Talk:Victory Arch

message: "Cast in Iraq, they are partly composed of metal from guns and tanks of Iraqi soldiers killed in the Iran-Iraq war."
Iraqi or Iranian? Just wanted to make sure, as I thought using the equipment of ones own casualties for a monument is a little backwards, though still understandable.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.241.134.229 (talk) 02:20, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Hands of Victory

message: The debate about whether to keep the arch intact needs to be spelled out. What were the arguments in favor and against? 98.210.208.107 (talk) 19:09, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Elaborate on debate

message: I can find no record anywhere of an Iraqi sculptor by the name of Adil Kamil who the article claims was the sculptor who designed the monument. 
It is fairly clear that Saddam Hussein came up with the design concept, but the article claims that a mystery man, Adil Kamil, was charged with the task of converting the concept into drawings. However, one of the books that is actually quoted in the article, Samir Al-Khalil and Kanan Makiya's The Monument: Art, Vulgarity, and Responsibility in Iraq, specifically states that the original designer was Khaled al-Rahal, who died before he could complete the work. The project was then turned over to Mohammed Ghani Hikmat who completed it. (see pp 1-2)
Other publications that also attribute Khaled Rahal and Mohammed Ghani include:
* Jonathan Bloom and Sheila S. Blair (eds), Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art & Architecture,  Oxford University Press, 2009 
* Malcolm Miles, Iain Borden and Tim Hall, The City Cultures Reader,Psychology Press, 2000, p. 104
* Maruska Svasek, The Anthropology Art and Cultural Production: Histories, Themes, Perspectives, Pluto Press, 2007, p. 74
* Design Book Review, Issues 21-24, 1991,  p.7 
In newspaper/ magazine articles, Ghani is generally credited with complegting this work. So, where did Adil Kamil come from????????????? Can anyone out there enlighten me?? BronHiggs (talk) 12:35, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who was the designer? Who is Adil Kamil? 

message: Well, it has only been one day since I posted the preceding comment about a glaring error in the article. But in spite of the short notice, and in the absence of any discussion, I have begun cleaning up the article. The error has been present since the article was started back in 2003. That means that it has been there for 15 years, and I notice that mirror sites and blogs which tend to quote Wikipedia, have perpetuated the mistake, so that the Internet is now replete with misinformation. It's time that the article was corrected. BronHiggs (talk) 21:52, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Update

message: After a bit more searching, I have found one reference to one Adil Kamil who was an Abassynian novelist, active in the 1940s. This cannot be the same Adil Kamil, who was incorrectly cited as the sculptor of this monument, in the Wikipedia article. This misinformation has remained in the article for 15 years, and has proliferated across the Internet due to the sheer volume of sources that cut and paste from Wikipedia. The actual designer of the monument was Khalid (or Khaled) al-Rahal who died in 1986, after which the monument was completed by Mohammed Ghani Hikmat. In case, there is any doubt, here are a few more references that credit the al-Rahal/Ghani team with the project's design and construction:
* Makiya, K. and Al-Khalilm S., The Monument: Art and Vulgarity in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, IB Taurus, 2004, p. 1 (one of the authors, Kanan Makiya, is the son of Iraqi sculptor, Mohammed Makiya, who was a contemporary of al-Rahal)
* Floyd, T. E., , "Hikmet, Mohammed Ghani (1929–2011)" in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, Routledge, 2016, DOI: 10.4324/9781135000356-REM830-1 doi:10.4324/9781135000356-REM830-1 Online:
* Brown, B.A. and Feldman, M.H. (eds), Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art, Walter de Gruyter, 2014 p.20
* Weschler, L. Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas, University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 44
* Marozzi, J., Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood, Penguin UK, 2014 [E-book edition], n.p. [not paginated] 
* Michalski, S., Public Monuments: Art in Political Bondage 1870-1997, Reaktion Books, 1998  p. 198
This search only consists of books/articles available via Google Books, and does not include books published before 1980 - there are plenty of journal articles, etc published in the 60s an 70s that also cite the al-Rahal/ Ghani team, but I have not itemised these. Nor does it include books from an actual library search (I wonder if anyone actually goes to the Library any more?)  BronHiggs (talk) 05:45, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Postscript

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:
* 
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 08:41, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion 

message: I have added Video Footage of Iraqi Army Parades at the Monument
I have also added a construction Image during 1986-1989  — Preceding unsigned comment added by PreserveOurHistory (talk • contribs) 14:49, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Documentation of Additional Media added