Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Battle of Jammu (1399)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Doczilla @SUPERHEROLOGIST 05:34, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Battle of Jammu (1399)

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

I don't think this even pass WP:GNG. There is no notability of this specific event.  ❯❯❯  Chunky aka Al Kashmiri   (✍️) 19:05, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions.   ❯❯❯  Chunky aka Al Kashmiri   (✍️) 19:05, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Events, Military,  and Jammu and Kashmir.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 19:14, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep. Great Caesar's ghost, is this what we've come to? Herostratus (talk) 23:17, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, let me back off from that. This is just a weird situation. The internet does appear to know almost nothing about this battle, and neither does Google Books, which for such an allegedly big-deal event seems practically impossible. So the suggestion below that it might be a hoax is reasonable. But, if so, it's way way more elaborate than any I've seen here, I mean this is a lot of work to write, making everything up from scratch. And also it's just an odd subject for a hoax. It's not funny. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that a troll would do for lulz.


 * Apparently the article was first called "Battle of Dugara", but there isn't anything on that on the internet either. "Dogra" is another term for Dugara, but nothing on that either. The only real editing was done by the article creator, the other editors were just tweaking and cleaning up.


 * Anyway, we do have a source with this:


 * Emphasis added. It is from an entity called "Aphipedia". I don't know who they are, but its definitely not a hoax website. It's a commercial site, a study/coaching website for exam candidates I think, and it's clearly not a one-person site. It says here that they have at least eleven employees. I see it was founded in 2022 tho. Anyway, it's prep for the State General Knowledge exam and you'd think that either making stuff up or credulously copying from Wikipedia wouldn't fit their business model. But I don't know India.


 * Anyway, our article has


 * So we can see that Aphipedia and this article use entirely different wording and exposition, so it doesn't seem likely that one is copying from the other, unless special effort was expended to obscure this fact. Again, if this is hoax, Aphipedia is in on it I think, and it's getting awfully elaborate for a hoax.


 * So what it seems like what we might have here is an event which is somewhat obscure to begin with, really just Tamerlane overwhelming yet another podunk town. And it occurred in medieval Jammu, which even today Jammu is pretty remote from metropolitan India or really anywhere. So maybe not much was written down at the time. And this was before printing, so some or most of what was written down might have been lost. And it was written in whatever language and script they used in medieval Jammu which language and script is not even used or much known anymore I guess. So, it's natural that finding on-line English sources on the event is going to be hard, compared to an English battle like the contemporary Battle of Agincourt.


 * And then in the Aftermath section we have


 * Emphasis added. However, its not a deal killer if events are not firmly established. We just have to be careful to point out the source in the text and not say these things in our voice.


 * One major source is apparently the Zafarnama, which is important enough to have an article here, but as far as I can tell has never been translated into English nor published, so to vet that ref we'd have find somebody who can read medieval Persian and then somehow get hold of a facsimile. It is not used as a ref in the Notes section, which is correct because refs are supposed to be accessible without extreme effort. But it used in the text. (Also the article says that the book is a panegyric that, while it does record Timur's actions, presumably cherry-picks and spins facts, so...)


 * But then, we have these two books
 * Rai, Mridu (2004). Hindu rulers, Muslim subjects : Islam, rights, and the history of Kashmir. London: Hurst & Co. ISBN 1850656614.
 * Kalhana's Rajatarangini. Vol. 2 : a chronicle of the kings of Kashmir : Book VIII. Notes, geographical memoir, index, maps (Reprint ed.). 1989. ISBN 978-81-208-0370-1.
 * But User:TheChunky checked both books and found nothing. This is key, but I can't replicate, the first link devolve to a page with with "search inside unavailable", the second to a 547 page PDF which I can't search.


