Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Maida of Aukh

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

~~The result was delete‎.~~ Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:43, 13 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Amending closure. I'm changing my closure to soft delete‎. Based on minimal participation, this uncontroversial nomination is treated as an expired PROD (a.k.a. "soft deletion"). Editors can request the articles' undeletion at WP:REFUND. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:21, 13 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Maida of Aukh

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I'm nominating not only Maida of Aukh, but also Chakhig, Khour I, Khasi I, Khasi II, Surakat, Battle of Gebak-Ghala, Yanbek, Battle of Arm-Kurt. I will be showing how these articles are either WP:HOAX or lacking completely WP:RS. Forgery can be also found. Here we go...

Sources in Maida of Aukh:

Тесаев 2020a, p. 32: the author here is actually Yavuz Akhmadov. Despite being a dr. of historical sciences who without citing a primary source, makes following claim about the existence of Maida:
"According to folk legends, the Chechens' struggle against the invaders was led by military leaders Makhtsur, Idig, Aldam and others. Chechens of the Aukh society in old Arabic-language chronicles [which chronicles??? - WikiEditor1234567123] name the names of military leaders - Taimasha, Yanbek and Mada. Moreover, in addition to partisan actions, they also fought major battles with the Horde in the Aukh gorges, after one of which the Horde forever forgot the road to Aukh.
Адилсултанов 1993: not a reliable historian or even a historian at all. Can't find information about him whatsoever. Google search results show only this blog post "Чеченцы-аккинцы (ауховцы) и их гражданские формирования" (which the article is using as a source).
Ангуни 2013: not a reliable historian or even a historian at all.
Хизриев 1980 & Хизриев 1980: unable to find this source online but the author is a candidate of historical sciences and a professor. Some statements in his work, despite his status, are unsourced and clearly fringe.^[a] Though we don't know much about the region "Aukhar/Avakhar" mentioned in Persian chronicles, we know that Maida isn't mentioned there.^[b] Not to mention that the localization of "Aukhar/Avakhar" is still a matter of a debate, with one of the other major versions being that it is Avaria, Dagestan, i. e. portraying "Aukhar/Avakhar" people as Aukhs is violation of WP:NPOV. So in short, Khizriev made up the battles between the Avakhar people under Maidan and Gazikumukh Shamkhalate against the Timurids (Battle of Gebak-Ghala and Battle of Arm-Kurt).

Sources in Chakhig:

Муртазалиев: not a reliable historian or even a historian at all.
Ангуни: go back to the section "Sources in Maida of Aukh" to see why it's unreliable.
Сулейманов 1978: not a reliable historian or even a historian at all, however, he's simply mentioning folklore and not portraying it as historical facts.
Ахмадов 2001: unverifiable source. Also go back to the "Sources in Maida of Aukh" to see why source is probably unreliable in this matter.
Хизриев: source doesn't even mention Chakhig - forgery. Also go back to the "Sources in Maida of Aukh" to see why source is probably unreliable in this matter.

Sources in Khour I:

As I have mentioned, Anguni, Murtazaliev and Suleymanov as well as Айдемиров are not historians and aren't WP:RS even if they do mention such figure.
Хизриев: doesn't mention Khour I, i. e. forgery. Also see about him above.
Иванов: doesn't mention Khour I, i. e. forgery.
Тесаев 2020: not a reliable historian (doesn't have any candidate or dr. titles either), rather a hoaxer/mystifer, making crazy theories. The name of the book is "Historical figures of Chechnya" but has folkloric figures such as Khour attributed to the Alan king Khusy while folkloric figure Turpal Nakhcho shown as a historical.

Having now shown the main sources (Akhmadov, Tesaev, Murtazaliev, Anguni and others) in usage for the articles, I'm not going to explain each time why they're unreliable. Here I'm going to show some new ones:

Sources in Khasi I:

Кузнецов 1971 &: doesn't mention Khasi I, i. e. forgery.

Sources in Surakat:

Салгириев, А.М (2019). "Летопись об исходе чеченцев из Нахчувана (перевод и комментарии)". Таллам. 2: 33–35: not a reliable historian whatsoever nor could I find this source.

For Battle of Gebak-Ghala, Yanbek, Battle of Arm-Kurt:

Article is using as Khizriev as source again but he makes up battles between Avakhar and Golden Horde when we have little to no information whatsoever about Avakhar, see "Sources in Maida of Aukh", I explained it there. Other sources in the article are the ones mentioned above i. e. unreliable.

WikiEditor1234567123 (talk) 14:08, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2023 October 6. —^{cyberbot I}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 14:21, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: History, Royalty and nobility, Asia, and Russia. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 16:56, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for making a very detailed case for deleting these articles. It's always a challenge to identify and deal with pseudo-history of this sort on Wikipedia.

