Open Questions

Open Brihadishvara Temple

Why It Is Open Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department administers the Brihadishvara Temple's finances but has not been found to publish a standing per-temple annual account for it, and the state's own Comptroller and Auditor General reported in December 2024 that the department withheld the documents needed to verify temple revenue across its properties generally.

What Would Settle It A published per-temple annual account from Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department for the Brihadishvara Temple specifically, naming its own audited revenue apart from the department's consolidated figures.

Expertise Needed Tamil Nadu temple administration and public finance, and legal or investigative journalism covering HR&CE governance.

Question posed in Tamil Nadu: CAG Slams HR&CE Department for Non-Cooperation in Temple Assets Audit (Organiser, 2024), TS Venkatesan.

Open Ise Grand Shrine

Why It Is Open Japan's Religious Corporations Law exempts income associated with worship from both taxation and standing financial disclosure, and Shinto shrines including Ise Grand Shrine generally do not publish their offering income; the only widely reported figure, about 57 billion yen, is a one-time capital fundraising total for the shrine's periodic rebuilding, not an annual income or budget figure.

What Would Settle It A change in Japanese religious corporation disclosure requirements, or a voluntary published account from the Jingu Administration Office naming Ise Grand Shrine's own annual offering income or operating budget.

Expertise Needed Japanese religious corporation law and Shinto shrine administration, and financial or investigative journalism covering Japan's religious institutions.

Question posed in Shrine Funds: Japan's Religious Sites and Their Undisclosed Cash (Japan Times via Green Shinto, 2018), Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku.

Open Meiji Shrine

Why It Is Open The only widely circulated figure for Meiji Shrine, an estimated 1.3 billion yen over the three-day New Year holiday, comes from an outside estimator rather than the shrine's own published accounts and covers only that three-day window; Japan's Religious Corporations Law exempts worship-related income from the disclosure that would otherwise make a fuller, annual figure available.

What Would Settle It A voluntary published account from Meiji Shrine's own administration naming its annual offering income or operating budget, or a change in Japanese religious corporation disclosure requirements.

Expertise Needed Japanese religious corporation law and Shinto shrine administration, and financial or investigative journalism covering Japan's religious institutions.

Question posed in Shrine Funds: Japan's Religious Sites and Their Undisclosed Cash (Japan Times via Green Shinto, 2018), Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku.

Open Yasukuni Shrine

Why It Is Open Japan's Religious Corporations Law exempts income associated with worship from taxation and standing financial disclosure, and no figure for Yasukuni Shrine's own annual income or operating budget was located despite the shrine's unusual level of political and journalistic scrutiny on other matters.

What Would Settle It A voluntary published account from Yasukuni Shrine's own administration naming its annual offering income or operating budget, or investigative reporting that obtains one despite the general non-disclosure norm.

Expertise Needed Japanese religious corporation law and Shinto shrine administration, and investigative or political journalism covering Yasukuni Shrine specifically.

Question posed in Shrine Funds: Japan's Religious Sites and Their Undisclosed Cash (Japan Times via Green Shinto, 2018), Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku.

Open The First Fitna

Why It Is Open The Battle of Siffin and the Battle of the Camel are both remembered with specific traditional casualty figures, commonly around seventy thousand combined at Siffin alone, but those figures trace only to medieval chronicle compilations, chiefly al-Tabari drawing on Abu Mikhnaf, written under later dynasties with their own interest in the outcome. No modern historian has produced an independent whole-conflict synthesis to check them against.

What Would Settle It A modern historian's critical, source-by-source reassessment of the casualty claims in al-Tabari and the other early narrative sources, of the kind Bar Kokhba and the Sikh-Mughal Wars have each already received on this atlas, weighing the chronicles' reliability rather than repeating their totals.

Expertise Needed Early Islamic history; source criticism of the classical Arabic chronicle tradition

Question posed in The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate, Wilferd Madelung.

Open The Destruction of the Second Temple

Why It Is Open Josephus claims 1.1 million dead over the course of the siege; Tacitus gives six hundred thousand. Menahem Stern's standard critical edition of the classical sources treats Tacitus's figure, and by extension Josephus's higher one, as rhetorical rather than reliable, and proposes no replacement. No modern historian has converted demographic or archaeological evidence into a defensible death toll for the siege itself.

What Would Settle It A published demographic or archaeological reassessment of the siege's casualties, of the kind Raviv and Ben David produced for the Bar Kokhba War from settlement-survey evidence, applied to first-century Jerusalem's population and the siege's own documented timeline.

Expertise Needed Roman-period Judaean history; historical demography; classical source criticism

Question posed in Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, Volume Two: From Tacitus to Simplicius (1980), Menahem Stern.

Open The Raid on Somnath in 1026

Why It Is Open Turko-Persian chronicles written after the fact give a formulaic figure of tens of thousands killed defending the temple, which Thapar's historiographical study reads as a rhetorical convention repeated across several unrelated conquest narratives of the period rather than a count, and contemporary Sanskrit and Jain inscriptions from Saurashtra do not corroborate it or even mention the raid.