 * I mean it's just an interesting situation. Hard to prove, but my personal belief, based on the totality of the above and of the article, particularly the Aphipedia passage, is that this event did happen in the place and time specified. I further doubt that the details in this article are mostly or partly just made up as a hoax by User:Gārgīyajyotiṣa who wrote the article. This is the only published article by User:Gārgīyajyotiṣa, but he did write two other unfinished articles: Draft:Battle of Miran Sahib and User:Gārgīyajyotiṣa/sandbox (Battle of Dudhu Chak). These are similar to this article in all important respects. If this person is making all these up from whole cloth... that's... so odd that it's almost incredible. There are billions of people in the world tho, so you never know. Still, Occam's Razor.


 * Anyway, when in doubt, we want to lean toward preserving material, especially when we have something like this which took a lot of work and -- if true -- is a good article.


 * I think what we need to do is heavily tag the article throughout. This will alert the reader of the situation, and perhaps lead to somebody digging up more refs, altho tbh I don't know how. Herostratus (talk) 18:32, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Zafarnama says "More recently, the Zafarnama was translated into French in 1722 by François Pétis de la Croix and into English the following year." Those ought to be on the internet somewhere. Johnbod (talk) 04:21, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
 * OK, definitely don't want to rush here. There's WP:NOHURRY. I've alerted the India and Pakistan wikiprojects, they can read Hindi or Urdu sources, so maybe some help there.


 * But... looking at another of the author's articles, Draft:Battle of Miran Sahib... well apparently Miran Sahib is a person. I think. There are two sources, different from this article. But they're both used just for trivial facts. The first is "Kumar, Raj (2018). A complete history of Jammu and Kashmir State. Delhi. ISBN 978-9351282488". But there's no preview. The other is "Charak, Sukh Dev Singh (1998). Pahāṛi styles of Indian murals. New Delhi, India: Abhinav Publications. ISBN 9788170173564", used for an extremely minor fact, I can get a preview and it doesn't seem to support the fact that I can see. Of course, this is a draft, and maybe he was going to change the title and add some more refs. Maybe. Herostratus (talk) 01:04, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
 * There is a tendency in India articles to glorify local rulers and, in all probability, a skirmish, or a local legend of sorts, has become a battle and a victory. Timur's campaigns in India are actually fairly well covered by historians so, if there was a battle, it shouldn't be hard to find English language sources. Perhaps can help. --RegentsPark (comment) 01:11, 5 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Comment: The article has two book citations and I checked both books, one here and another here . I performed searches in these books about this specific battle. I found nothing about this. The remaining references are the opinion/editorials, which are possibly WP:OPINION and have also not mentioned this battle specifically, but rather various battles in general. So, it is probably a WP:HOAX.  ❯❯❯  Chunky aka Al Kashmiri   (✍️) 03:44, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment: there appear to be several battles with the same name. So, I'm not well-versed in the subject, but the other ones are in the 18th and 19th c. Andre🚐 02:05, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Weak keep Herostratus's work on this suggests that the events are real and his is not a HOAX. What may be recorded in local folk memory is not necessarily to be written off as unreliable, though it is far from an ideal source.  Whether "battle of ..." is the right title is a different question.  Peterkingiron (talk) 14:55, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete No sources. Abhipedia (note the pedia) is not even remotely reliable. I've removed other sources that don't contain material on this battle. Of the two remaining sources, one is from 1899 and Raj era sources are explicitly not considered reliable and the other, unfortunately not easy to get hold of, according to Amazon "covers the macro historical, social, religious, and political highlights in Kashmir from about 1840 to 1950" which is not anywhere near the time period of Timur. Simply put, there are zero sources for this battle. --RegentsPark (comment) 01:03, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Online and in English, you mean! Johnbod (talk) 01:29, 5 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Keep for now The only modern bio of Timur seems to be: Marozzi, Justin. Tamerlane: sword of Islam, conqueror of the world, London: HarperCollins, 2004, which has a 34-page Chapter 7 on the Indian campaign. Someone with access to a good library needs to check out if that mentions it. If there's nothing, I'd be ready to delete. The only sources for a minor battle in India in 1399 are likely to be Muslim chronicles close in date to the events, including Timur's own account. "Raj era sources" sources were perfectly capable of collecting and summarizing these. Timur fought lots of battles, with monotonous success, & historians writing on broader subjects probably wouldn't say much about most of them. Regent's Park says: "Timur's campaigns in India are actually fairly well covered by historians" - can we have some examples of modern detailed narrative accounts please? That nothing turns up on the internet means little. Actually, though I can't see Marozzi's bibliography, his page xx mentions two books by modern historians (Manz & Hookham) which sound like they might have this.   Johnbod (talk) 01:29, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
 * If nothing shows up over the next couple of days, I'll pick it up from my library and take a look. --RegentsPark (comment) 01:48, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Also look for descriptions of "Tamerlane" the old name that Timur was known as. Andre🚐 01:46, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete per RegentsPark. Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  15:11, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * To get an idea of the notability of Timur in the history of India, you might want to start with the middle-level books and go lower (I mean in resolution); the high-level books will likely have little or nothing. The little might be a brief mention as one of several final nails in the coffin of the Delhi sultanate. He apparently didn't do much beyond killing and plundering. He shed so much blood in Delhi (of Muslim and Hindu alike) that it was said the red stain on the streets was no longer from betel leaf. Who said this I can't say. No novel items of equestrian cuisine or warrior apparel were infused into the culture for the hungry and bedraggled to style after. There is really not much there a general historian can write about.  So, what middle-level books? Here is a short list:
 * Satish Chandra's A History of Medieval India, which has this pronouncement, "The raid into India was a plundering raid, and its motive was to seize the wealth accumulated by the sultans of Delhi over the last 200 years. ... Timur then entered Delhi and sacked it without mercy; large number of people, both Hindu and Muslim, as well as women and children lost their lives. ... It resulted in the drain of large amount of wealth, gold, silver, jewellery, etc., from India. Timur also took with him a large number of Indian artisans, such as masons, stone cutters, carpenters, etc. Some of them helped him in putting up many fine building in his capital, Samarqand. ... But the direct political effect of Timur’s invasion of India was small. "
 * Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot's India before Europe, CUP, early 2000s.
 * Peter Jackson's Delhi Sultanate: A political and military history, CUP, late 1990s
 * Aniruddha Ray's THE SULTANATE OF DELHI (1206-1526) Polity, Economy, Society and Culture, Routledge, 2019
 * Andre Wink's ''AL-HIND THE MAKING OF THE INDO-ISLAMIC WORLD VOLUME III INDO-ISLAMIC SOCIETY

