Talk:Barhebraeus/GA3

GA review

The following discussion 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.

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Nominator: Hogshine (talk · contribs) 08:05, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: Tim riley (talk · contribs) 19:19, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Initial comments

I'll do this in small batches, as I'm pushed for time this week.

First batch, down to the end of Legacy section

• No complaints about the lead this time. It is full but not to excess. Just right, in my view.
• "serving … as a physician and deacon" – perhaps link "deacon" here?
• "personal physician to Hulagu Khan, which was remarkable achievement" – lacks a definite article before "remarkable".
• "Barhebraeus briefly resided with his father Aaron in Aleppo" – you've already told us his father's name.
• "Nineveh (where he likely stayed at Mor Mattai Monastery)" – if we're in BrE, the normal usage is "probably", rather than "likely"
• "died on the night of Tuesday, July 30, 1286" – it is true that The Times and The Guardian use the mm-dd-yyyy format, but it is otherwise rare in BrE: dd-mm-yyyy is the usual form.
• "he consecrated twelve bishops, including his biographer Dioscorus of Gozarto and his disciple Philoxenus I Nemrud" – I'm guessing "his disciple" means Barhebraeus's disciple, but it could equally well be Dioscorus's disciple. Might be as well to avoid the ambiguity.
• "spent most of his life, including all of his later years – do we need the second "of"?

More shortly. Tim riley talk 19:19, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Second batch: Writings to Relations

• "J.S. Assemani called them … and J.P.P. Martin described him" – the Wikipedia manual of style specifies gaps after initials: J. S. Assemani and J. P. P. Martin.
• "contain up to 10 percent of its manuscripts" – according to the current edition of Fowler, per cent is traditionally written as two words in BrE but as one word (percent) in AmE.
• "Previously castigated as a skilful but unoriginal compiler of earlier works, that judgement is misplaced" – the syntax has gone off the rails: there is a dangling modifier here: the judgement is not what is castigated, but that is what the sentence says. You want something on the lines of "Barhebraeus was previously castigated as a skilful but unoriginal compiler of earlier works, but that judgement is misplaced".
• "it would reach a wide readership, so he supplemented the work" – I am a septuagenarian and I daresay younger editors would think my view on this point old-fashioned, but I do not regard "so" as a conjunction in good formal prose – fine in speech but for an encyclopaedia article I would write "and so" or just "and".
• "then continues only as Antioch" – much the same goes for "then", which in my view needs "and" in front of it.
• "Justin forcefully deposed Severus of Antioch" – can one depose someone gently? Not sure you need the adverb.
• "with further addenda by anonymous authors" – these are the only addenda mentioned here, and "further" is not needed.
• "he views that the maphrianate of the Syriac Orthodox in the East is the rightful continuation of the ancient See" – the prose is a bit contorted here: I suggest trimming to something like "he views the maphrianate of the Syriac Orthodox in the East as the rightful continuation of the ancient See".
• "He refutes and discusses the Dyophysite doctrine" – two points here: first, surely discussion would come before refutation and secondly I'd be careful with "refute", which properly means to disprove something and not merely to deny it.
• "sees it as partially pragmatic" – "partially" is another word to be treated with caution: it can mean just "partly", but it can also mean favouring one party or side in a biased or prejudiced way
• "during Mongol rule — though not devoid of genuine elements" – another manual of style point: you can have em-dashes but they must not have a space on each side: they are unspaced—like that; alternatively if you want spaced dashes they have to be n-dashes – like this.
• "later worked with physician Jamal al-Din" – bruising false title that can be remedied with a definite article before "physician".
• "working within Mongol military camps alongside other physicians, a great feat." – it isn't clear – well not to me anyway – why this was a great feat.
• "Eight works on medicine and pharmacology are known to be authored by him" – you could lose "authored", which is a rather pompous way of saying "written" and the sentence is just as clear without either here.
• "descriptive titles in contrast to many of his other works" – the current (2015) edition of Fowler says that "contrast to" and "contrast between" are acceptable, but I cling to the old boy's original 1926 prescription that the preposition should be the customary "with".
• "had a significant influence on his primary scientific work" – This is Plain Words on "significant": This is a good and useful word, but it has a special flavour of its own and it should not be thoughtlessly used as a mere variant of important, considerable, appreciable, or quite large … it ought to be used only where there is a ready answer to the reader's unspoken question 'Significant, is it? And what does it signify?'
• "largely in contrast to the Greek and Arab populations" – as above.
• "mere recordkeeping" – the Oxford English Dictionary hyphenates "record-keeping".
• " He likely encountered the Latins" – as we are in BrE it would be as well to replace the AmE "likely" with the BrE "probably".
• "envisioned the restoration of a unified Syriac Church" – what a frightful verb! I take it to mean contemplated, foresaw, predicted or visualised, in which case it would be a very good idea to say so.

