Talk:List of Turkish Grand Mosques

Reliability of sources
Rather than just deleting sources. Could you explain here what specifically is the problem with a source. --Bejnar (talk) 22:16, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi Bejnar, I've already explained the problems with this sudden redefinition of the article's scope and with the sources themselves at the merger discussion. To re-summarize: three of the four sources you cited are not published sources by scholars (contrary to WP:RELIABLE), and the other (Hasan 1989) is tangential to the topic of this article and doesn't address the other issues I've raised. R Prazeres (talk) 02:28, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Moving without RM discussion
, as I said previously I'm not particularly opposed to this page move, but what made you think it was appropriate to move this page on your own, without discussion, especially when there are two other unclosed discussions about what to do with it? This is clearly ignoring the policies at WP:PAGEMOVE. If this is the result, I will simply redirect Ulucami (which is now blank) to Congregational mosque and be done with it; what's the point of soliciting consensus? R Prazeres (talk) 17:17, 22 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I don't really get why a merger was suggested in the first place when there was actually no sourced content to move and the only thing on the page was a list. This should have been titled as a list from the outset. It seems uncontroversial to call a list a list. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:37, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I actually did move the redirect before I realised that there was no simple way to do that and not mess up the AfD template - I am 100% with you on redirecting Ulucami to Congregational mosque, but I would just suggest that you wait until the AfD closes. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:41, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I understand and appreciate that, it's just that it's made more of a mess in the meantime and I'm not even sure if I can (for example) close the merger discussion myself if it's become moot and then start a new one or redirect the name on my own, because I don't have any consensus to show for it. Any list page could have been easily created as a new page, without moving Ulucami itself. Now it's unclear what either the merger or the deletion requests are really about, since the name being discussed is now a blank redirect page and the original article has changed and moved. How are editors weighing in on those discussions supposed to understand what is happening? If there's significant disagreement about what to do around the original article, it's not the time to make undiscussed page moves. What it looks like now is that you made an argument for something at the merger discussion and then went ahead and implemented that solution unilaterally. R Prazeres (talk) 17:52, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It really didn't look like either the AfD or merger discussion were going anywhere anyway, but whether the attempted approach was a merger, deletion or move, the background swell of consensus was that no page titled "Ulucami" was needed. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:14, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * One might equally ask why it was thought appropriate for the AfD to be raised while a merger discussion was ongoing. My intervention on behalf of the page to rehabilitate it as the list it should have been was more a reaction to the AfD, which critiqued the lack of sourcing, which can only be responded to with sourcing, but then the article needs to be scoped correctly in order for the intent and application of the sourcing to make any sense. While you're right that I could have just taken the material and created a new page, that in itself would have been a form of internal plagiarism and a bit of a disservice to the editors who originally worked on expanding this list. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:28, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that the AfD was a questionable move (not my idea), but the simple answer to all that is that you should have waited. Piling it on doesn't help. All of this could have been done once those discussions are closed, and the intention to fix things with sources can be expressed as part of the discussion. There's no urgency to skip to the end of the process without consensus. R Prazeres (talk) 18:33, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I may have been ... a little impulsive, but look at it! It's such an obviously listy list! Iskandar323 (talk) 18:50, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

OR
The first paragraph of the first cited source,, reads in Turkish: "İslâm şehirlerinde ulucamiler bulundukları şehrin veya bânilerinin adıyla anıldığı gibi “cuma camii” ve “câmi-i kebîr” gibi isimlerle de tanınmıştır. Fethedilen şehirlerde önceleri orada bulunan en büyük ibadet yapısı camiye çevriliyor ve hemen ardından büyük bir cami inşa ediliyordu. Erken dönemde ele alınan ve ordugâh camileri diye de adlandırılan Basra, Kûfe ulucamileriyle Kahire Fustat’ta Amr b. Âs Camii bu tipin ilk örnekleri kabul edilir. Bu yapılar revaklı avlulu ve çok ayaklı planda yapılmıştır." English translation, "Ulu Mosques in Islamic cities are known by names such as "cuma camii" (Cuma Mosque) and "câmi-i kebîr", as well as the name of the city or their patrons. In the conquered cities, the largest worship building that was there before was turned into a mosque, and soon after, a large mosque was built. The great mosques of Basra (sic Bursa ?) and Kufe, as well as Fustat the mosque in Cairo built by Amr bin, were built in the early period and called great mosques. As mosques they are considered to be the first examples of this type. These structures were built in a multi-legged plan with a cloistered courtyard." Does that not sound closer to what the edit that was reverted on by R Prazeres on 1 December 2021‎ than what it replaced? Here is the comparison. The older version is WP:OR, and not supported by the cited source. --Bejnar (talk) 14:54, 1 December 2021 (UTC)


