Open Questions

Open Ahmad Yasavi

Why It Is Open No birth year is recorded anywhere, and the received death year rests on hagiographical sources written centuries after the life. Nobody argues for a particular birth year, because there is no evidence to argue from; the reference literature simply omits it.

What Would Settle It A twelfth or thirteenth century document, endowment record or inscription from Yasi, Sayram or Bukhara that names him with a date.

Expertise Needed Central Asian documentary history and Persian hagiography

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

Open Dhu Nuwas

Why It Is Open The Sabaic inscriptions of his reign stop at the Aksumite conquest, the Syriac accounts of the killings at Najran do not describe his end, and the story in which he rides his horse into the sea rather than be taken appears only in much later Arabic narrative. The reference literature reports the death as approximate for exactly this reason.

What Would Settle It A dated south Arabian inscription from the period of the Aksumite takeover that names the outcome, or an early Aksumite, Syriac or Byzantine notice of the campaign that reports how the Himyari king was disposed of.

Expertise Needed South Arabian epigraphy, Ethiopic and Syriac historiography

Question posed in The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam, G. W. Bowersock.

Open Donatus Magnus

Why It Is Open No source gives a birth year. His exile in 347 is documented in the imperial and conciliar record, but the death is placed around 355 only by later writers arguing against his church, and no burial place is recorded. The standard reference works print both dates as approximations.

What Would Settle It An African or Gallic epigraphic or documentary find naming him with a date, or an unremarked notice in the conciliar and imperial correspondence of the 350s.

Expertise Needed Late Roman prosopography and North African epigraphy

Question posed in The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa, W. H. C. Frend.

Open Musaylima

Why It Is Open Every reported revelation of his survives only as quotation inside the writings of the tradition that defeated him, presented in order to be ridiculed, and no manuscript, inscription or non-Muslim notice offers a control. This is a gap rather than a dispute: no scholar holds a position on the content of his teaching, because there is nothing independent to hold a position about.

What Would Settle It A documentary or epigraphic find from al-Yamama independent of the Islamic historiographical tradition, or an early non-Muslim notice of the Hanifa movement of the 630s.

Expertise Needed Arabian epigraphy and early Islamic historiography

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

Open Elsie Wheeler

Why It Is Open Every account of her, including this entry, is drawn from Marc Edmund Jones's own description of her in his writing on the 1925 Sabian sitting. No independent biographical, genealogical or newspaper record naming her birth or death year has surfaced in the sources checked for this entry.

What Would Settle It A genealogical or California newspaper archive search for a clairvoyant medium named Elsie Wheeler active in the San Diego area in the 1920s, or a period Theosophical Society membership record naming her.

Expertise Needed Biographical and archival research

Question posed in The Sabian Symbols in Astrology, Marc Edmund Jones.

Open Johannes Angelus

Why It Is Open The degree images printed under the name of Johannes Angelus in 1488 are generally traced to earlier material circulating in manuscript and associated with the name of Pietro d'Abano, but the atlas has no citable study collating those manuscripts against the incunable. Without one, a statement that a particular degree image originates in this book cannot be checked, and the printed edition risks being treated as a source when it may only be a witness.

What Would Settle It A collation of the surviving manuscript witnesses of the degree image material against the 1488 Augsburg printing, establishing the recension the editor worked from and the extent of editorial change.

Expertise Needed History of astrology; incunable and manuscript studies; textual criticism

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Hubert Pearce

Why It Is Open The parapsychological literature records his trial results to several decimal places and almost nothing about the man. This atlas could not verify a birth date, a death date, or any account of his later life from an accessible source, and records no dates at all rather than estimating them.

What Would Settle It Duke Divinity School enrolment and graduation records for the early 1930s, or the Rhine Research Center's own archive of laboratory correspondence, which would identify him well enough for ordinary genealogical work.

Expertise Needed Archival research; genealogy

Question posed in A Review of the Pearce-Pratt Distance Series of ESP Tests, J. B. Rhine and J. G. Pratt.

