Open Questions

Open Wallace Fard Muhammad

Why It Is Open He is the founding figure of the Nation of Islam, a movement with millions of adherents across its history, and no document has been produced that establishes who he was before he appeared in Detroit around 1930. Historians, journalists and the FBI have each proposed different identities and origins for him, and none commands consensus.

What Would Settle It A birth, immigration, employment or court record naming him under a documented pre-1930 identity, corroborated independently of the competing candidate identities already proposed by investigators and journalists.

Expertise Needed American religious history; archival and genealogical research; journalism and investigative history

Question posed in The Nation of Islam: An American Millenarian Movement, Martha F. Lee.

Open Kenekuk

Why It Is Open Kenekuk enters the historical record as a religious reformer among the Kickapoo in the 1820s and is documented until his death in the 1852 smallpox epidemic; no source records when he was born.

What Would Settle It A missionary, trader or government record from before the 1820s naming Kenekuk and giving an age or birth year.

Expertise Needed Native American history, history of the Kickapoo removal era

Question posed in Kenekuk, the Kickapoo Prophet (Herring), Joseph B. Herring.

Open Nehanda Nyakasikana

Why It Is Open Nehanda Nyakasikana enters the colonial and oral record as a leader of the First Chimurenga beginning in 1896 and is documented through her capture, trial and execution in 1898; no source records when she was born.

What Would Settle It A colonial administrative record or documented oral genealogy from Mashonaland naming the medium's birth year prior to her possession by the Nehanda spirit.

Expertise Needed Zimbabwean colonial history, Shona religious history

Question posed in The God of the Matopo Hills: An Essay on the Mwari Cult in Rhodesia, M. L. Daneel.

Open Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel I

Why It Is Open Josephus documents Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel I as an established figure in Jerusalem politics by 66 CE and rabbinic tradition names him among the last Sanhedrin leaders before the Temple's destruction, but neither source names his birthplace, his birth year, or a confirmed date of death; later tradition folds him into the legendary Ten Martyrs, a list usually set two generations later.

What Would Settle It A datable document or inscription naming his birthplace or birth year, and an external account of his death independent of the later, chronologically strained Ten Martyrs tradition.

Expertise Needed Rabbinics, Josephan studies, history of the Second Temple and Sanhedrin

Question posed in The Jewish War, Flavius Josephus.

Open Parmenides

Why It Is Open No ancient source records when Parmenides died. His birth is dated from the dramatic setting of Plato's dialogue named for him, which implies old age around 450 BCE, but nothing marks the end of his life.

What Would Settle It A datable ancient testimony naming when Parmenides died, independent of the dramatic framing of Plato's dialogue.

Expertise Needed Classical philology, history of pre-Socratic philosophy

Question posed in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman (eds.).

Open Occia

Why It Is Open Tacitus records Occia's fifty-seven years as chief Vestal and her death in 19 CE in unusual detail, but does not state when she was born or when she entered the Vestal order as a girl.

What Would Settle It An epigraphic or documentary record of her family and the year she was chosen for the Vestal order as a girl.

Expertise Needed Roman epigraphy, history of the early Principate

Question posed in Rome's Vestal Virgins: A Study of Rome's Vestal Priestesses in the Late Republic and Early Principate, Robin Lorsch Wildfang.

Open Eucleides of Athens

Why It Is Open Eucleides is known to history by a single administrative act, his archonship of 403/402 BCE and the alphabet reform decreed under it. Almost nothing else about his life, including a birth year, is recorded anywhere.

What Would Settle It An inscription or documentary source naming Eucleides outside his single archon year, giving any biographical anchor beyond that office.

Expertise Needed Greek epigraphy, Athenian political history

Question posed in The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.).

Open Sultan Sahak

Why It Is Open Scholarship provisionally places the opening of Sultan Sahak's teaching in the fifteenth century CE, but surviving accounts of his life are a composite of historical memory and devotional narrative, and no reading offers a death date.

What Would Settle It A documentary source external to the devotional Kalam-e Saranjam tradition naming a death date, or independent corroboration for one of the competing scholarly placements of his era.

Expertise Needed Yarsani and Kurdish religious history, Iranian studies

Question posed in The Religious Textual Heritage of the Yarsan (Ahl-e Haqq), Philip G. Kreyenbroek.

Open Peter Waldo

Why It Is Open Peter Waldo enters the record as a Lyon merchant who gave away his wealth and began preaching around 1173; nothing in the surviving medieval sources states when he was born.

What Would Settle It A Lyon municipal or ecclesiastical record naming Waldo's family and birth year, independent of the later Waldensian tradition's own accounts of his conversion.

Expertise Needed Medieval history, history of the Waldensian movement

Question posed in Peter Waldo (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors.

Open Suryavarman II

Why It Is Open Khmer royal inscriptions name Suryavarman II's posthumous title and record his military campaigns and his temple building at Angkor Wat, but as with other Khmer god-kings his personal birth is not part of the epigraphic record, which speaks in terms of reign and religious dedication rather than biography.

What Would Settle It A dated Khmer inscription naming Suryavarman II's age or birth before his accession, distinct from the reign and campaign dates his own inscriptions record.

Expertise Needed Khmer history, Angkorian epigraphy

Question posed in Suryavarman II (reference article), Wikipedia contributors.

Open Kartir

Why It Is Open Kartir's own four rock inscriptions, the only sustained first person account of the early Sasanian priesthood to survive, describe his rise across the reigns of four kings from Ardashir I through Bahram II and his own religious offices and honors, but they are a career record, not a birth notice, and no outside chronicle supplies one either.