14th-15th CENTURIES'' (pardon the capitals), BRILL 2004

In reference to RegentsPark's observations, I note that in modern parlance, i.e. the new-found emanations of Hindu majoritarianism, "Jammu" is the counterpoint to "Kashmir," of the Hindu to the Muslim, the folk to the imperial, the brave to the cowardly, the "would have been but for" to the "what was," ... Fowler&amp;fowler «Talk»  18:51, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
 * As you say, his Indian foray was perhaps like a natural disater, with huge loss of life and treasure, but little long-term effect except weakening the powers that were. Histories of India won't give much detail; the 3 authors I gave wrote specifically on Timur, and perhaps will have more - or not. Johnbod (talk) 19:14, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I do have Manz (formerly Forbes), The rise and rule of Tamerlane, CUP, 1989. But she has more on his army, his rise and fall in the various organizations he rose and fell in. She says, "Timur did not treat all conquered regions and people alike and the variations in his policies illustrate the challenges and opportunities which different regions offered him. In many of the territories he conquered, such as northern India, Syria, Anatolia, Moghulistan and the Quipchaq steppe, Temur contented himself with the collection of ransom money and the destruction or chastisement of unfriendly leaders, leaving no permanent administration behind. The areas over which he did assert control were those which were similar to the Ulas Chaghatay in population and structure: lands of mixed populations which had previously been ruled by Chinggisid dynasties.  These areas &mdash; Ferghana, Khorasan, Sistan, Khorezm, western Iran and 'Iraq &mdash; Temur and his Chaghatay emirs could adapt to easily and rule directly."  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  23:39, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
 * No mention of Jammu or his retreat in the face of the king of Jammu? --RegentsPark (comment) 01:16, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
 * The thing that gets me about all this is: OK Timur took Jammu on that date, probably. But where the did the author get all the other details? They don't read like the're just made up (altho that's possible). He must have a source. Herostratus (talk) 03:44, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
 * The article (rather a game of 2 halves) initially cites the Zafarnama (Yazdi biography) .... It was commissioned by Ibrahim Sultan, Timur's grandson between 1424–28, and remains one of the best-known sources of Timur's life. But the final "aftermath" section, giving different accounts, seems to rely on local tales, no doubt collected in the refs given. Johnbod (talk) 04:18, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Not according to User:TheChunky. They said they vetted the refs and found nothing. Herostratus (talk) 19:19, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * No. But I did look at a fascinating book, The Legendary Biographies of Tamerlane: Islam and Heroic Apocrypha in Central Asia Ron Sela,
 * Cambridge UP, 2011. Many legendary biographies were first written in India in Indo-Persian (just as the first Persian dictionaries were first written in India) and became known in the Timurid heartland only in the 19th and 20th centuries.  One such is about the brahmin from Kashmir, "The next encounter of the people of Central Asia with a false prophet was with Nāsir-i Khuraw’s son. The son, Shāh Mansūr, fled to India where he was trained in magic by “Brahmins of Kashmir.” He began preaching to his followers, claiming that he was the mahdī. The ‘ulamā’ who rejected him sooner or later found their demise. Shāh Mansūr challenged Tīmūr in a letter from Kashghar. Tīmūr decided to assign twenty thousand troops to this matter, under the command of his son Jahāngīr, and to send him to face Mansūr. The latter challenged him to a contest, telling him that he could not be killed. They chained Mansūr, dug a grave, buried him alive, and lit a fire on top. For three days the fire burned until they decided to dig him out. Mansūr emerged completely unharmed. When Jahāngīr commanded to untie him, the chains disintegrated on his body, showing everyone that he could have easily gotten away had he wished so. This, of course, greatly increased his following. Mansūr demanded that Jahāngīr and his troops believe in him and gave them a seven-day ultimatum. For a week Jahāngīr was baffled, thinking that, “If Mansūr were not a prophet, how was he able to perform such miracles?” ..." So, T-lane Jr may have gone to Jammu.  