That's all for this batch of quibbles. Final lot to come shortly. As at the GAN for Cave of Treasures, the minor points I have made here about the prose are purely suggestions – please feel free to accept or reject any of them. Tim riley talk 08:34, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Final batch

• "Aside from his native Syriac" – the usual BrE form is "apart from" rather than "aside from"
• "and Liturgy was already wholly conducted in Arabic " – isn't it usual to have the definite article with "liturgy", and is the noun usually capitalised?
• "(with the notable exception of Jacob of Edessa)" – no doubt, but "notable" is a touch editorial without a source that mentions the notability.
• "He authored numerous books" – as above, a plain "wrote" would be kinder to the reader.
• "30 July, the date of his repose" – his what? You mean his death. See MOS:EUPHEMISM
• "the 700th anniversary of the passing of Maphrian Barhebraeus" – Ditto. I am reminded of a line of Noël Coward's: "She didn’t pass on or pass over or pass out – she died".
• "Sebastian P. Brock … who described him as "a polymath of extraordinary wide learning in virtually every subject that was studied in his time" – this is rather perplexing. You can't describe something as "extraordinary wide" and I don't believe an Oxford don such as Sebastian Brock would be guilty of such an error. But there are two copies of his book in the Internet Archive (here and here) and one calls Barhebraeus "a polymath of extraordinary wide learning" and the other calls him "a polymath of extraordinarily wide learning". The latter is so obviously the correct form that I think you should stick with it. The former is surely a printer's error.
• "organised in Aleppo, Syria by the late Archbishop of Aleppo Yohanna Ibrahim." – "late" as in former or as in dead? Either way do we need it?
• "Sources: I cannot work out your rationale for the ordering of the sources. We are in alphabetical order down to William Wright, and then we lurch into seemingly random order for Barsoum, Tarzi, Rajan, Dinno, Brock, Rompay, Witakowski, Dinno, Weltecke, Frye, Tannous and Takahashi.

That concludes my initial comments. Over to you. I'll put the review on hold for a week. Tim riley talk 10:18, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

As always, impressive attention to detail. I learned a couple things myself. I've went ahead and adjusted the text, though I have a few comments:

"Justin forcefully deposed Severus of Antioch" – can one depose someone gently? Not sure you need the adverb. Ecclesiastically, one can be deposed relatively "peacefully" by a synod with the agreement of the ecumene at large. This is not what happened with Severus of Antioch; military force had to be applied. I rephrased it altogether.

Well, I've learned something today, which is always a good thing. Thank you. Tim riley talk 19:17, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

"and Liturgy was already wholly conducted in Arabic " – isn't it usual to have the definite article with "liturgy", and is the noun usually capitalised? It is capitalised when referring to a specific liturgy, e.g., Liturgy of St. James and Liturgy of John Chrysostom, but not in this case. Corrected.

"(with the notable exception of Jacob of Edessa)" – no doubt, but "notable" is a touch editorial without a source that mentions the notability.‌ Jacob is unique among Syriac writers in assuming Hebrew—not Aramaic—was the first language. This is cited in Jacob's article but not isn't neccessary here, so I removed it.

"the 700th anniversary of the passing of Maphrian Barhebraeus" – Ditto. I am reminded of a line of Noël Coward's: "She didn’t pass on or pass over or pass out – she died". This is apparently a direct quote, so I‌ added " ". Fits the Veneration section a bit more, methinks.

"organised in Aleppo, Syria by the late Archbishop of Aleppo Yohanna Ibrahim." – "late" as in former or as in dead? Either way do we need it? Late as in "the one before the current one". He's technically just missing, not officially dead. I replaced it with "previous", though it doesn't feel right. What do you think it should say?

Oh, Lord! I've just looked at his article and feel ashamed of my flippancy. How awful! You could call him "the then Archbishop", though that's a bit stilted. I might omit any adjective here.

Thanks for the much-helpful comments! ~ Hogshine (talk) 17:42, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm pleased my comments were of use. It was obvious to me from the outset that this is a substantial and considerable article. Now that I had studied it carefully I am satisfied that it meets all the GA criteria, and I think it has ample potential to be taken on to FAC. For now, however:

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   Well referenced.

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   Well referenced.

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   Well illustrated.

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

   Well illustrated.

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

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.