Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abdul Raheem Glaiati

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 keep. MBisanz ^talk 02:18, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Abdul Raheem Glaiati

Abdul Raheem Glaiati (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Contested PROD. There is no evidence of non-trivial coverage in multiple, reliable sources that would satisfy WP:N or allow a full, neutral biography to be written about this individual. In addition, in its current form at least, it also fails WP:V. As I stated on the talk page of the user who removed the PROD, I did the obvious Google/Google News/Google Scholar searches, then a JSTOR search that can locate articles in many English language publications as far back as the 1800s (as someone who could be classified as an intellectual, I felt that it might be an appropriate search), then a search of University of Texas libraries (obviously a "random" library so to speak, but one with a very significant collection). I would search in Arabic as well but, as no sources exist (that I have been able to locate) that include the spelling of his name in Arabic, I cannot do so. A good faith search has not detected any sources in English and until the name is transliterated back into proper Arabic, English is all that we've got. Cheers, CP 17:48, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

• delete unfortunately. I suspect that one could find sources sufficient to establish notability if one could get access to the egyptian national archives of newspapers from the early 20th century and spoke arabic well enough to understand what was there. If someone ever bothers to do that, they're welcome to re-create (and after all, i'm just assuming stuff could be found). As it stands now, no reliable sources to establish notability.Bali ultimate (talk) 20:31, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
• Comment - I poked around and found hints of historical significance (if not notability proper). According to penatlas.org, the paper (of which he was the first editor) was an important outlet for literature at the time in question. The current text on the WP stub is lifted directly from here, though (or is it the other way around?) Jlg4104 (talk) 20:41, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Other way around. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs/editor review)}~ 23:00, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

• Weak keep on the basis that editor of a major newspaper is notability, even if little else can be found becauseo f cultural bias. DGG (talk) 23:45, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
• Delete Wanting, hoping, and believing subject should be notable does not make it so. I couldn't find any sources. ChildofMidnight (talk) 01:01, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
• Strong Keep and Move to Abdul Raheem Glailati The reason that sources cannot be found is that his name was Glailati not Glaiati. The original contributor was FrancisTyers who was a significant contributor from December 2004 to September 2006. A review of his edits indicate a solid understanding of Wikipedia policies. At the time of his edits, as someone has noted elsewhere, there was not the stress upon sources that we see today. It looks as though the source for this was part of the library research (not OR) that FrancisTyers found when writing the article on Sudanese literature. In back-tracking that, I found the article that provided this basic information. It was: El-Nour, Eiman (1997) "The Development of Contemporary Literature in Sudan" Research in African Literatures Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 150-162 which is commercially available electronically from JSTOR, EBSCO or Questa. It says in part on page 151, "The editor who played a significant role in the development of Sudanese published literature, however, was Abdul Raheem Glailati, who was a well-known writer and poet. Under his editorship the newspaper flourished and reached a wide readership. He welcomed contributions from established as well as unknown poets and writers. Glailati's poems were often recited during special religious occasions, like the Prophet's birthday celebrations. In 1911, he printed a collection of his poems in a pamphlet that he entitled Masamat al-rabf (Spring breezes). This was the very title he was to use in 1923 when he published a collection of revolutionary, nationalist poetry, selections of which were also read on the occasion of the Prophet's birthday. The public acclaim that greeted any poetic composition by Glailati caused the colonizers a great deal of concern. In order to avoid any stirrings of nationalist feelings in the country, Glailati was arrested in 1917 and deported to Egypt following the publication of an article in which he described the poverty and misery of the Sudanese people." Now that he is correctly identified, additional library research should provide additional substantiation, if it is required. --Bejnar (talk) 05:10, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Question Before I'm willing to withdraw (contingent on, of course, all the others who voted delete), I need to clear up a bit of confusion. I read that excerpt on jstor and it looks promising, but it does not particularly solve the issue that I brought up when nominating this article. I repeated all of the above searches with the term "Abdul Raheem Glailati" and did not find any more sources except for, of course, the one that Bejnar has provided. The source also does not clarify the spelling of his name in Arabic, which does not allow me to search in that language and see what sources might be available. Furthermore, it raises a big question: if he is as important as El-Nour has suggested, why aren't there more easily available sources to show this? I'm sure that you will agree that there are many, many individuals noted in a single journal article that are touted as being notable and important, but that does not make it so. I really do appreciate all the work that Bejnar has done and commend him for it, but I am personally even more convinced that he does not merit an article upon seeing this. Before, I was a little weary that I had missed something and uncertain; now that I see what has been missed, it has not solved the grand sourcing riddle. After all, there is not one Google, Google Scholar or UT Library hit under this name. So I don't mean to be uncivil, but this article is, in my opinion, far from saved as has been suggested below.
  • Now, having been a jerk, I do want to emphasize that one or two more sources like the one above would convince me that this individual merits an article. Until I see them, however, I do not believe in keeping an article based on theoretical sources, as that quickly becomes a very slippery slope. Cheers, CP 06:39, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately for electronic sources, he was publishing in Arabic in the 1910s and 1920s in Sudan and Egypt. I have listed two probable sources on his talk page under Additional sources, but I am nowhere near a large library and I do not read Arabic. Are you CP near a large library that might have the N.E.A., Journal of research on North East Africa or near Harvard which has Al-Fikr al-Sudani: Usuluhu wa tatawwuruhu (Sudanese thought: its origins and development)? I strongly suspect that he appears in both of those publications. He might well be in the Historical Dictionary of the Sudan which has at least three separate editions, but again I don't have access to that. I would request your assistance in tracking down these other sources, or alternatively, your forbearance for a couple of months, as tracking down these hard copy sources is not a matter of a few days, unless you are in Boston. --Bejnar (talk) 20:10, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Small addendum: One of the purposes of the Wikipedia was to bring information to the people via the Internet precisely because it was not readily available electronically. So the lack of availability of electronic sources should hold no weight for pre-Internet activities. With regard to having searched the UT catalog, I hope that you don't predicate notability upon a person having a book written about them. --Bejnar (talk) 20:50, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I believe that my point is being entirely missed here. Wikipedia is here to reproduce, in an encyclopedic fashion, material and information that is already available. It is not here to make exciting new discoveries of people we really ought to know more about but don't. I'm a "Middle Eastern" scholar, I would love to create articles on dozens of individuals that I think were important to the development of the reason, but without the sources, I can't. Yours could be a never-ending process. Those books may establish his notability, then again they may not. Maybe there's other books at Harvard, at other libraries, in other countries or on a cave in the moon. There always could be material somewhere in some capacity. Wikipedia, however, is only for what we can verify. It is not my job, nor desire, to spend all my time tracking down sources for you to prove that this person is not notable. It is the onus of the person who added the entry in the first place to prove it is notable. If you later find that information is available, no one is going to salt the page and prevent you from recreating it. I am not going to go an unreasonable amount out of my way to prove that this individual isn't notable when the original creator did not do the same to prove that they are notable. I could go on, but I think I'll stop here; people reviewing this deletion discussion I think can decide for themselves what standards and visions they hold for Wikipedia. Yours and mine are simply different, and that doesn't necessarily make either of us wrong or right. Cheers, CP 21:16, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

