Talk:Battle of Alcácer Quibir

message: This is an article badly in need of attention.  There are not factual details (which exist) beside the legend.
"The Portuguese army was small. According to the battle legend, young King Sebastião promised to his men that the cross would win against the crescent and that they didn't need to fight: He could kill every Moor on Earth by himself. The soldiers ran away from the Plaza of the city, and after a couple of hours, when they came back to Alcacer Quibir, neither their king nor the Moors were there. The battle was won by the Moors." --> this must be part of a legend!
lots of issues  | leave me a message 09:21, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

message: I'm not quite certain if this article is quite neutral, or at least very Encylopaedic.  I agree that it needs attention.
I agree about NPOV problems. This article shows a bias against the Portuguese- and the mention of "regime change" is completely unnecessary.
As the originator of the basic form this article has had since 11 November 2005 (just look in the history to see what a lamentable state it was in before then) I strongly deny any personal anti-Portuguese bias. Quite the reverse: my partner is half-Portuguese and Portugal is one of my favourite countries of all those I have ever visited. If there is bias in the article it is carried over from my principal English-language source (detailed at the foot of the article); but it does not seem possible to represent the campaign as anything other than unwise, and the battle as a disaster for Portugal. I was surprised that I could not find a viable source for this major battle later than the mid-19th century, and if anyone can contribute better, updated and more detailed information I wish they would do so. Some people have made some valuable additions but I agree that plenty more needs to be done on this entry – especially perhaps from the Moorish side – and I know I am not competent to do it. 
Re ‘regime change’: the term, as applied to the 16th century, is of course anachronistic, but it seems a useful shorthand description for what Sebastian was trying to do: replace one ruler with another whom he hoped would be more sympathetic or pliable to his cause. If anyone has a better way of expressing this let them do so.Cenedi 13:57, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV? 

message: shouldnt the name of this battle in this article and the name of this battle in the Campaignbox Reconquista be the same?
Please see:
Putting this article under "Reconquista" is puzzling, at least. Doesn't the expression mean specifically the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, which ended with the taking of Granada in 1492? And, if Alcácer Quibir was "Reconquista", why not the taking of Ceuta, Tangiers, and many other town during the 15th and 16th centuries? Nuno Gabriel Cabral 18:15, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Completely agree. How can a country reconquest something that was never part of its territory? Joaopais 23:43, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm still reluctant to take matters into my own hands, since I don't who put Alcácer Quibir under Reconquista and why. If in, say, three more days any kind of comment or explanation is not given, I'll correct it. Nuno Gabriel Cabral 09:54, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name of Battle 

message: i couldnt find any information about Ottoman Empire. Actually, Battle of Three Kings also fighted by Ottoman Turks. Morocco was a vassale state of Ottoman Empire and were supported by Ottoman Troops in Algeria. The moroccan Emperor has also asked help to Turks. Rasmazan Pasha the beylerbeyi of Algeria make the war decisitive. The book A history of the Maghrib in the Islamic period by Jamil M. Abun-Nasr page 214.
i made a few changes today, i couldnt find any information about ramazan pasha in english but wel something in french wiki, as we know algeria speaks now french so i put an link to that website.. by the way moroccan cavaly were trained by turks because the moroccan king al malik was an ottoman commander for a long time i read somewhere, also canons were at the same style used same as the battle of mohac ....  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.82.212.81 (talk) 16:04, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reconquista? 

message: After a good faith and unsuccessful attempt at finding sources for the Ottoman involvement I've removed them as participants. The Ottomans were involved, in some unspecified way, in the re-enthronement of Abdelmalik (which was 2 years before this battle), but I found no source mentioning them as combatants in this battle (Notably Britannica does not mention them at all). --Tachfin (talk) 03:38, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I skipped through some Turkish sources. Even though they are eager to claim that the victory belonged to Ottomans, there provide no source whatsoever, not even untrustworthy ones. I guess you are right. Ottomans were indirectly involved, or events unraveled too fast for Ottomans to react. Caglarkoca (talk) 01:41, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ottomans 

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thread_title: File:Flag of Morocco 1258 1659.svg Nominated for speedy Deletion

message: Eu El-Rei
according to your source it's 18000 dead from both sides. not from the Moroccan side alone. therefore we will have to change it. or maybe try to bring another source. also it says "according to Mendonça", who was a portuguese soldier at that time, therefore not muslim chroniclers. 
"Segundo Jerónimo de Mendonça morreram 18.000 muçulmanos, embora este valor respeite, por certo, ao total
de baixas dos dois lados. Subtraindo-lhe o total de cristão mortos (8-11.000), ficamos com um mínimo de 7.000 muçulmanos
mortos."
I propose to either leave it unknown in the Moroccan side, as there are no reliable sources that gives us the exact number, or put 7000 and "portuguese sources" underneath it.
--AZSH (talk) 01:32, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  casualties. 

