Talk:Baybars

Early life and birthplace

When I check 2020 versions, it says he was born in Crimea, now it suddenly says Kazakhstan. All of those sources barely look like a RS and some of them are primary sources where we can not even verify it. Can anyone look at section? I think it has to be rewritten with reliable sources. Beshogur (talk) 10:46, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Belated response just to say that you're right, it's a mess. The insertion of "Kazakhstan" was made here by an IP with no additional references added, while deleting mention of Crimea at the same time. So the Kazakhstan claim is unsourced. Presumably this was missed by other editors, because it should have been reverted immediately. It does appear to be a recurring claim in writings related to Kazakhstan (guidebooks etc), so I assume it has nationalist connotations here, but there's no reliable sources have been provided in support so far. I'm restoring the old wording for now, though it would help for the citations here to be improved and the attributions of each claim made clearer. R Prazeres (talk) 04:31, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Many of the currently cited sources are inaccessible and/or they're primary sources, which are discouraged on Wikipedia per WP:PRIMARY, unless treated cautiously and used with good justification. Only Britannica is accessible online (though there's apparently no consensus on whether it counts as WP:RS, see WP:BRITANNICA), and it seems to concur with other sources. For what it's worth, here's what I could find among reliable secondary sources:

• Baybars I entry (by Thorau 2010) in Encyclopedia of Islam Three:
  "He was probably born about 625/1227–8 in the southern Russian steppes as a member of a Qipçāq-Turkish group."
  • Worth noting that Thorau, the author of this article, is also the author of what seems like the only full-length book on Baybars in English, The Lion of Egypt. This book is frequently cited by other scholarly sources, but I can't fully access it online.
• Baybars I entry in Medieval Islamic Civilization:
  "Baybars was born around 1220 CE among the Qipchaq Turks, who lived in the steppe region north of the Black Sea." (p.101)
• Baybars I" entry in Dictionary of World Biography: The Middle Ages:
  "Baybars I, al-Malik al-Zahir Rukn ak-Din Baybars al-Salihi, was born around the year 1223 in what is now southern Russia. A member of the tribe of Kipchak Turks living on the north shores of the Black Sea, Barbars was a victim of the Mongol invasion of his native region in the late 1230's. By the time he was fourteen, Baybars had become a prisoner of war; he was sold in the slave market in Sivas, Anatolia." (p.124)
• Campbell 2015, Templar Knight vs Mamluk Warrior: 1218–50 (not sure that this one is as reliable as the others though):
  "Born north of the Black Sea into a Kipchaq Turkish tribe, (...)" (p.62)

So nearly all the sources so far say approximately the same thing. Going back further in the article's history, it seems that at one point many of the cited primary sources were there before any birthplace was specified, so it's unclear that these citations actually add anything helpful here. And only one source, added in 2020 here (I can't track down whether it was included in an earlier version), says Crimea, but given that the other sources don't say so, and given the unlikelihood that a more specific birthplace is known, this seems dubious. It's also not a specialized reference (it's an edited volume on English literature, not on Mamluk or medieval history), so it seems undue to give it weight equal to the others (WP:UNDUE). Here it is:

• El Mougy 2014, in Adventuring in the Englishes: Language and Literature in a Postcolonial Globalized World:
  "Born in Crimea, Baibars was a Kipchak Turk (Kazakh Turk). It was said he was captured by the Mongols on the Kipchak steppe and sold as a slave, ending up in Syria." (p.17)

R Prazeres (talk) 05:35, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

You are mixing the story of Qotuz and Bebars, Bebars as sources say had two different eye colors which is a rare genatic disorder common in a group Cherkasians from the north caucas 217.165.89.72 (talk) 09:14, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Yap too much bullshit about changing his origin; the man was a cherkasian and that was part of their lands before the Tatars and turks sattled there; the name is famous between Cherkasians; every second man is called Bibars and they aren't Turks. With all respect to the Turks and all other nations 2A00:F28:FF4A:3548:1:0:DDD:A4BD (talk) 17:25, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Baybars is a Turkish name, it has no meaning in Circassian. The historical Sultan Baybars spoke Kipchak Turkish. The Caucasus was invaded by various Turkic tribes hundreds of years before the 12th century - beginning with the invasion of the Huns, later the Avars, Khazars, Oghuz and many others, hence every single Caucasian is heavily mixed with ancient Turks. If you drive through regions of the Caucasus these days, you will see that the Turanid-type people predominate, the cultures simply merged very early on. 46.114.170.173 (talk) 03:46, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Physical Appearance

the current description seems to "white wash" Sultan Baibars as a caucasian. He was of Turkic Asian descent and likely either completely East Asian in appearance or perhaps Eurasian. Sumaiyahle (talk) 23:17, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:No original research. R Prazeres (talk) 23:21, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Lead image

I'm recommending in this edit that the lead image be replaced with an image of a coin that actually comes from Baybars' time, following the example of almost every other lead image in Mamluk sultan articles (minus some of the later ones for whom near-contemporary depictions exist), as well as in Ayyubid sultan articles, Abbasid caliph articles, etc.

The bust outside the Egyptian Military Museum ([1]) is a modern fictional depiction, and per the examples I just mentioned, we rarely use such depictions in the lead of a historical subject when we have contemporary depictions or associated objects available. I would argue they're uninformative and somewhat frivolous, and any image of a contemporary object depicting Baybars or his name (e.g. objects with inscriptions, emblems, etc) would be more appropriate for a history article.

Better yet, an image of literally the same bust is also included in the "Legacy" section, where it is given clearer context and is more relevant to the theme of the section. There's no need to show the same bust twice, and the one in the infobox is the least useful.

There are multiple images of coins available in Wiki Commons and I don't have a strong preference for one, so if there's no disagreement on this general idea, feel free to pick any other good-quality example. Additionally, the British Museum has at least one coin explicitly attributed to Baybars that can be viewed [2] or here, and the images appear to be freely-licensed (but please double-check). R Prazeres (talk) 05:16, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Duplicate content at Zahiri dynasty

@18Carlox32: The new Zahiri dynasty article appears to be mostly or entirely a copy-paste of content from this article, plus the shorter Al-Said Barakah and Solamish articles. If there is any information there that is not covered here and that is reliably sourced and cited, please add it to this article and/or to other relevant existing articles. The history of the period is also covered at Mamluk Sultanate and (in less detail) at Bahri Mamluks, so we do not need up to four different articles covering the same things; see WP:CONTENTFORK. The term "Zahiri", which is merely used sometimes to denote a small subset of the Bahri Mamluks, does not need its own article.

I've redirected that title here; alternatively, it could be redirected to Bahri Mamluks. If there is a good argument for creating a separate article, please propose it here or at Talk:Mamluk Sultanate by following the guidelines at WP:SPLIT. R Prazeres (talk) 00:54, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

PS: And as a reminder, Baybars' sons lasted barely two years before Qalawun came to power, so they are not so much a dynasty as a failed attempt to make one (e.g. see Petry's brief description of the episode here). R Prazeres (talk) 01:20, 19 March 2024 (UTC)