Talk:Maghrib

@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)

It has been proposed in this section that Maghrib be renamed and moved to Maghrib (disambiguation)Maghrib (disambiguation). A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil. Please use {{subst:requested move}}. Do not use {{requested move/dated}} directly. Links: current log • target log • direct move

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)