message: Based on the review of sources I've discussed in this section above (see also the reference list at the end of this section), I am removing "Ottoman Empire" for now from the list of belligerents/combatants in the infobox since no source, with the confusing exception of Fromherz (see comments above), mentions a Janissary or Ottoman army being present at the battle. From the perspective of both a general and an academic reader, including "Ottoman Empire" or "Ottoman Algeria" would mislead readers into assuming the opposite, and therefore does not improve reader understanding as per the description of this parameter at Template:Infobox military conflict. Ottoman indirect support for Abd al-Malik can be more helpfully explained in the main text itself; I've already added the beginnings of that in a new section. As per MOS:INFOBOX, the infobox is meant to summarize the basic facts of the article; it is inappropriate to add information there that misleads readers as to the content of the article itself. Further explanation:
* What is supported is that Abd al-Malik reorganized his army along Ottoman lines and recruited foreign Turkish and Ottoman officers into his army, and even Ahmad al-Mansur continued this afterwards. Abun-Nasr makes that clear, as does Rivet and many others. Both sides (Portuguese and Moroccan) included foreigners as part of their army in 1578.
* What is not supported clearly is the claim that the Ottoman army or a division of the Ottoman army was fighting alongside the Saadians. This is a major point and yet the claim is not made by the well-cited (i.e. cited as references by multiple other authors) and detailed academic accounts of the battle, which review in full detail the forces present and the historical sources used. It's also neither explicitly nor implicitly mentioned by any other relevant academic source. (Addendum: One of those sources, Cory's 2016 book, also contradicts this more directly, stating that the battle was "won without direct Ottoman assistance.") The exception is one encyclopedic entry by Fromherz, which by contrast is a generalist reference that doesn't lay out arguments to explain its inconsistencies or novelties vis-à-vis the rest of the literature (including its own bibliography, which cites Bovill too). Even Abun-Nasr, who has been quoted above in support of this claim, does not in fact say this anywhere. If he meant to say this, he would have said so; it would be WP:OR (see WP:SYNTHESIS in particular) to infer extra conclusions that he doesn't explicitly support. As for Grant's "1001 Battles that Changed History", it is neither precise enough to contradict other sources nor is it a specialist reference of similar weight (see WP:SCHOLARSHIP about the priority of peer-reviewed research and mainstream scholarship).
* As per WP:ONUS, it is up to editors to show that something merits inclusion or merits inclusion in a particular way. I'm arguing that as per WP:EXCEPTIONAL and WP:WEIGHT, a claim that is unusual in the context of the entirety of available academic sources so far requires more than one general reference for support; in this case, it would need explicit and precise academic sources that clearly show that this is a reasonably established (minority or majority) perspective among scholars (again, see WP:SCHOLARSHIP), and in that case the full range of sources and their inconsistencies can be explicitly included for readers to judge for themselves, as per WP:NPOV. Cheers, R Prazeres (talk) 18:47, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: PS: I should mention, because it will be lost in the long discussion above, that I think the Fromherz quote, previously cited on the page, should still be included in a footnote somewhere on the page, so that readers are aware of it. I leave others to decide either way. R Prazeres (talk) 19:01, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not edit-warring: I've made a single edit in this specific issue and referred editors to this complete explanation with multiple new sources, as one can do in WP:BRD. You've frankly been a little disparaging from the beginning of this discussion and I agree, I'm no longer interested in dragging on like this. I'm happy to engage in a new RfC with other editors, as needed. Thanks, R Prazeres (talk) 21:10, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: April 2021 edit

message: This issue is open for all editors to weigh in. I posted a request for third opinion first, but no volunteer was forthcoming, so I think it's sensible to move on to a Request for Comment (RfC), as was already suggested earlier by M.Bitton. The aim is to solicit from the community a wider consensus on how to proceed with regards to the issues above. I'll additionally publish a notice of it on the Ottoman Empire, Morocco, and Portugal WikiProject pages (other suggestions also welcome).</br> 
I'd like the RfC to be based one or two questions like this: "1. Was the Ottoman Empire a participant in this battle? 2. How should information on this question be presented in the article?", or something to that effect. I think it should remain as open-ended question as much as possible (not a this-or-that choice), but I'm concerned about making it not clear or concise enough for a productive discussion. So feedback on how the question(s) should be formulated is welcome here. R Prazeres (talk) 22:11, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Feedback to prepare RfC

message: Hello 2A02:A445:FAD3:1:618C:48D2:62EC:6E28 (talk) 16:42, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hello 

message: Rifles in the 16th century? I doubt this. Rifles only appeared after the Napoleon wars - early 19th century - to my knowledge. The weapons were probably muskettes or similar smoothbore and muzzleloading firearms.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.191.188.253 (talk) 05:58, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  "infantry armed with rifles" it states 

message: Please man who ever in charge of this page please accept those changes that i added...those changes are in the Arabic and the French version also they are mentioned in the "Strength"... CappuccinoSs (talk) 13:43, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adding supporters: 

message: @M.Bitton Why do you think that the Mercenaries deserve to be in the belligerent list? The guidelines state that: "this is most commonly the countries whose forces took part in the conflict" DavidDijkgraaf (talk) 01:02, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: The guideline also says that belligerent stands for combatants (which include the mercenaries). M.Bitton (talk) 01:03, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it states that if you want to include other parties than countries it should improve the readers understanding. In this period every army consisted of large amounts of mercenaries, and it is not common practice on wikipedia to include all the nationalities present in an army. Why do that here? DavidDijkgraaf (talk) 01:13, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: It does improve the readers understanding. As for the other articles, feel free to add mercenaries to them (if you can source the info). M.Bitton (talk) 01:18, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

text: If there's no hard restriction here, I don't see any reason to remove this brief additional context. Most armies included mercenaries, but in this case it's a little more notable because the Portuguese king tried to turn the invasion into an international crusading endeavor, and some countries allowed volunteers to participate accordingly. So I believe it's of interest to give a quick summary of these participants. R Prazeres (talk) 06:19, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mercenaries in infobox