Talk:Basim ibn Ishaq

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Basim's son

The bio of Basim read as such, "Years later, he became a father, but his son was taken from him by a close friend." I remember this sequence from the game, when Eivor and Basim are talking near a campfire during their quest to rescue Sigurd, at which point Basim told her that his friend/mentor took his son from him. Are we sure that it wasn't Loki talking through him about Fenrir ? Maxattac (talk) 15:55, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the line likely was a reference to Fenrir and Odin, respectively. By the time Basim was an adult, Loki had taken over his mind, so the man is speaking from memory of thousands of years ago, as opposed to Basim having physically fathered a child. – Darman (talk) 16:00, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

There is no way of knowing, though the rebellion bio doesn't even mention loki. - Soranin (talk) 16:17, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

I think the implication is that whatever the incident was with Basim and his son (possibly caused by Rig) it awakened Loki's consciousness within him like Sigurd getting his hand cut off. Of course none of this is explicit and thus not sourceable.Lacrossedeamon (talk) 01:04, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

So do we keep the sentence or not, since it's so open to interpretation whether Basim actually had a son or if he's remembering Loki's life? – Darman (talk) 01:25, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Keep the sentence; there is nothing in Valhalla or it's ancillary material that suggests what is stated in Rebellion can't be the case. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 15:12, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Mentor or not?

I read the Silk Road. In one sentence, the narrator described Basim as a Mentor with a capital "M" and other times with a little "m". Which one must we consider?Francesco75 (talk) 21:03, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

I think it makes sense that Basim was the mentor of the constantinople brotherhood but he served under a head mentor which was rayhan maybe?BearticWiki (talk) 06:12, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Death date?

Since Layla is considered dead, would Basim also have "died" when he originally entered the Yggdrasil device back in Eivor's time and would it therefore be appropriate to include that date as a date of death here? With the disclaimer of course that once being ejected from the Yggdrasil device, he landed on the Staff which kept him from fully dying.

I mean obviously she's working on stuff with Desmond in there, versus Basim who was waiting for the right moment to leave... but let's say hypothetically that somewhere down the line, the Staff happened to end up back right beneath Layla at the Yggdrasil device, and she happened to get ejected from it and land on the Staff the exact same way that Basim did and she ends up surviving. Would the death date on her wiki page be removed? Or would it stay there with a disclaimer similar to the above?

I don't know for sure but I wanted to throw the question out there. At least to me it seems like if Layla is considered dead, Basim would also have been considered dead during that time - or, if Basim was not considered dead while in the Yggdrasil device, that Layla would still currently be considered alive. —unsigned comment by Boolbordan (talk · contr) 22:59, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Except this idea of the Staff of Hermes returning there is all hypothetical. Layla is openly told that the only reason she's alive in Yggdrasil's vault is because the Staff is protecting her from the radiation that built up over 8 years after the machine went into overdrive when Desmond saved the world in 2012. If she ejects, without the Staff nearby, she dies. Basim is only alive because Loki ran calculations hedging on Alethia still being in the Staff wielded by Kassandra and then Layla, and that Layla would enter Yggdrasil's vault with the Staff. Just entering animation does not mean one is dead, since Eivor and Sigurd were able to plug in and willingly eject. While there is no way to know when specifically that Svala's body functions stopped while Yggdrasil preserved her mind, no human/Reborn Isu can survive after having withered away over a millennium, never mind radiation's impact on what amounts to a briefly-living corpse. Darman (talk) 04:45, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I think the real discussion should be "should Layla have a date of death". I'd argue no. Her body is in suspended animation not dead regardless of being narratively written out for the time being. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 08:25, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, yes I believe this is more the question I was getting at. If Layla is considered dead, shouldn't Basim also have been considered dead from 878-2020 and thus noted accordingly here on the wiki? Or, if Basim wasn't considered dead - just in suspended animation as Lacrossedeamon said - should Layla also still be considered alive? Boolbordan (talk) 13:50, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Basim's birth

Make up your minds. Pick one year or the other. —unsigned comment by Revan's Exile (talk · contr) 18:31, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Can we keep 835 as his birth year? For me, Basim in Valhalla look much older than 28 years old. Also if he had the title of master before 867, it means that he was younger than Altaïr to obtain the rank. It created too much incoherence.Francesco75 (talk) 10:05, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

