentioning that his 700th child was born in 1721. I think the category was last featured in the 1999 edition. Earlier editions gave the same numbers as the article here.

I'd say he probably had over 1,200 children by the time of his death, but I've never seen a final count. Notice that all the figures here are for first generation offspring only; Lord knows how many total offspring (including grandchildren, great-grandchildren etc.) he had by the time he died. He nonetheless holds the record for most offspring, even if only a portion of them have been accounted for.

"Moulay"
As someone living in Meknes, I would like to point out that "Mawlay" is, to Moroccans, a completely incorrect spelling of the word. Shouldn't we spell it the way it's spelled in the country of origin?

Children
It should also be mentioned that 888 children is considered the record number of off-spring for a man (while the corresponding record for a woman is only 69 by a 19th century Moscow woman that produced many triplets). Source: The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond (ISBN-13: 978-0-06-084550-6) pg. 88 KiNgFrOmHeLl (talk) 00:55, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Children
The daily average of copulation of 1.2 women over 60 years is mathematically wrong. As a simple calculation, if he only copulated with an average of 1 woman per day it will take him less than 3 years to create more than 888 pregnancies. Of course in practice a copulation does not always result in a pregnancy and a pregnancy does not always result in a successfull birth. 28 Nov 2009. per day —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.129.91.148 (talk) 20:54, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I see no references on having approximately 500 women in harem. So I removed that info, and fixed the links about having 888 children with a correction of 867 children including 825 sons and 342 daughters (as per Guinness record book). Reference goes to the main article. Regards, Tanvir 09:07, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Now the daily average says 4.8 women over 40 years, which also makes no sense, and the cited work doesn't appear on the publications list of the purported author at http://sitemaker.umich.edu/mitani/publications, isn't on the web anywhere, and isn't linked. So I'm deleting the apparently speculative math and useless citation. --Tibbetts2c (talk) 02:20, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Bibliographical details missing; and page needs more current sources
I've noticed that this page doesn't actually provide full bibliographical details for its major references like De Castries, Al-Nasiri, "Moroccan archives", etc. The citations notes are there but they're not linked to any defined references. They're defined on the French page, from which I assume they were copied, so they need to be copied here. (I'm not familiar enough with the short/split citation format to import them easily myself.)

On a less urgent note, a lot of this page apparently relies on very old sources from the early 20th century or even earlier. That's not necessarily a problem by default, but in the future this page should really strive to incorporate current scholarly knowledge about this topic -- some information has probably not changed since those early authors, but some claims may have been revised by more recent and more in-depth research. (e.g. His use of forced labour is well-known, but claims about tens of thousands of Christian slaves being the labour force that built his palaces don't seem to have withstood closer academic investigations; see discussions and cited sources at Kasbah of Moulay Ismail for a start.) Cheers, R Prazeres (talk) 05:42, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Face-smile.svg Thank you for noticing this. I also noticed right after editing that this article is based entirely on French-language colonial sources, which concerned me enough that I shot an email to User:Brigade Piron asking if he'd be willing to review it -- but I'm glad I wasn't the only one. The books and articles named in the Further Reading section are English-language, post-colonial sources, so ought to be investigated for the possibility of being more methodologically careful and more helpful for our student readers. I'm afraid I don't have the time to dig in any further right now. NotBartEhrman (talk) 15:58, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I got your message, . I am not sure what I can add. I know very little about North African history, I'm afraid, and still less about the Early Modern period! As you say, there are almost certainly modern sources out there but it's a question of finding someone with access to them. Have you tried the relevant WikiProjects? —Brigade Piron (talk) 15:18, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It'll probably wait til an interested editor comes along, but for what it's worth, some of the books already listed in "Further reading" are probably good starts for future revision or cross-referencing. Abun-Nasr's book is a standard reference for North African history (and does a good job of offering a "big picture" view as well as specific details, depending on the topic). El Hamel's book is about a more specific subject but from what I've seen he includes a lot of historical information. Blunt's book looks less promising (it's still old, it's not clear to me that he's a specialist, and he seems to rely mainly on European sources at a glance) but at least it's in English. If you can read French then of course there are quite a few general history books on Morocco you could look for: the one by Daniel Rivet I'm more familiar with and is usually good on providing new perspectives, and there's also one by Michel Abitbol and another by Bernard Lugan, though I've heard criticism about the latter. R Prazeres (talk) 18:41, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

This is a good article which I cannot fit into the flow of the existing article -- it would require a rewrite. Ismail's slavery practice was unusually systematic and racialized. When read critically, European slave narratives can give insight into how Ismail perpetrated slavery. This would work well in conjunction with Black Morocco (2013), however, the latter book is not about Ismail specifically so basically this article needs expert attention. NotBartEhrman (talk) 17:24, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Reference citations.
I amended some citations, however there are some sources, e.g. Hamet 1923, Castires 1927 and the Moroccan archives which do not have any information available. For instance, Castires never wrote a book in 1927, he died in 1927. If someone has information, then please elaborate. Cltjames (talk) 20:25, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
 * As I noted above, the full references appear to be in the French article. I'm guessing content was copied and translated from there at some point, without importing the full references themselves. I haven't tried to transfer them here so far, for lack of time to sort it out. Briefly, here's the raw text of the French bibliographical references, but see the French article for clearer details and archived links if helpful.
 * Ismaël Hamet, chap. VI « Les Chérifs Filaliens : Les chérifs filaliens ou hassaniens. – Moulay Rachid au Tafilalt, puis à Fez. – Moulay Ismaïl (1672-1727). – Les Abid Bokhari. – Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah (1757-1790). – Moulay Slimane (1792-1822). –Moulay Aderrahmane (1822-1859). », dans Histoire du Maghreb : Cours professé à l'Institut des hautes études marocaines, Paris, Ernest Leroux, 1923, 502 p., p. 335-391
 * Henry de Castries, Les Sources inédites de l'Histoire du Maroc. Deuxième série. Dynastie Filalienne. Archives de la Bibliothèque de France. Tome III, Paris, coll. « Publication de la Section Historique au Maroc », 1927, 587 p.
 * Direction générale des affaires indigènes, Archives marocaines, vol. XXVIII, Paris, Honoré Champion, coll. « Publication de la Direction générale des affaires indigènes (section sociologique) », 1931, 65 p.
 * Mission scientifique au Maroc, Archives marocaines, vol. XVIII, Paris, Ernest Leroux, coll. « Publication de la Mission scientifique au Maroc », 1912, 451 p.
 * Hope this helps, R Prazeres (talk) 20:42, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
 * @R Prazeres ok thanks. I will amend the citation reference errors with the new book references presented for this article. Cltjames (talk) 22:07, 15 November 2022 (UTC)


 * i add Richard Bordeaux Parker and Jonathan M. Bloom in character assessment section. it also mentioned in Kasbah of Moulay Ismail page Ahendra (talk) 15:51, 5 April 2024 (UTC)


 * also Marianne Barrucand Ahendra (talk) 16:07, 5 April 2024 (UTC)