Talk:Pact of Umar

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What??How is this a fictitious article? this treaty is quoted in Muir, Mualana Ali, and several other direct primary sources. --RafiMando (talk) 03:44, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mr. Spencer

With no credentials or academic backing, William Spencer's opinion has no backing. To generalize a statement over a 1200 year period is ridiculus. Besides the fact that from when the Covenant of Omar was written, Palestine belonged to several countries including Rome, Syria, the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and various others. Eframgoldberg (talk) 09:41, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with Pact of Umar II

I propose to merge this article with Pact of Umar II. After factcheck it looks that there never were two pacts, just different versions of the alleged pact of Umar (or call it: covenant) ascribed to either Umar. I stumbled over a quotation for the "Pact of Umar II" which gives the text referred to in the article but clearly ascribing it to Umar bin Khattab. Checking on readily available material like Comments on the Pact of Umar I take it from here that obviously different versions were attributed to either Umar. Is there any scholarly comment trying to connect any of these different versions (be it the more irenic "Jerusalem"-version, be it the hostile "Syria" - version) to one of the 2 historic pesons? I only saw criticism as later fictions which tried to describe later situations..

Once done, also the socalled "Covenant of Ali" could be included for the time being, which is a Shiite version of the "Umar Covenant / Pact" (cf a version referring to Armenians or another version referring to a "Hizqil Di'l-Kafal monastery (German Text)) --Kipala (talk) 18:31, 5 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Do Not Merge

I grew up in the Arab World and the Umar Covenant is well-known and regarded as fact, taught in the history books. There is only one version, attributed to Umar I. This Wikipedia page is the first time I heard of the Umar II Covenant (which is likely bogus), and the first time I heard that the authenticity of the Umar I Covenant is in question. In fact, I dislike the tone of the whole page altogether, using words like "purported" and so forth, with all the references coming from Western works of history. When dealing with history of non-Western parts of the world, the primary historical sources from those regions need to be given priority. The emphasis of the article is also misguided. What is important, in my opinion, is not the nitty-gritty of who wrote the treaty, but what this treaty contains. Regardless of whether Umar wrote it or not, it did carry the force of law for many centuries, through many different Islamic regimes. It was not violated on a wide scale until the Ottoman reforms of AbdelHamid in the middle of the 19th century. Note there is a statement in the text that an "English translation of the text of the treaty is below", but that is not given (I added it). I would be interested in that being on the page. Wikipedia should stick to facts and not opinions.Readlotsof books (talk) 16:38, 11 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Historicity

I have added NPOV Language and Undue tags in Historicity section. My first concern stems from this excerpt

Traditional Islamic accounts of the Muslims' seventh century conquests, including Jerusalem, such as those by historians al-Baladhuri and al-Tabari were written down 200-300 years after the events

When reading the sentence just before this one, it becomes clear the sentence above was written to support the claim that there is some authenticity problem even though there is no sourced content that suggests any linkage, furthermore, there is no sourced evidence that the first Islamic accounts of the Covenant were actually written down 200-300 years after the event.

My second concern is that the whole section has been written to question the authenticity of the document yet there is no source that directly addresses the authenticity of the document. The section title could have been more appropriately titled "Criticism" rather than "Historicity" which misleads the reader into thinking that the lack of authenticity of the document is actually established.

My personal opinion is that the entire section should be removed or alternatively improved to cite some relevant facts of the document's "Historicity", but I've temporarily left it to give other editors a chance to defend their claims. In the meantime, I'm adding NPOV tags. MJC.2012 (talk) 06:06, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]