Talk:Maghrib

Primary topic

@Wbm1058: I strongly disagree with treating 'Maghrib' and 'Maghreb' as if they are different. Srnec (talk) 01:15, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

No strong disagreement from me. I was thinking maybe Maghreb should be moved to The Maghreb. It was also at Greater Maghreb for some time. The distinction is/was confusing to me. wikt:maghrib (lower case) refers to the evening prayer, but wikt:maghreb is a red link. So the prayer favors the "i" spelling. Whereas the The MaghrebThe Maghreb redirect has been around since 2006, I just created The MaghribThe Maghrib today. For some reason, in the English language, the "e" spelling seems favored for the Arab land where the sun sets. – wbm1058 (talk) 01:37, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Maghreb (disambiguation) redirects to Maghrib. – wbm1058 (talk) 01:54, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

I don't think the e spelling is favoured in academic historiography but perhaps in other areas. Most standard Arabic romanization systems use an i. I do not think the prayer is a strong contender for primary topic. For example, the Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition has an article on al-Maghrib but not on the prayer, which is covered in the article on salat. Srnec (talk) 02:39, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

I see that page views seem to agree with your view, if the i and e spellings are truly interchangable. But the problem I'm seeing is editor behavior.

• The first edit that created the page at 10:23, 14 December 2003 indeed made a redirect to North Africa.
• However the second edit of 21:59, 7 April 2004, converted that redirect into a disambiguation. The Maghreb article had just been created at 20:08, 5 April 2004.
• But then at 03:35, 2 January 2005, an editor made the prayer the primary topic, by creating a stub about "the fourth daily salah in Islam".
• The next edit at 05:54, 22 March 2005 tilted it back to being a dictionary definition / disambiguation stub.
• The first 36 edits continued this muddy status, culminating with the version of 08:27, 26 February 2006 which had a disambiguation lead section followed by an article body about the prayer.
• @18:31, 3 March 2006, a "new disambig" was created by essentially reverting back to where the page stood before the prayer content was added, and moving it to Maghrib (disambiguation)Maghrib (disambiguation)...
• ...leaving this 18:32, 3 March 2006 initial version of the standalone prayer article at the base title. Their edit summary (proper disambiguation of maghrib/maghreb) clearly indicated the view that i meant "prayer" and e meant "land region".
• The prayer article stood at the base maghrib title for 7 years, 5 months until at 17:52, 27 August 2013 Khestwol moved page Maghrib to Maghrib prayer over redirect (name)
• At 23:56, 21 February 2025 Viceskeeni2 boldly moved Maghrib prayer to Maghrib (prayer). I just reverted that move yesterday.
• At 05:12, 9 September 2025 Thepharoah17 Changed the Maghrib redirect target from Maghrib (prayer) to Maghreb, i.e. they changed the longstanding primary redirect target from the prayer to the land region...
• ...which put the Maghrib prayer page into Category:Articles with redirect hatnotes needing review, which I patrol. At 19:13, 14 September 2025, I removed the hatnote.

Given that the prayer had sat on the base title as either the primary topic or a primary redirect, for over a decade, I responded to the change in primary topic by moving the disambiguation to the base title (avoiding a WP:MALPLACED status). I agree that the prayer should not be a primary topic/redirect. Before I made that move, I did a disambiguation of the links. I found that most of them did indeed intend the region, though there was this page that intended the prayer, and maybe a couple others. As long as there's a risk that editors of religious topics will create links to lowercase maghrib, thinking that distinguishes the topic from the uppercase Maghrib region, since the MediaWiki software doesn't handle such {{lowercase title}} differences well, I think we should "play it safe" and keep the base title as a disambiguation. Editors may also not realize how often others refer to the region using the i spelling – see Pages that link to "The Maghrib", all of which I'm responsible for, from my edits of yesterday. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:11, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 14 March 2026

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Most participants do not believe there is a primary topic between the two main topics shown on the DAB page. (closed by non-admin page mover) ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 06:41, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

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Maghrib → Maghrib (disambiguation)Maghrib (disambiguation) – Maghrib is a variant spelling of Maghreb and is very common in scholarly writing, since it is the standard transliteration of the Arabic term in the most commonly used systems. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition has an article on al-Maghrib but not on the prayer, which is covered in the article on salat. Ngrams show capital-M Maghrib much more popular than maghrib. I think it is safe to treat the Maghreb as the primary topic for Maghrib and make it a redirect at least. Srnec (talk) 21:06, 14 March 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. 1isall (talk | contribs) 00:41, 22 March 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. TarnishedPath^talk 09:25, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't think there's a single, definitive meaning for "Maghrib." Some understand it as prayer, while others as the time of prayer. Since they're both common, it's best to keep it on the disambiguation page. Soevid (talk) 09:06, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

I mean some understand it as prayer, some as a region. Disambiguation pages help everyone find what they mean. Soevid (talk) 09:09, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

• Support. Very clear primary redirect to Maghreb. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:50, 18 March 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose, in English maghrib primarily refers to the prayer, as also shown by this Ngram. Besides, on Arabic Wikipedia مغرب redirects to Morocco, not to the Maghreb, which is called المغرب العربي (al-Maġrib al-ʿArabī, lit. 'the Arab west'). The word ‏مغرب‎ (maġrib) originally means ‘place or time of sunset’ and has many senses in Arabic. ~2026-17887-09 (talk) 07:19, 22 March 2026 (UTC)
  • That proves nothing. "Maghrib region" is clearly not going to be a common name. It will just be Maghrib. Try this ngram though. Far and away the largest number of hits is for "the Maghrib", which is more likely to be the region than the prayer if you look at the actual hit list. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:45, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Disambiguation has been notified of this discussion. TarnishedPath^talk 09:26, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose. WikiNav shows that the vast majority of readers navigate from the current Maghrib dab page to Maghrib prayer—73% or readers in February and 82% in January. A quick scan of the Google Books results linked to the nom's Ngram shows that capitalized Maghrib refers to the prayer at least some of the time. For example, this passage:

  The plan is for them to conduct Maghrib (evening prayer time) on the beach and then proceed immediately to their allocated targets. Like other Islamic prayer times, Maghrib is timed on the position of the sun; today it's at 6:17 pm…

  As well as these. Also, many of "English language" results on the first page of Google Books results are in fact not in English. The WikiNav shows that most readers are not searching maghrib looking for Maghreb and a closer look at the Ngram corpus shows it is unreliable for nom's conclusion. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 01:33, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  I suppose there is a disconnect between everyday life for Muslims (Google results) and English RS (GScholar). I have written enough articles on Muslim topics and have many times written 'Maghrib' but never once in reference to the prayer time. Srnec (talk) 00:30, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

  There is no doubt that such a disconnect exists. Although I've not seen a thorough assessment of reliable sources here, and I would entertain that. It occurs to me that, since wiki automatically capitalizes the first letter of titles, and therefore does not distinguish between maghrib and Maghrib, the WikiNav may be explained by readers deliberately searching maghrib—not Maghrib—in search of the prayer. But if that's the case, it's still consistent with the conclusion that the choice of maghrib instead of Maghreb makes it much more likely that readers are searching for the prayer, and thus makes the term ambiguous in English. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 03:29, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

  Regarding WikiNav, my own suspicion is that Google is a little worse at getting people to the prayer when that's what they are looking for, hence they wind up at the dab page more often. Compare pageviews. Srnec (talk) 18:30, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

  Google being bad at this is consistent with maghrib being ambiguous in English. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 14:01, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.