Disputed Statements

Malik ibn Anas, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 711

The source gives this year as about, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.) tier 1

Malik ibn Anas, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 795

The source gives this year as about, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.) tier 1

Malleus Maleficarum, Esoteric Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Heinrich Kramer, Dominican inquisitor, who also wrote under the Latinised name Institoris. Jacob Sprenger is named beside him on many early printings.

Most modern scholarship, including Broedel and Mackay, holds that Kramer wrote effectively the whole book and attached the name of Sprenger, a more respectable Cologne Dominican, to borrow his standing. A minority of historians defend a genuine collaboration on the basis of the early title pages and of Sprenger's known role in the order. Nobody argues that Sprenger was the principal hand.

Source The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft: Theology and Popular Belief, Hans Peter Broedel tier 1

Malleus Maleficarum, Esoteric Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Textual Note

Currently States An approbation of the theology faculty at Cologne is printed with the work.

Scholars have long questioned how much of the printed approbation the faculty actually signed, and whether Kramer extended or reworked it. Mackay's edition sets out the problem. There is no consensus, and no surviving faculty original against which to check the printed text.

Source The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, Christopher S. Mackay tier 1

Malleus Maleficarum, Esoteric Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States How far the book actually drove the trials is genuinely disputed.

One camp, represented by Julian Goodare and by much recent regional work, finds the correlation between the book and prosecution weak: some heavily prosecuting territories show little sign of it, some owners of it prosecuted little, and the worst waves came a century and more after publication. Another camp emphasises transmission, holding that the book supplied later demonologists with a template and a claim of authority they reused, so its influence runs through the literature rather than directly into courtrooms. The reputation of the Malleus as the single engine of the hunts is older and firmer than the evidence for it.

Source The European Witch-Hunt, Julian Goodare tier 1

Mallinatha, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Gender

Currently States Male

According To Digambara

Paul Dundas's The Jains, Routledge, 2002, sets the dispute over Mallinatha's gender inside the broader Svetambara-Digambara disagreement over whether liberation can be attained from a female body. Dundas's method is a comparative reading of the two traditions' own canonical texts: the Svetambara canon holds that Malli was born a woman and that a woman can attain liberation, and reads Mallinatha's story consistently with that doctrine, while the Digambara tradition holds liberation is not attainable from a female body and so reads the same Tirthankara as male. Neither side is working from a disputed historical record; each reads its own scripture consistently with its own settled doctrine, which is why Dundas presents the disagreement as genuine and old rather than as an error either side could correct with further evidence.

Source The Jains, Paul Dundas tier 1

Mallinatha, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Gender

Currently States Female

According To Svetambara

Paul Dundas's The Jains, Routledge, 2002, sets the dispute over Mallinatha's gender inside the broader Svetambara-Digambara disagreement over whether liberation can be attained from a female body. Dundas's method is a comparative reading of the two traditions' own canonical texts: the Svetambara canon holds that Malli was born a woman and that a woman can attain liberation, and reads Mallinatha's story consistently with that doctrine, while the Digambara tradition holds liberation is not attainable from a female body and so reads the same Tirthankara as male. Neither side is working from a disputed historical record; each reads its own scripture consistently with its own settled doctrine, which is why Dundas presents the disagreement as genuine and old rather than as an error either side could correct with further evidence.

Source The Jains, Paul Dundas tier 1

Maluku Sectarian Conflict (1999 to 2002), Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Minimum

Currently States 5000.000000

The International Crisis Group's own February 2002 field assessment, published days before the Malino II Accord, set a minimum of five thousand deaths across the three years of fighting, the figure most consistently adopted in later reporting and scholarship as the conservative floor.

Source International Crisis Group, "Indonesia: The Search for Peace in Maluku", International Crisis Group tier 2

Maluku Sectarian Conflict (1999 to 2002), Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Maximum

Currently States 10000.000000

The same Crisis Group assessment gave as many as ten thousand deaths as its own upper bound, a figure Gerry van Klinken's academic study of Indonesia's communal violence during the same period, which independently arrives at a comparable national total, treats as a plausible ceiling rather than a settled count.

Source Communal Violence and Democratization in Indonesia: Small Town Wars, Gerry van Klinken tier 1

Maluku Sectarian Conflict (1999 to 2002), Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Assessment

Currently States The International Crisis Group's own February 2002 assessment, published days before the Malino II Accord, put the toll at a minimum of five thousand and as many as ten thousand deaths across the three years of fighting, a range Gerry van Klinken's academic study of Indonesia's communal violence during the same period treats as the best available estimate rather than narrowing it further. No single reconciled count has superseded that range, so this atlas records it as the Crisis Group itself gave it rather than adopting either bound as final.