• Strong keep per source. I am very glad that Bejnar has been able to save this article.--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 05:50, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

The source establishes enough to keep the article and expand when we find more sources. There is no reason to delete an article that is reliably sourced on a notable topic.--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 22:00, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

• Keep I created this as part of the work on "combatting systematic bias", as an aside during my research for the (still pitiful) article on Sudanese literature. Thanks for Bejnar for adding the source, which I think I probably found but didn't add. I'll take another look through JSTOR etc. to see if I can find more info. Just because there is little information in English does not mean that something or someone is not-notable. - Francis Tyers · 15:24, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
• cmt i applaud your intent and efforts francis. But the problem isn't a bias against arabic/other foreign language sources. The problem is the absence of citations to establish notability. That is, it's a bias against unsourced info that isn't verifiable as a consequence. It's my assumption that sources are theoretically findable (egyptian archives etc...) but absent someone going and finding them, well, you get my drift.Bali ultimate (talk) 16:08, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
• Comment: I found the following in ``Mohammed Nuri El-Amin (1986) "Britain, The 1924 Sudanese Uprising, and the Impact of Egypt on the Sudan". International Journal of African Historical Studies 19(2)``

The above view, though most flattering to arden Sudanese nationalists, still flies in the face of much testimony to the contrary. In the first place, there is enough evidence to prove that the Egyptian nationalists had been active in the first stirring of nationalism in the Sudan as early as 1912 or 1913. For instance it is generally agreed that Ra'id al-Sudan, which appeared in 1913 as an Arabic supplement to the Greek-owned Sudan Herald, provided a forum which socially and politically aware Sudanese of all generations used to air their feelings, frustrations, and aspirations, as well as to reflect in the very general, vague and indirect ways the sort of modern Muslim-Arab society to which they aspired.[13] It is also generally accepted that the real moving spirit behind all that was its editor -- 'Abd al-RAhim Qulaylat, a Syrian who worked at the Railways Department and a literary figure of some renown at the time in the Sudan. Although Qulaylat certainly played a role in the ferment the real fore was a scarcely known Egyptian nationalist -- Muhammad Tawfiq Wahba[14]

13. For an assessment of the role of Ra'id al-Sudan in assisting the budding nationalist movement, see Mahjub Muhammad Salih, al-Sahafa al-Sudaniyya fi niaf Qarn (Sudanese Press in Half a Century), 1903--1953 (Khartoum, 1971), 38--48

There is more, but I'll paste it on the talk page. - Francis Tyers · 17:27, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

• Comment Another source: Heather J. Sharkey (1999) "A Century in Print: Arabic Journalism and Nationalism in Sudan 1899-1999", International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 31. pp. 534-549 (see talk page) - Francis Tyers · 22:55, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd say all of these sources, if only partial, are more than enough for a keep and expand.--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 23:30, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

• Keep. Enough sources have been presented to make the subject notable. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:16, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
• Keep per the additional sources added to the article and listed on its talk page. I also find Tyers' argument about systematic bias persuasive, not as a reason for keeping an unsourced article but for keeping one that is sourced somewhat sketchily. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:24, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
• Keep User:Bejnar and User:F-m-t have clearly established that the article is sourcable and the subject is likely sail above the notability guidelines. Actually sourcing it may take some time and effort given the subject's country, language and non-recentism, but in the meantime it would be better to keep the article and have editors work on it. Abecedare (talk) 04:37, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp | talk to me 00:01, 10 January 2009 (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.