Wikipedia:Peer review/Al-Kindi/archive1

Al-Kindi

Hello everyone,

The importance of al-Kindi as a figure in the historical development of Islamic thought cannot be understated. His works on philosophy and science would have far reaching consequences, not just for the Muslim world, but for Europe as well. To that end, alot of work has been put into the article in bringing it up to GA status, with the aim of taking it to FA.

We would welcome any comments you have on the article, but the area that will need most attention will be the clarity of expression (especially of philosophical ideas) which is crucial.

Thankyou in advance for your help,

Alexander.Hainy 00:57, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

• References go after punctuation with no space, ex .[10] i saw it like this [10]. and . [10]
• Your web sources are not formatted properly, please check {{cite web}}
• For the "quotation" section there is a wiki for quotes where it should be moved
• Alphabetize categories
• There are a few one sentence 'paragraphs' remove merge or expand
• After these problems are dealt with it will only be the text that needs work, i haven't read it though just thought i would help you with the obvious problems. M3tal H3ad 07:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

My two cents:

• "as well a talented musician." Do you mean as well as a talented musician?
  • I have some seious problems with your lead. the attempted "as well as a talented" is verbose. Just say "and."
  • "He was the first of the Muslim peripatetic philosophers, and is best known for his efforts to introduce philosophy to the Muslim world." This line is getting close to fancruft, in the aspect that it is too large of an acredidation to be without a citation, so get one for this line.
• You have a lot of dangling modifiers. "A descendant of the Kinda tribe, al-Kindi..." One should use a participial phrase here and change it to: "Descendant of the Kinda tribe of pre-Islamic Arab world."
  • I aded the "pre-Islamic Arab world" part because I assume that maybe only one reader out of ten will recognize his location without my addition. Although you don't really need to "dumb down" an article, you need to diversify its possible readership.
• " ...al-Kindi was born and educated in Kufa before travelling to Baghdad to pursue further studies." It's nearly a run-on. Break it into "......al-Kindi was born and educated in Kufa. He travelled to Baghdad to pursue further studies."
• This is a run-on, "There, he would become a principal figure in the House of Wisdom, where he was patronized by a number of Abbasid Caliphs to oversee the task of translating Greek scientific and philosophical texts into the Arabic language."
  • Say this: "Al-Kindi became an important member of the House of Wisdom, where fellow Abbasid Caliphs successfully coerced him to translate important Greek philosophical and scientific text into Arabic.
• This is...not a run-on, but it does need a verification: "His contact with "the philosophy of the ancients" would have a profound effect on his intellectual development and lead him to write a number of original treatises of his own on a range of subjects ranging from metaphysics and ethics to mathematics and pharmacology."
• In the lead, you are a bit low on citations, namely, you have none. Get some.
• I think your lead may concentrate too heavily on the "Life" section.

Drop a line when you're ready for more. I've been really busy this month, so don't expect any quick replies. Permission to respond ex post facto to this, meaning after the PR? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Esoltas (talk • contribs).

Anas Salloum

Great job! Nice work on the article. With some effort, I think it has a good chance of becoming a good or even a featured article.

• The lead could use some citations. Most importantly to phrases like: "He was the first of the Muslim peripatetic philosophers.." etc.
• Names have been spelled differently throughout the article. For example, al-Farabi is spelled al-Fārābi in other paragraphs; also al-Mu'tasim (Mutasim). You need to fix these.
• "The historian Ibn al-Nadim(d. 955), described him.." I think it is not neccessary to include the date of his death, or just separate them with a space.
• The article has to use a unanimous spelling of the subject's name. In parts you write al-Kindi, and in others you write Al-Kindī and al-Kindī. In this case, they should be all changed to al-Kindi (or Al-Kindi if in the beginning of a sentence, of course).
• Make sure the wiki-links refer readers to the direct and correct article page (not redirect or disambiguation pages).
• In the lead, you need to briefly describe and talk about his major accomplishments.
• Use the en-dash (–) for dates and numeric ranges.
• Get rid of the red links; either create stubs or remove them if they are not notable enough for articles. Not a prerequisite for achieving good or featured article status, though.
• The quotation section is unnecessary and usually not favored.
• "only 5 have survived.." Spell out numbers less than ten.

If not busy, I'll be reading the article later today and returning with more suggestions if I find any. Good luck! ← ANAS ^Talk? 12:59, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Carabinieri

• The word "unfortunately" should not be used (WP:NPOV)
• Not sure about this one, but shouldn't it be "the Kinda tribe in Kufa, which had migrated there from Yemen" (I don't believe "tribe" is considered "human")
• "On account of his learning and aptitude for study, al-Ma'mun appointed him to House of Wisdom, which was a recently established centre for the translation of Greek philosophical and scientific texts in Baghdad." It would sound more fluent if the relative clause was changed to an apposition, i.e.: "On account of his learning and aptitude for study, al-Ma'mun appointed him to House of Wisdom, a recently established centre for the translation of Greek philosophical and scientific texts in Baghdad."
• Chemistry and medicine: It would be nice to know, whether his work in this field has been refuted by modern science.
• The words "we" and "our" should not be used (WP:MOS#Avoid_first-person_pronouns_and_one)
• I know that may not be possible, but it would be cool, if there were a few more images, even if they do not simply depict al-Kindi - simply related images would be better than none. But I do realize that may not be possible with philosophical topics.
• "However, as Oliver Leaman, an expert on Islamic philosophy, points out, their objections are rarely directed at philosophy itself (even al-Ghazali himself used the instruments of Greek logic to argue with the philosophers) but rather the conclusions the philosophers arrived at." It would be nice to know what these conclusions were - or at least one or two examples.
• How al-Kindi was received by the following generations is only mentioned once, in the Life section. Were his works ever received after his death or were they only forgotten about after a few generations?

Other than that, the article looks great. Good work!--Carabinieri 19:17, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

You could also add a "selected works" section listing the most "important" (whatever that means) books of his with a link to a sub-page listing all books whose titles are known. That might be a good idea, but it's just a suggestion.--Carabinieri 20:17, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

• Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, APR _t 23:23, 12 January 2007 (UTC)