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Arabic characters found woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves

bbc.com

51–60 of 180 posts

Re: Arabic characters found woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves

#51

The Swedish vikings are known to have travelled, traded and served as guards for the Ottomans. Most people equate Vikings with the Danish/Norwegian raids and voyages in western europe and the atlantic. It’s an interesting discovery, but the article lacks a bit of context. (Source: Historical Atlas of the Vikings by John Haywood, also a history interested dane/norseman).

I think they only served the Byzantines opposed to the Ottomans.

Re: Arabic characters found woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves

#52
post #33

Well, why don't they think that Vikings simply seen these as a decoration, not understanding what they mean? That happens in much much more recent times. Late Russian ex-foreign minister, and ex-prime minister Primakov, who is Arab states specialist and reads Arabic scripts very well, once saw a garment with 'No god except Allah...' on Patriarch of Russia Alexy II, shocking him because similar ritual garments were us…

As a funny modern example, check out Kenyon Martin, former NBA all-star, having Chinese character tattoos. I never really thought about this until social media apparently all told him to back off when he said current Brooklyn Nets point guard Jeremy Lin shouldn't have dreadlocks in his hair because that was a black culture thing, and then Lin (politely) pointed out that Martin had Chinese character tattoos. I imagine…

I would be really interested in that article about t-shirt slogans!

Re: Arabic characters found woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves

#53
post #33

Well, why don't they think that Vikings simply seen these as a decoration, not understanding what they mean? That happens in much much more recent times. Late Russian ex-foreign minister, and ex-prime minister Primakov, who is Arab states specialist and reads Arabic scripts very well, once saw a garment with 'No god except Allah...' on Patriarch of Russia Alexy II, shocking him because similar ritual garments were us…

As a funny modern example, check out Kenyon Martin, former NBA all-star, having Chinese character tattoos. I never really thought about this until social media apparently all told him to back off when he said current Brooklyn Nets point guard Jeremy Lin shouldn't have dreadlocks in his hair because that was a black culture thing, and then Lin (politely) pointed out that Martin had Chinese character tattoos. I imagine…

There is also the Western predilection for Chinese character tattoos which don't always mean what the customer thinks they mean and, of course, the Chinese predilection for English tattoos that...

Re: Arabic characters found woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves

#54

Well, why don't they think that Vikings simply seen these as a decoration, not understanding what they mean? That happens in much much more recent times. Late Russian ex-foreign minister, and ex-prime minister Primakov, who is Arab states specialist and reads Arabic scripts very well, once saw a garment with 'No god except Allah...' on Patriarch of Russia Alexy II, shocking him because similar ritual garments were us…

Allah literally means God in Arabic. It is comprised of definite prefix 'Al' and the word for god 'Elah'. In English, to show the difference between generic god and specific God, the first letter is capitalized. Arabic does not have the same capitalization rule , so instead they call the specific deity 'Allah', literally meaning 'the god', or 'God'.

This is important because not all Mulsims are Arab and not all Arabs are Muslim. Allah is first and foremost an Arabic word. As a result, practitioners of Islam in other languages use other words to refer to God.

In Iran, for example, Persian word 'Khoda' is used by Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians to refer to God in their religion. 'Allah' is never used except in phrases and words borrowed from Arabic and using it on its own in the middle of a Persian sentence would sound very odd.

I have also heard that Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews use the Allah to refer to God in their religions, but I have not fact-checked it.

Re: Arabic characters found woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves

#55
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a funny modern example, check out Kenyon Martin, former NBA all-star, having Chinese character tattoos. I never really thought about this until social media apparently all told him to back off when he said current Brooklyn Nets point guard Jeremy Lin shouldn't have dreadlocks in his hair because that was a black culture thing, and then Lin (politely) pointed out that Martin had Chinese character tattoos. I imagine…

I would be really interested in that article about t-shirt slogans!

Don't know about the GP's article, but there are actually quite some YT videos around of someone interviewing people in Asia (I think the last one I saw was based in Japan), asking them if they know the meaning of the words on their shirts.

Some of these are hilarious..

Re: Arabic characters found woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be really interested in that article about t-shirt slogans!

Don't know about the GP's article, but there are actually quite some YT videos around of someone interviewing people in Asia (I think the last one I saw was based in Japan), asking them if they know the meaning of the words on their shirts. Some of these are hilarious..

While living away from my native California, I had a good laugh seeing someone with a "San Bernardino Beach" shirt.

Re: Arabic characters found woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves

#57

Well, why don't they think that Vikings simply seen these as a decoration, not understanding what they mean? That happens in much much more recent times. Late Russian ex-foreign minister, and ex-prime minister Primakov, who is Arab states specialist and reads Arabic scripts very well, once saw a garment with 'No god except Allah...' on Patriarch of Russia Alexy II, shocking him because similar ritual garments were us…

Yep. It's like people nowadays getting tattoos with Han characters without knowing what they mean. Or the exact opposite happening in the CJK countries where Latin letters or gibberish English phrases are used decoratively in t-shirts. It is also well known that Nordic smiths would—with varying success—imitate decorative patterns and Latin phrases found in items forged by their Central European counterparts.

Re: Arabic characters found woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves

#58
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know about the GP's article, but there are actually quite some YT videos around of someone interviewing people in Asia (I think the last one I saw was based in Japan), asking them if they know the meaning of the words on their shirts. Some of these are hilarious..

While living away from my native California, I had a good laugh seeing someone with a "San Bernardino Beach" shirt.

I have multiple shirts that say Surf Ohio on them, I’d assume it was also a tongue in cheek thing like that.

Re: Arabic characters found woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves

#59
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "We know from other Viking tomb > excavations that DNA analysis has > shown some of the people buried in > them originated from places like > Persia, where Islam was very dominant Which is also not proof-positive that there were Muslim Vikings, but as we know there were Persian Vikings, and as the name Allah appears as decoration, it does start to see pretty likely, no?

> Persia, where Islam was very dominant Was that true at the time? They were certainly ruled by a caliphate, but other religions survive in Persia till this day so I wouldn't be surprised if the process took centuries. There also appears to be some repression of Persian people after. That Viking could of also been a refugee of the islamification process or the various power struggles in the region at the time.

The Islamic conquest of Iran happened in the late 7th century. The aforementioned remains were probably from the 9th/10th century. However, in that time there were still many Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians in Iran. I agree that the existence of Persian remains does not necessitate that there were Muslim vikings.

Re: Arabic characters found woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves

#60

Well, why don't they think that Vikings simply seen these as a decoration, not understanding what they mean? That happens in much much more recent times. Late Russian ex-foreign minister, and ex-prime minister Primakov, who is Arab states specialist and reads Arabic scripts very well, once saw a garment with 'No god except Allah...' on Patriarch of Russia Alexy II, shocking him because similar ritual garments were us…

Allah literally means God in Arabic. It is comprised of definite prefix 'Al' and the word for god 'Elah'. In English, to show the difference between generic god and specific God, the first letter is capitalized. Arabic does not have the same capitalization rule , so instead they call the specific deity 'Allah', literally meaning 'the god', or 'God'. This is important because not all Mulsims are Arab and not all Arabs…

The parent likely means "La ilaha illallah". So the point it not about "Allah" (indeed many cultures use that word for God -- it is derived from the semetic El). The point is instead about an inscription of the Shahada on the cloth of the Patriach of Russia. This would be akin to the US President wearing a garment with something along the lines of "God save the Queen" in Latin (assuming the President didn't understand Latin).
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