Disputed Statements

Faravahar, Religious Symbols

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Adopted as an Emblem

Currently States Adopted as the general emblem of Zoroastrian identity in the modern period, above all in the diaspora. The identification of the figure with the fravashi is a later reading and is disputed; the Achaemenid image carries no caption.

According To Zoroastrianism

The Achaemenid winged figure carries no caption, and reading it as a fravashi is a later interpretation. It has also been identified as Ahura Mazda himself and as the royal khvarenah, the glory of kingship. What is not disputed is the emblem's modern career: it was taken up as the general sign of Zoroastrian identity in the twentieth century, above all in the diaspora.

Source The Zoroastrian Diaspora: Religion and Migration, John R. Hinnells tier 1

Farid al-Din Attar, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1145

The source marks this year circa, 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

Farid al-Din Attar, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 1221

The source marks this year circa, 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

Faridkot Tika, Literary Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Scholarly Reception

Currently States Praised as the founding landmark of printed Sikh scriptural exegesis and still reprinted by the Punjab Languages Department, but its Vedantic and Sanskritic reading of the Guru Granth Sahib was later argued by Singh Sabha and Tat Khalsa reform scholars to import a Hindu philosophical framework foreign to Gurmat, the Sikh tradition's own teaching; later Sikh scholarship remains divided on how much weight to give the criticism against the work's historical standing.

Source Faridkot Tika (Adi Sri Guru Granth Sahib ji Satik), Giani Badan Singh of Sekhvari (first draft), completed by a revision synod of Sikh scholars chaired by Mahant Sumer Singh of Patna Sahib tier 2

Father, People Signified

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns House

Currently States The 10th house, in the modern reading of the parental axis

According To Modern Western astrology

The Hellenistic sources place both parents in the 4th and Lilly places the father there. Much twentieth century practice reads the father from the 10th and the mother from the 4th, inverting the older assignment. Both conventions are in current use and a reading should state which it follows.

Source The Contemporary Astrologer's Handbook, Sue Tompkins tier 2

Feda, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Description

Currently States Feda was the named trance control of the British medium Gladys Osborne Leonard, who rose to prominence during the First World War and was studied at length by the Society for Psychical Research. Feda communicated by entrancing Leonard and relaying messages she said she received from the deceased, claiming in her own account to have been a young ancestor of Leonard's who died around 1800 at about thirteen years old. Leonard's sittings with bereaved parents, gathered in the book Raymond, made Feda one of the most closely documented spirit controls of the early twentieth century. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Man, Myth and Magic (1970) records that the psychical researcher Charles Richet, studying the same sittings with the medium Gladys Osborne Leonard that made her spirit control Feda famous, examined the content and manner of Feda's communications directly and concluded Feda was better explained as a secondary personality of the medium herself than as an independent discarnate entity; that reading was never resolved either way among the wider community of psychical researchers who studied the same sittings.

Source Man, Myth and Magic, Richard Cavendish (ed.) tier 2

Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1535

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference), Encyclopaedia Britannica editors tier 2

Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 1616

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference), Encyclopaedia Britannica editors tier 2

Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States That his account of Nezahualcóyotl as a worshipper of one invisible creator preserves Texcocan tradition rather than reconstructing it.

Encyclopaedia Britannica's online entry (2024) on Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl sets out two competing readings of his seventeenth century writings on his Texcocan ancestors. One camp reads him as a custodian of genuine Acolhua court memory, including an authentic strand of pre-conquest Nahua philosophical speculation that the friars' own accounts flattened into simpler categories. The other reads his portrait of a monotheistic Nezahualcoyotl as Ixtlilxochitl's own construction, built from Christian theological categories to present his indigenous lineage in terms acceptable to the colonial authority he was petitioning for recognition and land. Britannica's entry notes both camps work from the identical body of his writings, since no independent pre-conquest record survives to check either reading against.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference), Encyclopaedia Britannica editors tier 2

Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1578

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference), Encyclopaedia Britannica editors tier 2

Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 1650

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference), Encyclopaedia Britannica editors tier 2

Fibonacci, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1170

No document records Fibonacci's exact birth. Historians of medieval mathematics cite around 1170 in Pisa as the conventional estimate, consistent with his father's known career and with the dedication of his own Liber Abaci, rather than a fixed birth record.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica: Verified Biographies (online academic reference), Encyclopaedia Britannica editors tier 2

Fibonacci, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 1250

No document records Fibonacci's exact death. Historians of medieval mathematics cite around 1250 as the conventional estimate, the last period in which he is documented as active in Pisa, rather than a fixed death record.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica: Verified Biographies (online academic reference), Encyclopaedia Britannica editors tier 2

Fides, Virtues

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States A civic and religious value from the early Roman Republic; her cult and Capitoline temple are traditionally dated to the third century BCE, though the underlying value in Roman practice is older and not precisely dateable.

Source Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic, H. H. Scullard tier 1

Final Kaph ך, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Scholem places Sefer Yetzirah between the second and sixth century CE

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Final Kaph ך, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Survives in three recensions that do not agree in detail

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Final Mem ם, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Scholem places Sefer Yetzirah between the second and sixth century CE

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Final Mem ם, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Survives in three recensions that do not agree in detail

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Final Nun ן, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Scholem places Sefer Yetzirah between the second and sixth century CE

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Final Nun ן, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Survives in three recensions that do not agree in detail

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1