What Would Settle It A Sasanian administrative or dynastic text naming Kartir's age or birth before his rise under Ardashir I, distinct from the career narrative his own inscriptions preserve.

Expertise Needed Sasanian history, Zoroastrian religious history

Question posed in A History of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce.

Open Leonidas I

Why It Is Open Herodotus, the earliest and fullest source for Leonidas, gives his parentage and the unusual succession that brought him to the Spartan throne around 490 BCE ahead of his elder half-brothers' male heirs, but nowhere states a birth year for him.

What Would Settle It A Spartan king list or dated inscription naming Leonidas's age or birth year, distinct from the succession narrative Herodotus preserves.

Expertise Needed Archaic and Classical Spartan history

Question posed in Histories, Herodotus.

Open Mursili II

Why It Is Open Mursili II's own Annals and Plague Prayers fix his father Suppiluliuma I's reign and his own accession after two elder claimants died of plague, but nothing independent of that political record gives a birth year for Mursili himself.

What Would Settle It A Hittite administrative or dynastic text naming Mursili II's age at accession or his birth year, distinct from the Annals' political narrative of the succession crisis.

Expertise Needed Hittite history, Late Bronze Age Anatolian chronology

Question posed in Hittite Prayers, Itamar Singer; Harry A. Hoffner Jr. (ed.).

Open Puduhepa

Why It Is Open Puduhepa appears in the documentary record as a priest's daughter married to the future king Hattusili III, then as high priestess and co-ruler through his reign and into that of her son Tudhaliya IV, one of the longest documented careers of any Hittite queen. Nothing fixes an actual birth or death year, only the span of her documented activity in seals and correspondence.

What Would Settle It A Hittite dynastic text naming Puduhepa's age at marriage or at death, distinct from the sealed correspondence that fixes only the span of her public activity.

Expertise Needed Hittite history, Late Bronze Age Anatolian chronology

Question posed in Hittite Prayers, Itamar Singer; Harry A. Hoffner Jr. (ed.).

Open Balim Sultan

Why It Is Open Balim Sultan enters the record only as the organizer who gave the Bektashi Sufi order its lasting institutional form about the beginning of the sixteenth century, roughly two and a half centuries after the order's traditional founding figure Haji Bektash Veli. Nothing in Bektashi tradition or in outside chronicles fixes a birth year for him.

What Would Settle It A dated Ottoman or Bektashi document naming Balim Sultan's age or birth year, distinct from the undated tradition of his organizing career at Dimetoka and later at the Haci Bektas lodge.

Expertise Needed History of the Bektashi order, Ottoman religious history

Question posed in The Sufi Orders in Islam, J. Spencer Trimingham.

Open Hamzah Fansuri

Why It Is Open Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, whose 1970 study did the most sustained work reconstructing Hamzah Fansuri's biography, could not establish a birth year from his poems and early European accounts of him. Vladimir Braginsky's later study, framed around the question of when Hamzah lived at all, likewise reached only a floruit rather than a birth date.

What Would Settle It A dated manuscript or an independent early European account naming Hamzah Fansuri's age or birth, distinct from the internal, undated evidence of his own poems that al-Attas and Braginsky each worked from.

Expertise Needed History of Malay literature, history of Southeast Asian Sufism

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 Hammurabi

Why It Is Open No inscription or chronicle records when Hammurabi was born. What survives fixes only his reign, conventionally 1792 to 1750 BCE under the Middle Chronology, and everything about his life before the throne is unrecorded.

What Would Settle It A dated Old Babylonian document naming Hammurabi's age or birth before his accession, distinct from the reign dates fixed by his own year names and later king lists.

Expertise Needed Old Babylonian history, Mesopotamian chronology

Question posed in Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary, Jeremy Black and Anthony Green.

Open Khuong Tang Hoi

Why It Is Open Khuong Tang Hoi was orphaned young in Jiaozhi and later became a Buddhist monk and translator whose documented career, arriving at the Wu capital and translating scripture, runs up to his death in 280. No source independent of that career record gives a birth year.

What Would Settle It A biographical notice or dated document from Jiaozhi or the Wu court naming Khuong Tang Hoi's age or birth year, distinct from the undated account of his early life as an orphan.

Expertise Needed Early Chinese Buddhist history, history of Jiaozhi under Chinese administration

Question posed in New World Encyclopedia, New World Encyclopedia contributors.

Open Linji Yixuan

Why It Is Open Linji Yixuan's death in 866 is well documented in Chan biographical tradition, including the Linji lu compiled after his death, but the same tradition gives no birth year, and standard reference works represent his life as a bare range with the birth end left open.

What Would Settle It A dated biographical notice from Linji Yixuan's own lifetime or from Huangbo Xiyun's circle fixing his age or birth year, distinct from the undated account of his training and later teaching career.

Expertise Needed Tang dynasty Chan Buddhist history

Question posed in The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr..

Open Bahya ibn Paquda

Why It Is Open The Encyclopaedia Judaica records only that Bahya ibn Paquda was active as a rabbinic judge in Zaragoza in the second half of the eleventh century. His one surviving work carries no colophon date, and no later medieval chronicle independent of it fixes a death year, the same gap already recorded under his lifespan-start-year.

What Would Settle It A dated document from Muslim Iberia or a later medieval Jewish chronicle naming Bahya ibn Paquda's death, distinct from the undated internal evidence of his one surviving work.

Expertise Needed History of medieval Iberian Jewry, history of Jewish ethical literature

Question posed in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition, Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.).