User talk:Al Ameer son/Mu'awiya

Hi AhmadLX. Responding to your edit summary here. That section is still a work in progress. I know the episode about Abd al-Rahman is disputed. It is mentioned by at least two *relatively* early Muslim traditional sources (Tabari included) that Mu'awiya had Abd al-Rahman poisoned and the reason was his prestigious nobility, military skill and popularity among the Syrians and the consequent threat he posed to Mu'awiya's ambitions for his son's and family's political future. Lammens seems to be alone (I could be mistaken) in linking this with anti-Christian violence in Homs rather than Mu'awiya's intention to remove Abd al-Rahman. I'm aware of Madelung's shortcomings and biases, but he's not the only scholar in the field to be subject to criticism. In general, I'm careful to use him only for factual information (his survey of the political history of Uthman and Ali's caliphates and the First Fitna are very detailed and for me, indispensable) and avoid his anti-Umayyad polemics. One can also argue that Lammens is an apologist for the Umayyads. In any case, Lammens and Wellhausen state Abd al-Rahman posed a danger to Mu'awiya's ambitions for the aforementioned reasons. Wellhausen further states "a Christian physician poisoned him, it was believed, at the instigation of Muawia" which further soured his relations with the Banu Makhzum and Martin Hinds in his EI2 entry on the "Makhzum" also make notes of that and says Mu'awiya's role in the affair was "at least alleged". This is most likely what I will do here (use "alleged") and add a footnote that further discusses the range of opinions about the episode, i.e. Tabari and Mus'ab al-Zubayri's claims, Lammens and Madelung's take, etc.

On a further note, there's a few reasons I'm doing more source attribution in the "Nomination of Yazid as successor" and "War with Byzantium" sections—one of those reasons is that the accounts in the medieval Arabic sources are not entirely consistent and the modern sources are not uniform in their analyses either. --Al Ameer (talk) 18:38, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Al Ameer son for the response. Yes it is fine to present it in a more qualified way as modern sources do. Wellhausen and EI2 entry on Ibn Khalid don't present it as fact. And I'm not saying this on the basis of Lammens, whose pro-Umayyad bias I'm aware of–in fact he is the exact opposite of Madelung; despising Alids and admiring Umayyads, although less reckless in portraying his whims as historical facts. Also see de Goeje's analysis of this claim. AhmadLX-)¯\_(ツ)_/¯) 19:38, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

@AhmadLX: Just read the passage. Interesting and sober analysis. Never explored de Goeje. Wellhausen had given me a bad impression of him and generally Wellhausen is the only "old modern" source I like to use because his work has been recognized as the foundation for modern Western scholarship on the Umayyads; otherwise, I prefer using newer works. I'll try to balance all these perspectives on the Abd al-Rahman incident before moving to mainspace. --Al Ameer (talk) 20:02, 12 August 2019 (UTC)