What Would Settle It Independent corroborating evidence from the Saurashtra region itself, archaeological or epigraphic, of a kind that is entirely absent from the record as it stands, or a named modern historian's reasoned estimate in place of the chronicle's formulaic figure.

Expertise Needed Medieval South Asian history; Indology; epigraphy

Question posed in Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History, Romila Thapar.

Open The Huichang Persecution of Buddhism

Why It Is Open Ennin's eyewitness diary and official Tang records document the persecution's scale in detail, including the 260,500 monks and nuns returned to lay life, but neither they nor any later Chinese history drawing on them records a death toll.

What Would Settle It A documented count from Tang administrative or local records of deaths directly caused by the persecution, distinct from the well recorded laicization total, should one ever surface in the surviving archive.

Expertise Needed Tang dynasty history; Chinese Buddhist history

Question posed in Ennin's Diary: The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law, Ennin, translated and annotated by Edwin O. Reischauer.

Open Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church

Why It Is Open The word asrat, literally "tithe", is well documented historically, but as a state-administered land tax of one tenth of agricultural produce collected by secular officials (mesle, gult gash, cheqa shum), administered separately from the Church's own monastic gult land holdings, per a peer-reviewed regional economic history of one Ethiopian ruler's own early-20th-century tax system. Two bands across this axis have now searched (scholarly databases, the Fetha Nagast, the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica) and found no canonical or doctrinal Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church text stating a personal member giving percentage. A modern US diaspora parish's own fundraising campaign uses the word "Asrat" in its title, showing the term is in living use, but a single campaign title is not a doctrinal statement of what the Church formally expects.

What Would Settle It A direct reading of a canonical Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church text, a Holy Synod statement, or a scholarly ethnography of contemporary EOTC parish finance (in Ethiopia or in the diaspora) stating whether an ordinary member is expected to give a set percentage of income and what follows if they do not.

Expertise Needed Ethiopian studies, primary source review of Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church canonical texts

Question posed in The Taxation System of Ras Haylu Taklu Haymanot of Gojjam: 1907-1932, Geremew Eskezia.

Open Georgian Orthodox Church

Why It Is Open A named-author 2021 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace policy report on the Georgian Orthodox Church's political and financial position documents its state funding channels in real detail, annual budget transfers, land, buildings and vehicles from the Georgian government and local municipalities, and never once addresses ordinary parishioner or member giving. Two bands on this axis have now searched specifically for a Georgian Orthodox tithe, due or stewardship norm (the 2002 state concordat, general Orthodox stewardship literature, Georgian-language donation terminology) and found nothing that names the Church's own practice.

What Would Settle It A primary Georgian Orthodox Church source (a parish or diocesan stewardship statement, a Patriarchate financial policy) or a scholarly study of Georgian parish-level finance specifically, stating whether an ordinary member is expected to give a set amount or percentage.

Expertise Needed Georgian religious studies, primary source review of Georgian Orthodox Church financial governance

Question posed in The Orthodox Church in Georgia's Changing Society, Archil Gegeshidze and Mikheil Mirziashvili.

Open Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Why It Is Open The Ukrainian Orthodox Church's jurisdiction is genuinely contested (the Orthodox Church of Ukraine under the 2019 Tomos of Autocephaly against the church previously under the Moscow Patriarchate), and no single source found across two bands establishes a giving norm for either reading of it. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA's own institutional announcement of a general stewardship resource promotes giving only in general spiritual terms, "the deep spiritual roots of Orthodox stewardship", with no stated percentage, due or consequence for a member who does not give, distinct from the codified due-with-consequences shape already recorded on this axis for Serbian and Armenian parish practice.

What Would Settle It A primary source from a specific Ukrainian Orthodox jurisdiction (the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, or the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada) stating a specific dues, pledge or tithe structure and what follows, if anything, when a member does not meet it; or a scholarly study of Ukrainian Orthodox parish finance addressing member giving specifically.

Expertise Needed Slavic Orthodox studies, primary source review of Ukrainian Orthodox jurisdictional finance

Question posed in New Blog: Office of Stewardship.

Open The 1999 Ban and Crackdown on Falun Gong

Why It Is Open Detention, forced labor camp sentences and reports of torture and deaths in custody are well documented since the 1999 ban, but advocacy organizations and the Chinese government publish estimates that diverge by orders of magnitude, and neither is independently verified nor cross-checked against detention records outside state control.

What Would Settle It Independent access to Chinese detention, labor camp and mortality records, or a systematic international investigation with verified access to prison and camp registries from the relevant decades.

Expertise Needed Human rights documentation

Question posed in Falun Gong and the Future of China, David Ownby.

Open The Persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan

Why It Is Open Individual killings and mob attacks against Pakistan's Ahmadi community are documented incident by incident since the 1974 constitutional amendment and the 1984 Ordinance XX, but no independent body has compiled a cumulative total across the full decades-long campaign of legal restriction and violence.

What Would Settle It A systematic count from an independent human rights body, cross-checked against Ahmadiyya community records and Pakistani state records, covering the full period since 1974.

