Talk:Ahmed Urabi

message: The following text, from 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica was excised from the article, dismissed (correctly no doubt) as "biased":
:Arabi was born in Lower Egypt in 1839 or 1840 of a fellah family. Having entered the army as a conscript he was made an officer by Said Pasha in 1862, and was employed in the transport department in the Abyssinian campaign of 1875 under Ismail Pasha. A charge of peculation, unproved, was made against him in connexion with this expedition and he was placed on half-pay. During this time he joined a secret society formed by Ali Rubi with the object of getting rid of Turkish officers from the Egyptian army. Arabi also attended lectures at the mosque El Azhar and acquired a reputation as an orator. In 1878 he was employed by Ismail in fomenting a disturbance against the ministry of Nubar, Rivers Wilson and de Blignières, and received in payment a wife from Ismail's harem and the command of a regiment. This increased his influence with the secret society, which, under the feeble government of Tewfik Pasha and the Dual Control, began to agitate against Europeans. In all that followed Arabi was put forward as the leader of the discontented Egyptians; he was in reality little more than the mouthpiece and puppet of abler men such as Ali Rubi and Mahmud Sami. On the 1st of February 1881 Arabi and two other Egyptian colonels, summoned before a court-martial for acts of disobedience, were rescued by their soldiers, and the khedive was forced to dismiss his then minister of war in favour of Mahmud Sami. A military demonstration on the 8th of September 1881, led by Arabi, forced the khedive to increase the numbers and pay of the army, to substitute Sherif Pasha for Riaz Pasha as prime minister, and to convene an assembly of notables. Arabi became under-secretary for war at the beginning of 1882, but continued his intrigues. The assembly of notables claimed the right of voting the budget, and thus came into conflict with the foreign controllers who had been appointed to guard the interests of the bondholders in the management of the Egyptian finances. Sherif fell in February, Mahmud Sami became prime minister, and Arabi (created a pasha) minister of war. Arabi, after a brief fall from office, acquired a dictatorial power that alarmed the British government. British and French warships went to Alexandria at the beginning of June; on the 11th of that month rioting in that city led to the sacrifice of many European lives. Order could only be restored through the intervention of Arabi, who now adopted a more distinctly anti-European attitude. His arming of the forts at Alexandria was held to constitute a menace to the British fleet. On the refusal of France to co-operate, the British fleet bombarded the forts (11th July), and a British force, under Sir Garnet Wolseley, defeated Arabi on the 13th of September at Tel-el-Kebir. Arabi fled to Cairo where he surrendered, and was tried (3rd of December) for rebellion. In accordance with an understanding made with the British representative, Lord Dufferin, Arabi pleaded guilty, and sentence of death was immediately commuted to one of banishment for life to Ceylon. The same sentence was passed on Mahmud Sami and others. After Arabi's exile had lasted for nearly twenty years, however, the khedive Abbas II. exercised his prerogative of mercy, and in May 1901 Arabi was permitted to return to Egypt. Arabi, as has been said, was rather the figurehead than the inspirer of the movement of 1881-1882; and was probably more honest, as he was certainly less intelligent, than those whose tool, in a large measure, he was. The movement which he represented in the eye of Europe, whatever the motives of its leaders, "was in its essence a genuine revolt against misgovernment," (Lord Cromer in Egypt, No. 1, 1905, p. 2.) and it was a dim recognition of this fact which led Arabi to style himself "the Egyptian."
Can anyonne re-edit the information contained here in an acceptable fashion and return it to the article ? --Wetman 21:47, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: ...I am disappointed with the cavalier dismissal of the Encyc. Brit. material in toto.  I would have preferred to have someone identify the exact passages that are supposed to be in error or biased, so an attempt could be made to sort this out item by item.  If that was done or attempted, I'm sorry--I missed it.  The bottom line is that all I get from the Encyc. Brit. article on Xhmed Xrabi is that he was a normal human being who may have been fallible but who worked for a praiseworthy goal, i.e. the independence of his country.  I haven't studied history for 40 years to fill it with plaster saints.  If we must have such figures in our imaginations, I think we miss the reality of history. My heroes are heroes BECAUSE they struggle with themselves at times. Terry J. Carter (talk) 21:02, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  1911 Britannica 

message: I think Ahmed Pasha Arabi may be the same person. If so, these two articles should be merged. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:17, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It was merged.  District Attorney 14:56, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Same person?

