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October 8

Ottoman 15th century Molla Lutfî, Pl. help confirm

Draft:Molla Lutfi was a 15th century Ottoman scholar, Pl. help confirm following:

1) tr:Molla Lutfî is different from Lutfi (court official) ?

2) Date and year of execution, RS sources I came across seem to give 1494 (possibly December 24) as date of execution where as tr:Molla Lutfî seem to give January 23, 1495 as date of death please help confirm which is more likely to be correct one?

3) Molla Lutfi was executed at Hippodrome of Constantinople or Covered Hippodrome?

4) The Reference number 9 in "Crafting History: Essays on the Ottoman World and Beyond in Honor of Cemal Kafadar. Germany, Academic Studies Press, 2023." refers to a letter compiled in Tokapi Palace Museum archive E 8101/1 which had complained that Lutfi to have had stolen nefis books from collection of late Sinan Pasha, who was mentor to Lutfi. A corroborating ref is preferred saying wording used in the letter meant 'stolen' since late Sinan Pasha was a close mentor of Lutfi.

5) Last but not least, I would also request list of Molla Lufti's books with Arabic and roman script nomenclatures and translations of the names, if possible.

Bookku (talk) 03:06, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bookku, the difference between 24 December 1494 and 23 January 1495 is too great for solely Julian–Gregorian conversion to account for, but that may be part of the discrepancy. I've noticed that English language sources seem to prefer Julian where other languages tend to prefer Proleptic Gregorian. If you determine this is part of the problem, you may wish to include the other calendar's date in a footnote like we did at Zhu Yuanzhang to prevent people from changing it to be "consistent" with their own language sources. Folly Mox (talk) 18:02, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why would any reference use Proleptic Gregorian? That's saying, "this is the date it would have been if Pope Gregory had decreed the new calendar earlier than he actually did - except he didn't". There's obviously a case for converting Julian dates to Gregorian in cases where the country concerned had not yet adopted the Gregorian calendar; that can apply from 1582 onwards. But going backwards from 1582 makes no sense; the new calendar was not retrospective, and Julian dates right up to Wednesday 4 October 1582 are correct and should not be converted. That that date was immediately followed by Thursday 15 October 1582 as the first day of the new Gregorian calendar was just a result of correcting the discrepancies that had built up over 15 centuries. There was always meant to be a disconnection, the famous 10-day gap (which increased every century the longer it took for countries to convert). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:36, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Cultures that did not start out with the Julian calendar (Chinese calendar, Islamic calendar, e.g.) have a choice to make when converting pre-Gregorian dates to use a Western calendar, and many sources make the reasonable choice of using Proleptic Gregorian for consistency and ease of calculation rather than having to remember and account for the 1582 reform. Folly Mox (talk) 11:44, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) In the 15th-century sources, which are written in Ottoman Turkish, all dates are given in the Islamic calendar. I suppose that present-day scholars, translating such dates to a form accessible to their readership, see no reason to use another calendar that was current in the 15th century but is antiquated now. --Lambiam 11:47, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I get what you are both saying. I suppose it makes a kind of sense if those sources are considered in isolation. But the moment you introduce events in other countries around the same times, and those countries were using the Julian calendar, hey presto! there's an instant mismatch between the dates, making it seem as if one event preceded the other by up to 10 days in real time when in fact they were coincident. That seems less than useful as an aid to scholarship. Also, the conversion they use seems to be based on the view that Julian dates up to 4 October 1582 were somehow "inaccurate" and need to be corrected. That's just not so. Yes, the calendar itself got out of synch over a period of centuries, which is why Gregory decreed a new one - but the labels that were actually given to days before then (i.e. the dates) were the ones that the entire Western world used, the only official and correct ones (which were NOT retrospectively adjusted by Gregory's reform), and to fiddle with them from the lofty perspective of 20th-21st century scholarship seems somewhat wrong-headed, imo. It may sometimes be helpful to make it clear that, e.g. 15 July 1374 was a date in the Julian calendar. That's the solution, if one were required. But to convert that to 25 July in the Proleptic Gregorian is a step too far, and in the wrong direction. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:36, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bookku, according to Lutfi (court official), [Lutfi's] letter was "written in the middle of the month of Cemazi the Second in the year three and seventy and nine hundred²" which roughly translates to August 1565-6. (Where ² is a malformed ^[2] citing "Casale pg 70", and Casale authored two works cited...) Anyway this seems to exclude identity between the two subjects (they also have different Wikidata QIDs, although no overlapping authority control IDs to help verify). Folly Mox (talk) 11:55, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also the tr.wp article links Hippodrome of Constantinople (technically, tr:Sultanahmet Meydanı; I just checked the language switcher), in re your question 3. Folly Mox (talk) 12:01, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) The article on the scholar on the Turkish Wikipedia identifies the place of execution unambiguously as the Hippodrome of Constantinople. I don't think the Covered Hippodrome was then still extant. --Lambiam 12:08, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Gregorian calendar date January 23, 1495 corresponds to Julian calendar date January 14, 1495 or 1494. The uncertainty in the year is due to the fact that the new year did not everywhere start on January 1st; see Julian calendar § New Year's Day. In England, March 24, 1494 was followed by March 25, 1495. Both dates fall in April 1495 with Gregorian reckoning. --Lambiam 05:20, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Date conversions seem bit confusing to me. Trying to study and understand. Bookku (talk) 05:30, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What's confusing is the use of the proleptic Gregorian calendar. If sources actually employ this, they're doing a disservice to their readers, imo. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:18, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]