But maybe, more likely, he trekked up the Hindutash Pass through the Kunlun mountains, crossed the Karakash River  into Aksai Chin where no doubt some brahmins met him on the frozen salt flats. I don't know about this article, but T Lanes Sr and Jr are looking mighty interesting. If someone has the energy, a Legendary biographies of Tamerlane page might be very encyclopedic.I mean seriously.  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  00:16, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Finally, there is also Lost Enlightenment CENTRAL ASIA’S GOLDEN AGE FROM THE ARAB CONQUEST TO TAMERLANE by S. Frederick Starr,  Princeton, 2013. in which "Tamer the Lame known in the west as Tamerlane" constitutes the last of the 15 odd chapters. That would not normally constitute exhaustive coverage, but the book does have 724 pages.  So, betting on some 50, I read on, but again, nothing about Jammu, "{{tq|Following the age-old routes pioneered by the Kushans, Mahmud of Ghazni, and Chinggis Khan, Timur then swept deep into India, devastating Delhi and other cities. Reversing course once more, he attacked the Ottoman Turks and captured their hapless sultan, Bayazit, in 1402. By unintentionally delaying the fall of Constantinople for half a century, Timur gained Europe’s gratitude, which found expression in diplomatic contacts between him and England and France and in visits like that of the diplomat Clavijo from Spain. After spending only a scant few years in his capital, Samarkand, Timur hatched a plan to conquer China as well. Even Indians in distant Bengal were now paying tribute to Timur, but not China. Now he}wanted to correct this deplorable situation. Since the new Ming dynasty had defeated the Mongols only in 1368 and was still consolidating its power, he might well have succeeded. But just as he was launching his China campaign, Timur came down with a fever at Otrar and died in 1405.}|undefined"}
 * So a Solomon Grundy level basic biography. But it had Timur's response to the Pillars of Ashoka: "Timur’s ceaseless conquests were accompanied by a level of brutality matched only by Chinggis Khan himself. At Isfahan his troops dispatched some 70,000 defenders, while at Delhi his soldiers are reported to have systematically killed 100,000 Indians. At Damascus Timur herded thousands of residents into the Friday mosque and set it ablaze. At Izmir on the eastern Mediterranean he beheaded all the captured soldiers of the defending Ottoman army and then lobbed their heads by catapult onto the ships on which others were fleeing the port. At Aleppo, Baghdad, Tikrit, Isfahan, Delhi, and other conquered cities, Timur ordered the construction of what he called “minarets” of the skulls of the defeated populace.'" Again nothing about Jammu but fascinating fellow. No one gave him something to smoke in India? How did he injure his leg enough for last name inclusion?
 * But after this exhaustive search this page itself is a delete as a straightforward history, but a possible keep as a legendary history if combined in the theme. Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  01:01, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Relisting comment: Relisting. I think this closure should be decisive and that a little more time is needed to get there. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 19:53, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Keep Time should be given to add notability 🙈🚶🧭 (talk)  — Preceding undated comment added 20:00, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep for now per Herostratus. Seems to be enough evidence that there was a battle. Needs a search for offline sources. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:20, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment:, There were battles in Jammu, but this particular year's battle was not found. You can see Battle of Jammu (1808) (likely notable), Battle of Jammu (1712) (no notability) and this Battle of Jammu (1399) (no notability). ❯❯❯  Chunky aka Al Kashmiri   (✍️) 01:21, 9 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Keep -- We have ample sources for the invasion of India by or under Tamerlane.  What we are short of is references for Jammu's part in it, but from its location is is unlikely that it was not involved.  However precisely how, and whether the present content is correct needs verification.  Except in BLP cases, a dearth of good references is not a ground for deletion.  Peterkingiron (talk) 19:02, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * It's not, usually, but it would be if we think that either sources do not exist, or are not reachable by the reader with reasonable effort.


