Template:Did you know nominations/Dar al-Kiswa

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Rlink2 (talk) 16:00, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Dar al-Kiswa

Curtain for the internal door of the Kaaba
Curtain for the internal door of the Kaaba
To T:DYK/P2
  • ... that the Dar al-Kiswa in Cairo made ornamental curtains (example pictured) for the Kaaba in Mecca? Source: Porter, Venetia (2012). "Textiles of Mecca and Medina". In Porter, Venetia (ed.). Hajj : journey to the heart of Islam. Cambridge, Mass.: The British Museum. pp. 263-265.
    • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Jaz Brisack
    • Comment: The article's section on "Sacred textiles of Islam" was adapted from text in other articles, but there is still enough original text in the rest of the article for it to qualify.

Moved to mainspace by MartinPoulter (talk). Self-nominated at 11:38, 2 March 2022 (UTC).

  • New enough, long enough, neutral, and seems acceptably sourced. QPQ done. Google Books only shows me a teeny amount of the Porter book so I can't really confirm the hook but page 265 seems to be talking about the issue and the Egypt Today article seems to confirm the basics, so seems fine. The hook is... well, it's interesting to me, but I think might require a bit of background for readers who won't recognize the Kaaba instantly and know it's a big deal, or recognize that Cairo & Mecca are in two different countries and hence this is interestingly surprising. I'm not sure that's a fixable problem though, sometimes readers will just have to learn something I guess. (Maybe a reason for the promoter to give up on the image and bury this one 4th in the list at worst if it's decided it's too obscure for slot 1.)
  • @MartinPoulter: As a side question, this isn't enough to derail the nom, but can you potentially clarify what happened in 1927, and if it was a one-off or a continual thing? I presume that lots of textiles were required and what happened was that it started becoming 90% Egyptian, 10% Arabian, and maybe slowly working the way up, but that isn't clear at the moment - it could be that 100% of the 1927 kiswa was done by Mecca and 0% Egyptian followed by never happening again as written. Also, is it possible to get the Masri / Arabic version of the name of the workshop in the article somewhere? Seems relevant... SnowFire (talk) 08:12, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
@SnowFire: Thanks for this review. The 1927 event was a one-off or near-one-off. I was confused about this timeline and in an earlier version of the article said that production of the kiswah in Cairo lasted until 1927, but it lasted until 1962, with 1927 being the first exception. Hence the "with few exceptions" clause in the lead. To get across that the two places are in different countries, how about I change "in Cairo" to "in Egypt"? I think we can make the hook more interesting by suffixing "every year for a century"; the Porter ref has "the factory was established by Muhammad ALi Pasha in 1817 in the quarter of Kharanfash in Cairo", then "The kiswa continued to be sent from the Kharafash factory in Egypt until 1927" and all the sources explain that the outer textiles for the Kaaba, including these ornamental curtains, were replaced annually. I agree that it would be good to have the name of the workshop in the original language, but the sources I have don't include that, so I'm hoping an Arabic speaker notices the article and adds it. MartinPoulter (talk) 12:45, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
Interesting. Yeah, if the nature of the 1927 incident & verification things went back to normal from 1928-1961 can be clarified in the article, it'd be nice.
  • ALT1: ... that the Dar al-Kiswa in Egypt made ornamental curtains (example pictured) for the Kaaba in Mecca?
  • ALT2: ... that the Dar al-Kiswa in Egypt made ornamental curtains (example pictured) for the Kaaba in Mecca every year for over a century?
As far as I'm concerned, any of the original hook or the two alts you described are fine by me - I'll leave it to the discretion of the promoter. SnowFire (talk) 13:41, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
I've found in the source where it mentions a period from 1927 to 1936 where the kiswa wasn't made in Egypt, so I've clarified that in the article. Thanks for your edits and your catch of the "first in Mecca" claim. The source says "first in Saudi Arabia" so I've corrected the claim to that, which allows that it may have been made in Mecca centuries ago. MartinPoulter (talk) 11:44, 10 March 2022 (UTC)