message: Wikipedia has articles referring to this man either as Orabi or Urabi.  Is there any evidence that his name was ever spelled in either of these ways at the time?
All the contemporary sources I have seen spell his name Arabi.  That suggests to me that Wikipedia ought to standardise on Arabi.--Toddy1 19:02, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, and have so suggested at WP:RM. The transliteration of Egyptian Arabic is not so well defined as to override English usage. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:35, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd also support the uniform usage (any uniform usage; I have no qualified opinion on the merits). BusterD (talk) 14:26, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

text: In Arabic, the 'a' vowel (fatḥah) often tends towards 'o' after the ayin consonant (ع), and the quoted pronunciation () may well represent Arabic عَرَابِى . Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:58, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Even though Anthony Appleyard's comment is old, I don't want any contributor to be mislead by that misinformation. The Arabi spelling is clearly a mistake by westerners. The rules Anthony suggested are untrue. There are thousands of names and words starting with  in all Arabic dialects, none of them tends to change to any other vowel. His stress marks were also totally wrong. Arabic dialects have no secondary stress and that word's stress is penultimate in all Arabic dialects which have a stress. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 14:20, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The horizontal line above the 'ī' means length, not stress. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 15:19, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I referred to that: (); it has two stresses, an initial primary and a final secondary. Anyway, no problem. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 18:44, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

text: Even though 's comment is old, I don't want any contributor to be misled by that information. It doesn't matter whether it was a mistake or not: Wikipedia clearly uses common English names as the title space and clarifies any mistakes or ambiguities in the running text. [Not a linguist, but I'd wager it's not a mistake at all: it was probably a convention to, e.g., use some variant of Standard Arabic or even Turkish (where he's apparently still known as Arabi).] — LlywelynII 12:01, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

text: That said, Toddy1 was wrong that the period spelling predominates: it's actually most commonly Urabi is current sources, which is what we use. — LlywelynII 12:01, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Arabi or Urabi or Orabi

message: When the spelling was adjusted, it was pointed out that he is often called Arabi Pasha, which is quite true.  I have no opinion on this, which runs into the problem: what titles do we include for Muslim grandees? For example, we use Köprülü Mehmet Pasha but Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed for his son. Discuss? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:48, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If the general rule isn't that such titles should never be used unless the simplest disambiguation available, it should be.  In this case, there should not be redlinks at any of these: Köprülü Mehmet and Mehmet Köprülü and Koprulu Mehmet and Mehmet Koprulu.  There should be as either a disambiguation page at one with a redirect from the others, or a redirect from all to either the above Köprülü Mehmed Pasha or Mehmet Fuat Köprülü, with either disambiguation hatlines to each other or to the disambiguation page at both of those articles.  Gene Nygaard (talk) 16:47, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

text: nor redlinks at Köprülü Mehmed and Mehmed Köprülü and Koprulu Mehmed and Mehmed Koprulu, after I see that your link actually went through a redirect. The only one of the eight which does exist now redirects to the pasha. Gene Nygaard (talk) 16:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Oppose move, keep at Ahmed Arabi.  I support use of given name (Ahmed) over title (Pasha).  The given name should appear in all cases except those in which it is almost never used; the titles should not appear in article names unless further disambiguation is necessary after the given name is applied, and other options including parenthetical disambiguations should be considered then.  No strong opinion on the spelling of "Arabi", which is what I would go with absent any further relevant evidence of different usage in English.  Gene Nygaard (talk) 17:02, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Requested move