Source Communal Violence and Democratization in Indonesia: Small Town Wars, Gerry van Klinken tier 1

Mamma ਮ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Sikh tradition credits Guru Angad, the second Guru, with giving the script its settled form in the sixteenth century

According To The Gurmukhi script

Two reference works give incompatible accounts. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism (Harbans Singh, editor-in-chief, Punjabi University, Patiala, 1998) carries the Sikh tradition that Guru Angad, the second Guru (1504-1552), devised the script. The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996), surveying the paleography of Indic scripts, holds instead that the letterforms were already in mercantile use in the Punjab as one of the Landa scripts descended from Sharada, and that comparing those existing Landa forms against the Gurmukhi letters attested from Guru Angad's era shows a fixing and standardising of a repertoire already in circulation rather than an invention from nothing. Neither side has displaced the other because the two accounts read different kinds of evidence, a community's own historical memory against a comparative script lineage, and the atlas records both without adjudicating.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, Harbans Singh (editor-in-chief) tier 2

Mamma ਮ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Historians of Indic writing place the letterforms earlier, in the Landa mercantile hands already used across the Punjab

According To The Gurmukhi script

Two reference works give incompatible accounts. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism (Harbans Singh, editor-in-chief, Punjabi University, Patiala, 1998) carries the Sikh tradition that Guru Angad, the second Guru (1504-1552), devised the script. The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996), surveying the paleography of Indic scripts, holds instead that the letterforms were already in mercantile use in the Punjab as one of the Landa scripts descended from Sharada, and that comparing those existing Landa forms against the Gurmukhi letters attested from Guru Angad's era shows a fixing and standardising of a repertoire already in circulation rather than an invention from nothing. Neither side has displaced the other because the two accounts read different kinds of evidence, a community's own historical memory against a comparative script lineage, and the atlas records both without adjudicating.

Source The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.) tier 1

Mana (Conceit), Vices

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Mana, catalogued as the fourth of the five poisons in the Vajrayana extension of the Buddhist klesha list and, on the Jain side, as one of the four kashayas that bind karmic matter to the soul, carries the Jain dating on this row: the Tattvartha Sutra, the earliest surviving systematic Jain philosophical text that sets out the kashaya scheme, is dated by most scholars to the second through fifth centuries CE, itself a debated range rather than a fixed date. Padmanabh S. Jaini's The Jaina Path of Purification (University of California Press, 1979) is the source for this Jain-side dating specifically.

Source The Jaina Path of Purification, Padmanabh S. Jaini tier 1

Manasa, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Manasa's origin as a goddess is genuinely disputed among scholars.

Some historians of religion read her as a folk or tribal snake deity absorbed relatively late into the Brahmanical pantheon and only loosely fitted with a Puranic genealogy afterward, pointing to her marginal and reluctantly granted status within the mangalkavya poems themselves as evidence of that late and uneasy incorporation, while others treat her worship as continuous with older Vedic serpent veneration; the question remains unsettled.

Source Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.) tier 1

Manasara, Other Writings

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition

Currently States A Sanskrit treatise on architecture, town planning, sculpture and iconography whose date is genuinely unsettled: proposed estimates range from the fifth century CE to as late as the fifteenth, since the received text likely accumulated material across a long span rather than issuing from a single author or moment.

Scholars of Indian architectural literature disagree sharply on when the Manasara reached its present form. Some place its core in the early centuries CE alongside other Shilpashastra texts, others argue the surviving compilation is a medieval synthesis no earlier than the eleventh or twelfth century, and a minority reading pushes parts of it as late as the fifteenth century. No single archaeological or epigraphic anchor settles the question, so the text is treated here as a long-accumulated compilation rather than a work with one composition date.

Source Manasara on Architecture and Sculpture, Translated by Prasanna Kumar Acharya tier 1

Manasara, Other Writings

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition Start Year

Currently States 400

The wide span reflects genuine scholarly disagreement over when the Manasara was compiled, from an early-centuries-CE core to a medieval or even late-medieval synthesis; see the era fact for the full reasoning.

Source Manasara on Architecture and Sculpture, Translated by Prasanna Kumar Acharya tier 1

Manasara, Other Writings

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition End Year

Currently States 1400

The wide span reflects genuine scholarly disagreement over when the Manasara was compiled, from an early-centuries-CE core to a medieval or even late-medieval synthesis; see the era fact for the full reasoning.

Source Manasara on Architecture and Sculpture, Translated by Prasanna Kumar Acharya tier 1

Manchu Shamanism, Religions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 1644

Manchu shamanism is an indigenous tradition with no recorded founding point, practiced long before the Qing dynasty. 1644, the year the Qing conquered China proper, is recorded here as the point from which the Qing state is documented as actively regulating and centralizing the practice as a marker of Manchu ethnic identity, culminating in the 1747 Qinding Manzhou Jishen Jitian Dianli; it marks state regulation, not the tradition's own undocumented origin.

Source The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Elliott, 2001), Mark C. Elliott tier 1

Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo Found Cusco, Myths & Sacred Narratives

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Scholarly Note

Currently States The Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo account, recorded after the Spanish conquest chiefly by the chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega in his Comentarios Reales de los Incas (1609), tells of the sun god Inti sending his own children up from Lake Titicaca with a golden staff to found Cusco wherever it could be driven fully into the ground. Garcilaso's own chronicle records that a rival origin account existed alongside it, naming four Ayar sibling pairs emerging instead at Pacaritambo, a competing telling of the same founding moment that assigns it a different place and a different set of divine siblings entirely.

Source Comentarios Reales de los Incas (Royal Commentaries of the Incas), Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca tier 2

Mandaeism, Religions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Adherents Today

Currently States Estimates of the worldwide Mandaean population range from about sixty thousand to two hundred thousand. Iraq held sixty to seventy thousand before 2003 and had fallen to about five thousand by 2007, with most of the community displaced into Iran, Syria, Jordan and diaspora communities in Australia, Sweden and the United States, so the range reflects real demographic disruption and disagreement between community and outside counts rather than merely unpublished data.

Post-2003 displacement from Iraq has moved faster than any single census can track, and Mandaean community estimates and outside demographic surveys have not converged on one figure.

Source The Mandaeans: Ancient Texts and Modern People, Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley tier 1