Talk:Sankoré Madrasah

message: Certain assertions about the early years of this "university" do not appear to be reliable. I believe the article should be tagged for original research. --Ghirla -трёп- 10:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: these aren't assertations or assumptions.  i went throught a lot of trouble finding articles on this subject so the least you could do is read the sources posted below before making silly unfounded statements.  just cuz something seems unreliable due to you not having prior knowledge doesn't make it unreliable.  the only "original" research i did was turn on my computer Scott Free 00:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Although 2 years later, I agree with the comment that a number of items re the Sankore Mosque appear to be original research (per Wiki definition) as reliance on uquestionable sources. In particular, given my own reading in Islamic history, and knowledge of Islamic universities, it strikes me as immediately queer and suspect that the presentation resembles an Anglo Saxon university, etc. This appears largely to be Afrocentrism based on questionable sourcing. A pity given the Mosque has a real history. (collounsbury (talk) 12:22, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Original research?

message: The article covers the school during it's founding and golden age, but what happened to it after that? 220.253.8.29 02:23, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Current status

message: Seems to me somebody knows virtually nuffink about chronology. How can the Sankoré date to 989 A. D., if Timbuktu dates back to the 11th century? Did the mosque come before the settlement? If the author of this nonsense reads the weblink "About Sankoré", he/she will find this year in the quotation from the Tarikh al-Fettakh, but it refers to 989 of Muslim chronology, and this transfers the date of foundation into the 15th century. Ever heard of 622 A. D. = beginning of Muslim chronology? If not, the person in question should leave his/her fingers off an article on Muslim history. 172.176.126.24 09:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Strange chronology

message: timbuktu's been inhabited since at least the 900s and probably long before that.  i'll check out the al-Fettakh doc, but Sankore was already oprating by 1350 so the document's definately wrong if it says that is when Sankore was built.Scott Free 13:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: chrono

message: On the history page an anonymous contributor claims female students were unlikely at a 17th century Muslim university. I can agree with this, but I was writing about the period prior to 1591. But maybe it might be useful to add some details: The article about Sankore University, on which the main author of this article seems to heavily rely, explicitly says „that the intellectual freedom enjoyed in Western Universities was inspired from universities like Sankore and Qurtuba (Muslim Spain) universities“. (http://www.muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=371) This is not surprising, if we are to believe Dr Abd al-Kader Haidara, curator of the Mamma Haidara Library at Timbuktu, a leading institution dedicated to the conservation of Muslim manuscripts. He says that many documents dating back to the time before 1591 cover topics such as women’s rights. (http://www.altmuslim.com/perm.php?id=1908_0_25_0_M - Unearthing The Lost Literary Heritage Of West Africa) We have to keep in mind that no European scholar dared to think about such topics before the end of the 19th century and that women demanding equal rights in the name of liberty were decapitated during the French Revolution in the name of this very political ideal. In contrast to this women among the Massufa Berbers (Tuareg) were entitled to many liberties according to Ibn Battuta. In their traditional culture the female portion of the people is the keeper of old knowledge including the traditonal scripture (tifinagh). As the contributors to Ivan Van Sertima’s book about „The Golden Age of the Moor“ explicitly state, Moorish – i. e. Berber – society gave women the opportunity to „win new freedoms for themselves“, and this included the opportunity to work as „doctors and lawyers and professors“. (See Sertima, Golden Age of the Moor. New Brunswick – London 2006, p. 86 & p. 269) But where could they have acquired their knowledge and their skill unless they were admitted to Muslim universities like the ones mentioned above – in particular to Sankore, which was dominated by Massufa scholars like Ahmad Baba (called „al-Massufi“)?
Frozenqueen 10:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Women at Sankore

message: Part of this article's bibliography includes Ivan Van Sertima's work- and I can't really say that's all too reliable, considering he's such a prominent afrocentrist. Is John G. Jackson even a real historian?
::I believe Van Sertima's work is very credible despite being labeled an afrocentrist.  I haven't run across any good arguments against his findings.  Besides, most far-flung authors (the ones who belong in the looney bin) don't have access to reputable publishers (I.V. Sertima's been published under Random House).  As far as John G. Jackson, I don't know if he is actually a historian (still not sure what the qualifications are for such a title) but his book "Introduction to African Civilizations" is used at my alma mater as required text.  Let's not be hasty and remove or discount sources because they say things out of the norm.  None of the great pioneers in science or literature or philosophy were "mainstream" when they first arrived.Scott Free 01:50, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ivan Van Sertima 

message: At Soman.. Please discuss before making such hasty edits as a lot of work has been done subsequent to your revision.Taharqa 20:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Revert drastic edits

message: Based on the long standing objections to the extent text, the fact that the extent text at time of editing (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sankore_Madrasah&oldid=261576710) was largely based on a non scholarly & promotional source without any clear citations, and that advanced claims that seemed largely based on modern concerns rather than on scholarship, I edited the entry down to more fundamental facts. I note that the French language entry (with editors familiar with the more abundant Fr. lang. primary scholarship in this area) is substantially more modest in its claims. At time of editing the source pages were not available, but the text (esp. re degrees) seemed to be a light edit off of said page, and the same pages seem to have been entirely unscholarly (in comparing with information on other contemporary Islamic universities, re structure -never mind the not yet existant idea of degrees). Further revisions should focus on scholarly fundamentals and confirmed understanding. (collounsbury (talk) 21:01, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit to Encyclo type text