 * The good news is that we now have sources, and that everybody is now arguing how we best use those sources, which is where we want to be. I have no doubt that the opening intro could be tweaked and improved - as it stands, it's just a rather roughshod effort by me to crunch down the material added by the page's creator. However, while some of what you added was sound, I would like to know where you are getting the Damascus bit from, because it wasn't until well into the 16th-century that the Ottoman Empire consolidated its hold over the Levant region and Syria. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:12, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * While someone put the word "Turkish" in the title, we are talking about an appellation that was applied both in Arabic and Turkish. We do need to stick to the sources.  The current lead does not. The Damascus "great mosque" as a ulucami was first called to my attention by the Bengali article  that R Prazeres thinks is irrelevant, but is confirmed by works such as F. B. Flood's   2001 The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies on the Makings of an Ummayyad Visual Culture. Usage is shown by a Google search for: mosque Damascus "great mosque" OR "grand mosque" OR "ulucami" OR "ulu cami" -wikipedia -twitter -facebook. See also Leal, Bea. (2020) "The Abbasid mosaic tradition and the Great Mosque of Damascus." Muqarnas Online 37.1 pages 29-62; and references like "leaders, made efforts to incorporate architectural symbolism, revealing strength and piety by referencing such edifices as the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus" in a thesis by Andersen, Angela Lyn. (2004) "The Diyarbakir Ulu Cami: social history and interaction at the Great Mosque.".  Sources agree that later mosques in the Ottoman empire owe an homagic debt to the Great Mosque of Damascus. See, e.g., Note 1, page 14 of Kuban, Doğan. (1974) The mosque and its early development. Vol. 2. Brill.
 * Bejnar, the topic you are describing here is already covered by the pages congregational mosque and List of congregational mosques, which is exactly why I made the original merger request in the first place. R Prazeres (talk) 18:36, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * To Bejnar: (in response to initial comment) nowhere in that source does it say the equivalent of "The term was first applied to the Umayyad Mosque, built in Damascus in 715. But the term really came into use with the grand mosques of Basra and Kufe", as your edit did. Neither the source nor this page are etymological entries. Moreover, that strays into a discussion of congregational mosques across the Muslim world in general, which isn't the scope of this page either. The second statement you added ("These mosques were intended as congregational mosques, but not all large and historic mosques received the title, for example the Zagan Pasha Mosque is not called a grand mosque") also doesn't line up with the source since, as I pointed out in the deletion discussion, that mosque is listed in that encyclopedia under "Balikesir Ulucami" as well. The first source even says that Ulucamis can also be known by the names of their founders, which is the case for most Ottoman mosques. The first sentence of the second paragraph you added was likewise your personal assessment of the name's use, without a source to support it.


 * As for the current lead: if we want to be closer to the source (I agree), we can simplify the wording "a title originally given to the grandest Friday mosque" to just "a title for the Friday mosque" or something similar, as the source does not say anywhere that the title belonged to the largest mosque (the size of the mosque is incidental to its status but not always consistent). We have other sources, as I've said elsewhere, explicitly defining Ulucami as simply a Turkish term for a Friday/congregational mosque (even if that status nowadays can apply to nearly all mosques).  So for now the lead should be kept general unless we agree on whether we want something more specific, which may either require more content in the lead or simply require a consensus on this talk page to reasonably limit the scope of the list (which can also be expressed by a simple statement in the lead if needed). I may have a few ideas about that if helpful. In the meantime, I think that even with a general wording in the lead the title still makes clear that we don't want a mere replica of List of mosques in Turkey, so I doubt many editors would exploit any technical ambiguities in order to start adding a bunch of minor mosques to the list.


 * On a semi-related note: do we want to consider whether this page's name should be more like "List of Grand Mosques in Turkey", assuming we want to keep it restricted to the territory of Turkey? "Turkish", in theory, could be interpreted more widely than that, given the history of the region. R Prazeres (talk) 18:33, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Perhaps - I noted belatedly that this is how the names of the various lists of cathedrals are structured. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:07, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I might be misunderstanding, but I don't think so? The pages in this category are all along the lines of "List of cathedrals in [country]". It's not urgent, but this seems a less ambiguous wording for the long-term. R Prazeres (talk) 19:14, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I was agreeing with you. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:25, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh ok, I did misunderstand. Sounds good then. I'll support that name change if/when we come to it. R Prazeres (talk) 19:29, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Scope limits
If the scope is indeed to be limited to Ottoman mosques, then I think the title should be changed from "Turkish" to "Ottoman", as "turkish" is ambiguous as to language, locale or ethnology. Regardless, mosques that are not called great, grand or ulu should not be included, and a citation to a reliable source for such appellation should be a minimal requirement. I do not find that the Zagan Pasha Mosque qualifies based on the existing citation, although I agree that it is so listed in some tertiary sources. Also, while large mosques were intended to be congregational, that does not appear to be a qualifying characteristic for the appellation and should not be given prominence in the scope defined by the lead. --Bejnar (talk) 17:24, 1 December 2021 (UTC)


 * The implication of "Turkish" is both that we are talking Ottoman mosques, and those still inside Turkey - which is perhaps why the change suggested above by @R Prazeres to "in Turkey" is pertinent. Mosques not currently in Turkey will have non-Turkish names and designations, whether from before Ottoman times, or applied locally afterwards. Consistency also pushes us to create this list in the same manner as lists of other places of worship are drawn up - by country.
 * As to your second point: the qualification isn't being congregational, but the point about being the main congregational mosque in a community appears to have been a factor in the past (when communities might only have one mosque capable of fitting a congregation worthy of an imam's attention). Today, it tends to be either a lingering historic designation or a title more recently bestowed by the grace of the Turkish state. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:24, 1 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I wash my hands of R Prazeres, she/he does not get it, and seemingly never will. All I wanted to do was improve the article by citing sources and conforming text to them, and most importantly to not mislead readers.  I think that last is a hopeless cause given identification in the mind of R Prazeres of grand mosque=congregational mosque. The former may be a subset of the latter, but they are not equal. --Bejnar (talk) 21:47, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll remind you to remain WP:CIVIL. You haven't offered any reliable sources that actually support your views, while I've been providing sources left and right from published scholarly literature that directly address and define these terms on the congregational mosque page, in the related merger discussion, and repeating them in other discussions since. Disagreeing with the most relevant and reliable sources, while providing no reliable sources that present a differing perspective, is simply out of line with Wikipedia guidelines, and no amount of dismissing other editors will make up for that. R Prazeres (talk) 22:22, 1 December 2021 (UTC)