Talk:Mansa Muhammad

Requested move 4 April 2022

Mohammed ibn Gao → Muhammad ibn Qu – The spelling Muhammad ibn Qu reflects the spelling most commonly used in reliable sources. Niane (1959, in French) calls him Mamadou and his father Gao; Niane (1984) calls him Muḥammad and his father Kaw; Person (1981) calls him Muhammad and his father Qu; Levtzion (1963, 1980) call him Muḥammad and his father Qū; Levtzion and Hopkins (2000) call him Muḥammad b. Qū; Fauvelle (2018) calls him Muhammad; Gomez (2018) calls him Muḥammad b. Qū; and Canós-Donnay (2019) calls him Muhammad and his father Qu (note that "b." is just an abbreviated transliteration of بن, which the MOS says should be transliterated "ibn" on Wikipedia). The Arabic spelling of his father's name is evidently قو (both back-transliterated from Levtzion and Hopkins 2000 and taken from [1]), for which the strict transliteration is Qū or Qw, and of course his own name is simply the name Muhammad. "Mansa Muhammad" would also be a possible title. Ornithopsis (talk) 20:28, 4 April 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. Adumbrativus (talk) 03:07, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. A Google Scholar search suggests that ibn Gao, not ibn Qu, is the common name. It is also consistent with Gao (mansa). BilledMammal (talk) 09:31, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

  Most of the Google Scholar results for "Mohammad ibn Gao" you linked there are for Wikipedia mirrors, which hardly can be used to justify Wikipedia's usage being correct. Note that I also submitted a move request for Qu/Gao, based on the same reasoning. "Mansa Mohammed" gets six results (excluding two wiki mirrors) and "Mansa Muhammad" gets thirteen results (excluding three wiki mirrors). "Mansa Qu" gets 33 results total, and "Mansa Gao" gets 4 results.

  As noted, the only scholarly source I have found to tranlisterate قو as "Gao" is a 1959 French source, and at least six sources transliterate it as "Qu". I can add Thornton (2012) to the "Qu"/"Muhammad b. Qu" club, so actually it's at least seven. Per WP:MOSAR, we should use the transcription that is most common in English reliable sources (which is Qu), or if there is not a clear common name, the basic transcription (which is Qu).

  The reason for the scarcity of results for "Muhammad ibn Qu" is fourfould. One, scholarly sources often abbreviate ibn as b., so "Muhammad ibn Qu" overlooks results for "Muhammad b. Qu. Two, Google Scholar distinguishes between Qu and Qū, even though they're the same for our purposes. Three, many of the sources to discuss this figure are books, which are not as reliably indexed by Google Scholar as academic papers. Four, usage of the full patronymic Muhammad ibn Qu seems to be less common than calling him Mansa Muhammad. So perhaps Mansa Muhammad would be a preferable title? I've got a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Royalty and Nobility about whether "Mansa" should be included in the titles of articles on rulers of the Mali Empire.

  TL;DR: Pretty much the only sources supporting the spelling "Gao" are one French paper from 1959 (republished in 1975) and Wikipedia mirrors. Ornithopsis (talk) 18:24, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

• Comment I moved this page to Mansa Muhammad while processing the RM at Talk:Mansa Qu; three scholarly sources I found refer to him as "Mansa Muhammad/Mohammad" [2][3][4] so I jumped the gun without noticing that there was a pending RM. Since I (obviously) believe this is the optimal title, I'll leave it at that and close the RM. Should anyone disagree, please ping me and I'll reopen. No such user (talk) 12:25, 19 April 2022 (UTC)