message: With regard to the question of which transliteration system to use, let me say this.  Anyone who has studied Russian, Chinese, Japanese or Mideast history for very long has seen "ruling" transliteration systems come and go. A case can be made for using the English letter which comes nearest the foreign letter in the alphabet, as when we say "Romanov" or possibly "Arabi."  A case can also be made for using the English letter closest to the sound of the foreign letter, as when we write "Romanoff" or Urabi/Orabi.  I think there is also a tension, in which neither side can be blamed, between those who want somehow to preserve the eccentricities (meant non-pejoratively) of the other language and those who realize that John Q. Public's willingness to strive for accurate reproduction of an entirely different "sound palate" is probably limited.  I don't see anything in any of these positions that is nefarious or imperialistic or racist.  
I spent some short period of time in Egypt, trying to converse in Arabic.  I can say that the first vowel in Xrabi is truly neither an O nor a U, but something in between, and to that extent, the heated argument over how to transliterate it is after all rather off the target.  Oh, and I didn't think the hotel clerks were terrorists because they asked to see my "Bassbort."  Every language has built-in limitations in its ability to faithfully mimic another, so can we please all calm down about the imperialist agenda of saying "Arabi?"
In closing, may I say that the furor over this article surprises me in the light of the one on Aga Khan III, which IMO contains more whitewash than ink.  I hope we're not headed toward an Xhmed Xrabi article in the same vein. Terry J. Carter (talk) 21:02, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Thought

message: His name's pronunciation is specifically pronounced in Egyptian Arabic as . Literary Arabic's pronunciation, not Standard Arabic, because there is no single standard phonology for the literary variety of Arabic. Each region has its own pronunciation, they are loosely similar, by not the same. For example, a Levantine speaker would pronounce his name as , the open vowels' value is the same in both words and it's fully open, half-way between the front and the center; the rounded vowel may or may not be near-close. In the metropolitan Egyptian pronunciation there are two distinct vowels, a near-open front and an open back vowel. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 14:01, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Pronunciation 

message: First, remember not to clutter the lead of the article. I think we're good to go with the four standards: A. Urabi, Orabi, and Arabi and Arabi Pasha. If you really feel there needs to be more variants than that, begin a #Name subsection. Unhelpful laundry listing of variants like Ahmed Urabi Pasha, Ahmed 'Urabi Pasha, Ahmed ‘Urabi Pasha, Ahmed Urabi Paša... don't belong in the running text at all but (if you feel like being thorough and helping the article's SEO) in a PERSONDATA entry above the category listings.
Second, Wikipedia makes no stand for or against transliterations: we just go by the common name in contemporary and reliable English-language sources. It looks like that is now "Urabi":  both personally and (by far) in reference to his actions. That is where the article should be located, pending a shift in the scholarly consensus, but all common variants should be mentioned.
Third, the lead starts out by calling him a colonel. By definition, then, he was *not* a general officer as claimed here and at the Orabi dab. (Conversely, if he was promoted to general, we should probably accord him that rank unless he is—for whatever reason—traditionally remembered as a colonel; such a reason should be explained.) — LlywelynII 12:17, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Name

message: There are many mistakes in this article:
1- Orabi did not spend the rest of his life in Ceylon , he returned back to Egypt in 1903 , and died in Cairo in 1911 .
2- Egypt was officially made a British protectorate in 1914, not in 1882, or any date before 1914, and stayed British protectorate until 1922.
3- There is no any mention for battle of kafer El-Dawar, what Orabi beated the English army in it .
:I can find nothing to back up the claim:  If possible, could you provide a source? Currently this article appears to contradict Battle of Kafr El Dawwar. Zeklandia (talk) 03:00, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: It's wiki, please help improve the article. — Zerida 20:27, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Mistakes

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thread_title:  Move discussion in progress 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The Encyclopaedia Britannica gives his date of birth as 1839. The 1911 ed. (quoted above) gives it as 1839 or 1840. Wilfrid Blunt gives it as 1840. William Wright's Tidy Little War: The British Invasion of Egypt 1882 (Spellmount, 2009), p.26 gives it as 1841. The Kandy Times article quoted gives it as 1842! I, consequently, am confused. It would be good to have a reliable source for this! The Grand Lunar (talk) 14:18, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  When was he born? 

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thread_title:  Move discussion in progress 

message: There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:ʻUrabi revolt which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you.  —RMCD bot 18:17, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move discussion in progress