Open William Crookes

Why It Is Open Writers since the 1960s have argued that Crookes either knew the materialisations were produced by Cook herself or was personally involved with her, and that this explains his willingness to vouch for phenomena he would have tested rigorously in any other setting. The arguments rest on circumstantial reading of his published accounts and on later recollection, and no documentary proof has been produced in either direction.

What Would Settle It Contemporary correspondence between Crookes and Cook, or household records establishing the arrangements at the sittings, if any survive in family or institutional archives.

Expertise Needed History of Victorian science; archival research

Question posed in The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Ruth Brandon.

Open Tituba

Why It Is Open The 1692 court papers record her enslaved status and her testimony and nothing about her birth, her passage or her later life. Elaine Breslaw's reconstruction of an Arawak origin by way of Barbados works from indirect records and is explicitly circumstantial; other readings of the same material remain open, and the later life is a blank rather than a dispute.

What Would Settle It Documentary evidence tying her to a named vessel, cargo manifest, inventory, parish register or estate record, in Barbados, Massachusetts or elsewhere. A subsequent record of her under any name after 1693 would answer the second half.

Expertise Needed Colonial American and Caribbean archival history; the history of slavery and of Atlantic shipping records

Question posed in Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies, Elaine G. Breslaw, Breslaw, Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem.

Open Saint

Why It Is Open The comparative literature has not settled this. Using one tradition's word for the others carries with it a juridical, posthumous and universal notion of holiness that the wali, the tzadik, the sant and the arhat do not each share, and specialists in those fields regularly object to the translation. There is no agreed replacement term.

What Would Settle It A sustained comparative study working from each tradition's own vocabulary outward rather than from the English word inward, and testing whether any set of features is genuinely shared across them.

Expertise Needed Comparative religion; religious studies

Question posed in The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, John Bowker (ed.), s.v. Saint.

Open Saint

Why It Is Open The Consulta Medica is asked whether a recovery is explicable by the medicine of the day, and the medicine of the day changes. No public record shows whether findings have been revisited as diagnostic categories moved, and the acts of individual causes are not generally published in full.

What Would Settle It Access to the medical dossiers of closed causes, or a published retrospective by the Congregation itself, examined by clinicians against current diagnostic criteria.

Expertise Needed History of medicine; canon law

Question posed in Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn't, and Why, Kenneth L. Woodward, Chapters on the medical consultors.

Open Marabout

Why It Is Open Colonial officials applied the word to a very wide range of Muslim religious figures, and the ethnography written under that administration is the channel through which most of the outside literature received it. Historians of the archive and specialists on the orders read the evidence differently and both readings are current.

What Would Settle It A systematic comparison of pre-colonial Arabic-language sources from the Maghreb and the western Sahel against the colonial administrative record, to establish the indigenous range of the term independently of the reporting.

Expertise Needed History of West and North Africa; Arabic manuscript studies

Question posed in The Sufi Orders in Islam, J. Spencer Trimingham, Chapters on the orders in North and West Africa.

Open Edward Kelley

Why It Is Open The Enochian material rests entirely on Kelley's reports of what appeared in the showstone, recorded by John Dee. Dee's diaries are strong evidence of what Dee believed and weak evidence of what actually occurred. Frances Yates called Kelley a fraud outright; others treat him as a genuine visionary or as self-deceived. The question is central to how the whole Enochian corpus should be read and is not settled.

What Would Settle It It may be unresolvable in principle, which is worth recording as such. It would move on evidence of Kelley preparing material in advance, or on linguistic analysis of the Enochian corpus bearing on whether it was composed rather than received.

Expertise Needed Early modern history, palaeography, and historical linguistics for the Enochian corpus itself.

Question posed in John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature, Deborah E. Harkness, Pages 11 and 24.