 * I assume that the writer had some sources somewhere and didn't just dream this up. His sources may be some guy he met in bar or otherwise unreliable tho. Anyway, if it's not possible for us to probably ever find them, they're no good and the article's in danger. I think extensive tagging is enough, but deletion is a reasonable stance too.


 * The reader has to be able to get to the sources too. If, for instance, we are given access to read a source that's in a private collection, that might satisfy us, but if the reader can't check it we are saying "just take our word for it" and we don't do that. I think even if the sources are in a obscure book of which few copies are extant and get to one you would have to go to India and also hire a translator, that is beyond "reasonable effort" I think. If a copy exists in the United States and it's possible to subscribe to some organization, library or whatever, where you can get to see it even if its a hassle and costs some money, that's "reasonable effort" I think. Herostratus (talk) 23:43, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Don't be silly please. As has been said above (more than once) the article names in the text a clear source for at least part of it - the Zafarnama (Yazdi biography). Pages 517-522 here are a partial English translation, by Henry Miers Elliot in his pioneering The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians.  This confirms much of the two main sections, though not all of it. Johnbod (talk) 02:13, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Hmm. "Accordingly my forces fell to plundering and secured an enormous booty in grain, goods of all kind, and cattle" raised to the level of "Battle of Jammu" seems like a stretch to me. Are we in the business of making an article for every raid on a village by Timur or other invaders? There is also the issue of the sole reliance of a source from 1871. A "battle" that seems to go unmentioned elsewhere seems scarcely notable. --RegentsPark (comment) 12:58, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, that was before the battle proper, but it clearly wasn't earth-shaking, though it did lead to the capture & conversion of the local leader. Other sources, potential & seen, are discussed above. At least I hope we have disposed of the "hoax" theory. The full account, in the 18th-century English translation, should appear ealy on here, but I can't get it to load. Johnbod (talk) 19:04, 12 September 2022 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.