Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fatima of Madrid


 * 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 redirect to Maslama al-Majriti. (non-admin closure) – Davey 2010 Talk 01:25, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Fatima of Madrid

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An "unusually thorough and scholarly discussion" at AFD in 2011 determined that this was not a real person. (Not sure how to add the "previous nominations" sidebar manually, sorry.) –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 18:32, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:07, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Spain-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:07, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:07, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:07, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Astronomy-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:07, 4 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment: there's mention of her on the Maslama al-Majriti article, so a redirect to that page may be a useful option. I'm not sure how much should be merged. The Spanish language page appears to have more content. Praemonitus (talk) 19:15, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Maslama al-Majriti. The nominator somewhat overstates the result of the previous discussion, which was more that her existence could not be established from then-available reliable sources than that she definitely did not exist. However, several of the participants did conclude that she did not exist, and I think they were very probably (but not certainly) right. One would expect to find a mention of her in Said al-Andalusi's Al‐tarif bi-tabaqat al-umam, but while this (at least in the most available English translation) contains a short biography of her purported father and lists several of his students, it makes no mention of her (I've checked). That does not rule out the possibility of other medieval sources, but if such sources exist, nobody seems to be citing them. In fact, Spanish Wikipedia's version of this article cites two recent sources which state that the earliest traceable mention of her is in a volume of the Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana published in the 1920s - my first thought, in fact, was to replace this article by a translation of the Spanish Wikipedia one, but unfortunately the more detailed of the two sources, while in my opinion an excellent piece of work, seems to be by an amateur historian who posted it to a website without obvious editorial control. I have, however, a day or two ago, used the other source to add a couple of sentences to Maslama al-Majriti, which should provide a reasonable redirect target.
 * I ought to add that GBooks and GScholar searches both produce recent apparently reliable sources which do conclude (or assume) that Fatima existed. However, of the two apparently best ones, one starts with two and a half pages that apparently assume her existence without giving sources (unless these are given in the short bibliography at the end of the book which, however, is not included in the pages visible from GBooks) and then just over half a page about arguments against her existence - the latter section looks suspiciously like a translation of the Spanish Wikipedia article. The other (by a mathematician in a social science journal) considers sources on both sides of the argument, most of which, however, are websites of no obvious reliability by Wikipedia standard (where, indeed, the links still work), and comes down in favour of her existence on the basis of the websites in which he places more reliance. Effectively, this looks like academics writing outside their specialisms and, not understanding the standards of evidence in the area in which they are working, unintentionally spreading an internet meme into academic books and papers. In the absence of at least some coverage of the topic on Wikipedia, the article is likely to be recreated repeatedly by editors who do not realise this - under current circumstances, the best way of avoiding this seems to be the redirect that I am suggesting. PWilkinson (talk) 23:32, 4 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Merge/Redirect to Maslama al-Majriti -- per PWilkinson and so much of the great discussion in the last AfD. Nearly everyone from the 10th c. that we have any sort of record of any work (or supposed work) is notable, but that doesn't mean that they're good choices to have an article on until the sourcing improves; but I'm confident enough that it could improve that I think deletion is the wrong choice. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 02:34, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Maslama al-Majriti, per comment by, above. Cheers, &mdash; Cirt (talk) 19:49, 5 April 2016 (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.