Thursday, November 15, 2012

Harun al-Rashid

Firstly, this source could be reliable on occasion, but has many flaws. The Wikipedia setup allows for the access of many different minds across the world, meaning a larger amount of knowledge. However, this format allows people to post incorrect information, as well has having conflicting opinions or interpretations of the article. Also, the collective mind writing style gives little organization or flow to the passage. Other than those flaws with the system itself, the article had several sources listed and could be trusted for the most part, other than the fact that Mike Ackerman clearly did not influence Harun.

Questions that come up because of the article include, but are not limited to:
1) What was Harun's 'foreign policy' like with the Byzantines and Charlemagne?
2) How was Harun regarded among the people of his society? (good/bad)

For the most part, the Wikipedia article answered most of my questions, and for those that it didn't answer, I'm sure that those could easily be found through a simple Google search. Simply by refining the search to include more details or a keyword that encompasses the area that I was looking for would help me narrow down to a source  that would benefit me.

The Wikipedia article both tempers and adds to Harun's legacy. Because the people who wrote the article were not able to see or experience Harun and/or his deeds, they would mostly go with the opinions of the people of the time period. If they thought that he was awesome, the writers of the Wiki page would stress that. This would also serve to temper his legacy, because the writers of the article do not truely know him or his deeds, so they cannot fully describe them to the detail that they were.

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