I saw some of the issues myself but assumed that in spite of some embellishments and exaggerations, the personalities and events existed and had sources that covered them. Now I see that it's either entirely unsourced or uses unreliable sources. I support the deletion. Alaexis_¿question? 18:08, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

One of the issues here is that non-Russian speaking users are usually the ones that get deceived the most in these type of articles that use Russian sources as they're unable to verify information unfortunately. WikiEditor1234567123 (talk) 18:15, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't done a full dive into all the sources presented by the nom here, but what I did look into seems very concerning. The source I did read in full – via Google translate – was the undated Хизриев source. This source mentions the names of no individuals who faought against the Timurids except for Gayur Khan and his son Mohammed. It is frequently cited to support claims of individual names or their descent, and as such it has clearly been misrepresented (termed "forgery" by the nom). This undated source appears to have been modified from the original with editorial insertions, ethnic POV, and non-academic language (mentioned by commenters at the site it's been posted on; not just machine translation artifacts).
I suspect that the individuals whose articles are nominated here are all legendary (see Khour II#Background and Historical references), and people have taken it upon themselves to attempt to factualise them using tangentially related published material, in some ways clearly dishonestly.
No further time right now to do a fuller investigation, but based on the thorough nom and my hour looking into it and the results of that, it seems likely these articles all fail verification in toto. I hope to circle back later, but in case I forget, dropping a delete now with thanks to the nom. Folly Mox (talk) 20:10, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Having now spent several more hours digging into a single source (Иванов 1914), I'm considering that some of the details of Khasi I are the result of incorrect synthesis based on linguistic similarity. There was a person associated with Asud / Alania named in the 元史 who submitted to Ögodei and whose son Atachi went on to serve the Mongols.
This person's name is incorrectly transcribed in the article's source as *杭忍思; it is given in the 新元史 and modern punctuated 元史 as 杭忽思 (Hang-hu-si, *Khanghus?) and the 四庫全書元史 as 哈喝斯 (Ha-he-si, *Khasi?). Apparently his name is also written 昂和思 (Ang-he-si, *Anghosi?). In the article Khasi I, the name is called "Khasy Khan" and "Khusy Khan". They are never referred to as a "khan" in the Chinese sources, and apart from their eldest son Atachi and second son 按法普 (An-fa-pu), no other children are mentioned (e.g. Khour I, one of the questionable articles here).
The Khasi I article goes on to state that Chechen folklore has Khasi being executed by the Mongols for his son Khour's disobedience, while the Mongols claim that he died during a campaign. The Chinese sources have him dying in combat, after which his wife 外麻思 (Wai-ma-si) successfully defends his city on behalf of the Mongols.
I don't know enough about Middle Chinese phonology (much less Middle Mongolian phonology / Circassian / whatever all we're dealing with here) to speculate as to the identification of someone named "Khasi" with someone named 杭忽思 / 昂和思 / 哈喝斯. But I do think that if his son led a rebellion against the Mongols (as is claimed in Khasi I, Khour I, Mongol invasions of Durdzuketi), the Chinese sources on the individual would have mentioned it somehow.
Also noting that Khour II names him as Gayur Khan, the individual in the sketchy source I looked at the other day. Folly Mox (talk) 23:41, 7 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I will say that this ties in with my hypothesis above about attempted factualisation of legendary figures using tangentially related published sources. I imagine the whole first bit of this Sado-Orsoy dynasty / clan, up through Khasi II, may be unverifiable except by recourse to folklore studies. ~~If we retain the information, it might be best framed as a notable legend.~~ Folly Mox (talk) 00:03, 8 October 2023 (UTC) Struck in light of nom's reply below 07:35, 8 October 2023 (UTC) [reply]
The thing is that Sado-Orsoy clan or teip, as they're called in Chechnya and Ingushetia, never had such big influence and never ruled over Alania or Durdzuketi (note, the sources never mention that fictious Khasi ruled over Durdzuketi, forgery again). These are simply mystifications that are spread by unreliable sources to magnify their own history and make it seem more ancient. This is seen by the fact that in Khour II there are tries to connect the real figure Gayur Khan with Sadoy-Orsoy, backed up again with a unreliable source.^[a] Khasi articles and others can't even be preserved as a notable legends because they're not notable legends in Vaknakh folklore at all. Notable legends would be the likes of Turpal Nakhcho (legendary ancestor of Chechens), Galga (legendary ancestor of Ingush), Ga (legendary ancestor of Ingush), Kartskhal (legendary founder of Nazran), Aldaman Gheza and etc that were recorded all over Chechnya and Ingushetia. WikiEditor1234567123 (talk) 06:22, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

[a]

[b]

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