Open Frank Podmore

Why It Is Open The 1910 inquest could not establish how Podmore entered the water and returned no verdict of intent. Suggestions of suicide, tied to the risk of a scandal over his private life, have circulated since among historians of the Society for Psychical Research but have never been substantiated, and no further inquiry has been undertaken.

What Would Settle It A search of the original coroner's inquest papers and the Malvern and Worcestershire newspaper coverage of August 1910, which may hold testimony not yet examined by SPR historians.

Expertise Needed Archival research, history of science

Question posed in The Founders of Psychical Research, Alan Gauld.

Open Florence Campbell

Why It Is Open No source checked for this entry gives a birth year or biographical detail beyond her authorship of Your Days Are Numbered (1931) and a reported death in late 1964; her public identity survives almost entirely through the one book.

What Would Settle It A period publisher archive, obituary or genealogical record establishing her birth date and life outside her published work.

Expertise Needed Archival research, history of American occultism

Question posed in Florence Campbell (publisher biographical note), Newcastle Publishing editorial staff.

Open Vatican Apostolic Library

Why It Is Open The library plainly holds material relevant to this atlas, and popular accounts make expansive claims about it. Specific holdings could not be verified well enough to assert a custody relation for any individual work, and asserting one without evidence would be exactly the kind of confident claim the atlas exists to avoid.

What Would Settle It Shelfmarks from the library's own catalogue, which is partly published, for specific works already in this atlas.

Expertise Needed Manuscript studies and catalogue research; Latin and Italian.

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Bodleian Library

Why It Is Open The Bodleian holds significant alchemical and occult manuscript collections, including Ashmole material, but specific holdings for the works in this atlas were not verified to the point where a custody relation could be cited.

What Would Settle It Shelfmarks from the Bodleian's catalogue for named works, which is largely searchable.

Expertise Needed Manuscript studies and catalogue research.

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Wellcome Collection

Why It Is Open The Wellcome holds a large collection on the history of medicine, magic and belief, much of it digitised. Specific correspondences to items already held here were not established.

What Would Settle It Catalogue identifiers from the Wellcome's own openly available catalogue.

Expertise Needed History of medicine and catalogue research.

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Halqa ࡀ

Why It Is Open Most Mandaic letters are named by their own sound with a preceding a (ab, ag, ad...), and their own descriptions state plainly this is a pronunciation label rather than an inherited word with a sense, unlike the Northwest Semitic nouns Hebrew and Syriac kept for the same slots. Six letters break that regular pattern by their own descriptions' own account (Its own text names the set: ushenna, aksa, dushenna, kad and it itself; In and Ash are separately marked as built on a different vowel or sound), and Dushenna and Kad, two of the six, already carry attested senses because they are documented ligatures of a real Aramaic word. The other four, plus Halqa, the very first letter and one of the script's three true vowel signs, whose name is equally outside the regular pattern, have no sense offered by any source consulted, and none of their descriptions states this as a settled absence either.

What Would Settle It A study of Mandaic's own manuscript and liturgical tradition for these specific six names, checked against Mandaic vocabulary and against the older Aramaic sequence's inherited nouns for the same six slots (Aleph, Waw, Heth, Yod, Ayin, Shin), beyond what the general reference literature already surveys.

Expertise Needed Mandaic studies; comparative Aramaic philology

Question posed in The Unicode Standard, The Unicode Consortium.

Open Djervi Ⰼ

Why It Is Open Djervi, the twelfth Glagolitic letter, sits well before the point in the alphabet recitation where letter names turn opaque or Greek-derived (that boundary falls at Tvrido, the twenty-first letter). Its own description states its sound, its regional history and its descendant the Serbian djerv, but gives no Slavonic word or sense behind the name itself, and no source consulted states whether this is a settled absence or simply unresearched.

What Would Settle It A study of the earliest Glagolitic abecedaria and of the South Slavic manuscript tradition that preserves djervi, checked against comparative Slavic dialect vocabulary for a word matching the form, beyond what the general reference literature already surveys.

Expertise Needed Slavic historical linguistics; Old Church Slavonic philology

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.