Expertise Needed Human rights documentation

Question posed in Ordinance XX of 1984 (Pakistan), Government of Pakistan.

Open The Uyghur Internment in Xinjiang

Why It Is Open The OHCHR's 2022 assessment documents serious human rights violations across the Xinjiang internment system, but China has not granted independent international access to detention facility records or mortality data, and no independent body has published a verified death toll.

What Would Settle It Independent international access to detention facility records and mortality data, which has not been granted to date.

Expertise Needed Human rights documentation

Question posed in OHCHR Assessment of Human Rights Concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Open The 1391 Massacres of Spain's Jewish Communities

Why It Is Open Modern scholarship documents that survivors of the 1391 massacres either converted, often under direct threat, or fled to Islamic-ruled territory, Navarre, Portugal or France, but no source checked gives a reliable numeric total for those who fled distinct from those who converted or were killed. The one round figure found in circulation (a "100,000 fled" alongside equally round conversion and death figures) is inconsistent with the death-toll range already carefully sourced here and was judged unreliable rather than written.

What Would Settle It A demographic study of Iberian Jewish community registers or tax rolls before and after 1391, cross-referenced against the destinations named in contemporary accounts (North African, Navarrese and Portuguese Jewish community records), of the kind that has been done for the 1492 expulsion but not, so far as could be found, for 1391 specifically.

Expertise Needed Historical demography

Question posed in Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today (2014), David Nirenberg.

Open The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain

Why It Is Open Contemporary chronicles (Bernaldez among them) and modern accounts alike describe severe hardship during the 1492 expulsion journey, disease, starvation, robbery, shipwreck and, in some accounts, refugees thrown overboard by ship captains, but no source checked, including Jonathan Ray's standard modern academic treatment "After Expulsion," gives a numeric mortality estimate for the journey distinct from the total number expelled, which is already recorded here as a displaced range.

What Would Settle It A dedicated demographic or archival study specifically isolating expulsion-journey mortality from the wider 1492 to 1497 diaspora experience, of the kind Kamen's 1988 Past and Present article did for the total population expelled but for which no equivalent study covering deaths in transit could be found.

Expertise Needed Historical demography

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

Open The Kishinev Pogrom

Why It Is Open Secondary accounts of the April 1903 pogrom's property destruction disagree in a way that reads as citation drift rather than independent corroboration: the number "2,000" recurs but is applied inconsistently to "families" in some accounts and "people" in others, for what appears to be the same underlying claim, and neither version was traceable back to the established academic source already cited here, Judge's "Easter in Kishinev: Anatomy of a Pogrom" (1992).

What Would Settle It A page-level check of Judge's 1992 monograph, or the contemporary Russian official commission of inquiry it draws on, for its own stated count of families or individuals left homeless, distinct from the homes-and-businesses-destroyed figures already recorded here.

Expertise Needed Historical demography

Question posed in Judge, Easter in Kishinev: Anatomy of a Pogrom (1992), Edward H. Judge.

Open The Würzburg Witch Trials

Why It Is Open Contemporary execution lists survive for parts of the Wurzburg episode, but the trials ran across the city, the surrounding prince-bishopric and its wider territory, and different surviving lists count these differently; the records are incomplete and no modern historian has reconciled them into a single agreed total, unlike the single well documented parish record behind the Torsaker toll or the court record behind Salem's.

What Would Settle It A systematic reconciliation of the surviving city, diocesan and territorial execution lists against one agreed boundary for what counts as the Wurzburg trials, of the kind regional archival historians have already carried out for other German territories.

Expertise Needed Early modern German history; archival history of the witch trials

Question posed in Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History, Wolfgang Behringer.

Open The Yellow Turban Rebellion

Why It Is Open Historians frequently repeat casualty figures in the millions for the rebellion, but these numbers, where they can be traced at all, describe the population loss of the following decades of civil war, famine and displacement across northern China rather than deaths in the rebellion itself, and no modern historian has isolated a defensible toll for the rising and its suppression alone.

What Would Settle It A modern historian's attempt to separate combat and reprisal deaths during the 184 CE rising itself from the much larger population loss of the decades of civil war, famine and displacement that followed it and that the rebellion helped set in motion.

Expertise Needed Han dynasty history; historical demography of early imperial China

Question posed in The Encyclopedia of Taoism, Fabrizio Pregadio (ed.).

Open Epistle to Diognetus

Why It Is Open No ancient writer names or quotes the letter before its single surviving manuscript resurfaces in the thirteenth century, and the letter itself names no author. Its polished rhetorical style differs from the rest of the apostolic fathers collection it is conventionally grouped with, and proposed authors and dates spanning the second and third centuries all rest on style and apparent theological concern rather than direct evidence.

What Would Settle It An independent ancient citation or manuscript witness naming the author or firmly dating the text would settle this; absent that, a scholarly consensus reconciling its style and content with a known apologetic writer's other work would narrow the range.

Expertise Needed Patristics and early Christian textual studies

Question posed in The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (Michael W. Holmes), Michael W. Holmes, editor and translator.