The current information we have is that Basim is 17 at the start of the game and that it starts in 861. Later in the game, he's stated to be 20. We can't really deny in-game dates until they're retconned.RealBearZ (talk) 11:30, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Did the game state he's 17 or is just the writer saying when she also said that the begin of the game occurred 20 years before Valhalla. With the new beginning in 861, I think that her previous statement could be questioned, as it is only a decade before Valhalla.Francesco75 (talk) 12:53, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Still, unless you have any source for that "835", it's staying as is. - Soranin (talk) 13:41, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

But the source used, the writer said that Basim is around 17 and contradicted by saying is around 20 years before Valhalla. If for the writer around 20 years it is in fact 10 years, I could argue she meant that Basim is around 27 when she said he is around 17. You can't used a source which is contradictory in some case. To choose a middle ground, we can write that Basim is born in the 840's or early 9th century.Francesco75 (talk) 14:33, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, the only piece of media put out by Ubisoft that gives Basim's year of birth is the "Abstergo profile" that was shown at Paris Games Week last year. And in that video they do unequivocally state that he was born in 835. However, that video also stated that Mirage begins in 852, which we now know is false. I'm quite certain that the original plan for Mirage was to have it start in 852 when Basim is 17 years old, but then at some point the plan changed. The final version of Mirage instead starts in 861 but without at all clarifying how old Basim is supposed to be. Either his original birth year stands and they simply moved the start of the game forwards a bit, thus making Basim 26 at the start of Mirage. Or they changed his birth year entirely to match the final version of the narrative, where he's still 17 at the start of the game but in 861 instead of 852. There's really no way to know which scenario is the correct one until we get some form of confirmation from Ubisoft. But until that happens, what we do know for sure is that he was born in the 9th century. N217062 (talk) 08:30, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not against removing the date altogether, I am, however, against using a number pulled out of nowhere, which was the suggestion I was responding to. - Soranin (talk) 23:32, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Arabic naming conventions

Currently, our policy is to correct Ubisoft's typos involving poor romanization of non-English words, e.g. "Yusuf's Turkish Kilij" vs its erroneous in-game rendering as "kijil", "Yu/Gu Dayong", etc. I would like to propose two minor corrections. First, removing the capital ⟨I⟩ in Basim's nasab "Ibn" and replacing it with lowercase ⟨i⟩. While official company material capitalizes it, to my knowledge, no one of historical Arabic descent like Muhammad ibn Tahir or of in-universe creation like Jasoor ibn Basil ever has that written with a capital, with perhaps the sole exception of Altaïr's family, who treat the nasab like an unconventional nisbah/surname.

Second, I believe we should move the page and adopt his Arabic stylization with "Is'haq". Yes, its I think only occurrence is Roshan's use during Basim's initiation, but I feel that it being closer to its proper localization than how English phonetically renders it as "ih-shack" borders on "faithful[ness] to the naming conventions of the subject's cultural and linguistic background", per the Manual of Style. – Darman (talk) 00:10, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Back in 2023, when Mirage had first came out we discussed moving this page to "Basim Ibn Is'haq", though lacrosse pointed out in the discord that "Is'haq" is not "the accepted romanization of the name given the ‘ is usually reserved for transliteration of specific Arabic characters that don't appear in the name". Myself and Cyfiero both agreed with not moving the page under that argument. - Soranin (talk) 01:50, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Oh, really? I was unaware, thank you. That must have been before I was even sporadically using Discord at all, then. I'll trust Lacrosse's linguistic knowledge and retract this proposal, and also undo the move I'd done for his father's name based on the trophy descriptions. – Darman (talk) 02:45, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

What about the unusually capitalized nasab, though? Or is that also vetoed? – Darman (talk) 02:50, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

I'd be fine with doing the lowercase ⟨i⟩ for "ibn" but yeah the ⟨'⟩ used in Ishaq is solely an Ubisoft thing to get the fanbase to stop pronouncing the ⟨sh⟩ as digraph since they are in two separate syllables. In romanization of Arabic script the ⟨'⟩ is used to denote the hamza and the 'ayn (technically open/closed are used to differentiate between the two). Lacrossedeamon (talk) 02:58, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm also fine with the lowercase i, so long as the move retains the capital I page as a redirect. - Soranin (talk) 03:07, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

That makes sense given its how Ubisoft formats it. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 03:14, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

I still think it's silly to keep ⟨I⟩ when smaller ⟨i⟩ is still the same letter that would be in the search bar, but fine, I'll keep it for the page name since Ubisoft insists on that for its own styling. And no, I won't ask that we do similar for Altaïr. Given his and his family's series prominence, it would be a titanic mess to clean that's not worth the effort. – Darman (talk) 03:20, 9 November 2025 (UTC)