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Arabic characters found woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves

bbc.com

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

#71

Post by bsaul »

Yetanfou wrote: post #62

Placed in the perspective of the current political climate in Sweden I can not be but sceptic against research which tries to make islam part of Sweden's history. While the article is published by the BBC, the research - for what it is - was done in Uppsala. That Vikings travelled to islamic countries is known. That they traded with them - willingly or unwillingly - is also known. They did the same with many other cu…

i've heard a lot of very very preocuppying things about sweden, but could you elaborate on what you think the current political climate is ?

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

#72

Post by theprotocol »

smnrchrds wrote: post #54
anovikov wrote: post #26

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…

>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.

I can confirm this. We say "Allah." The advent of Islam into the global public awareness has created a lot of confusion about Middle Eastern cultures, e.g. I frequently hear "Allah is the name of the Muslims' God." But it is in fact a more generic word, exactly analogous to "God" with a capital G.

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

#73

Post by chewz »

fludlight wrote: post #53
PakG1 wrote: 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…

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...

there are few blogs re: Japanese t-shirts 'in English'

'Crap your hands'... etc.

http://www.dorkly.com/post/70381/hilariously-translated-japa...

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

#74

Post by geff82 »

Question for me as a Westerner capable of reading/writing arabic script: does anyone see an example where the name "Ali" is written? I wonder a bit. In the pictures, it is not shown (except for the picture coming from Bulgaria, which has nothing to do with Viking clothing).

So if someone can point me to a picture containing the "Ali" part of the enigma, please link it here.

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

#75

Post by thaumasiotes »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #35
flukus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> "but other religions survive in Persia till this day" Just to be clear, what is known as Persia is a subset of modern day Iran: http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/iranpersia Quick note about non-Islamic religions in Iran: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Iran "The remaining 0.6% associate themselves with non-Islamic religious minorities, including Bahá'ís, Mandeans, Yarsanis, Zoroastrians, J…

> what is known as Persia is a subset of modern day Iran

Subset? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaemenid_Empire

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

#76

Post by chewz »

lucaspiller wrote: post #39
earksiinni wrote: post #13

Sceptical that this means that there were Muslim Vikings. Arabic script was commonly used throughout medieval Iberia as decoration, often without any meaningful words, just Arabic letters strung together for aesthetic effect. Wouldn’t surprise me if something similar was going on here, where Iranian weavers were simply mass producing cloth for export with Ali and Allah embroidered as decoration. Keep in mind that Vik…

Here in Lithuania (well the empire, so Poland and Belarus too) there were a large number of Muslim settlers who arrived in the 14th century. They were known for their military strength and were invited by Vytautas to aid in the efforts against the Christian Crusaders. If military prowess was as highly regarded as we believe to the Vikings, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did something similar too.

Do you mean Lipka Tatars? Yes, they were (mostly) Muslims serving in the army of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and had been settled there. But not really that many of them - 2 thousand according to 2011 cenzus. Their villages (at least only those two remaining within in Polish border) still have mosques.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipka_Tatars

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

#77

Post by _0w8t »

rusanu wrote: post #47

Swedish Vikings extended mostly toward what is now Russia and Ukraine, using Volga, Don and Dniepr as major communication/transport channels [0]. This brought them into contact with the Khazar Khanagate at the mouth of Volga [1] and the Volga Bulgars [2] (both muslim at the time). When Vladimir (half viking) had to choose a religion for his Kievan Rus, Islam was one of the choices [3] (rejected because it would forbi…

I remember reading that Vikings used ships rented in Khazar Khanagate to attack targets in Mediterranean as a form of disguise. They payed the rent with things they captured during the raids.

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

#78

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

Yetanfou wrote: post #62

Placed in the perspective of the current political climate in Sweden I can not be but sceptic against research which tries to make islam part of Sweden's history. While the article is published by the BBC, the research - for what it is - was done in Uppsala. That Vikings travelled to islamic countries is known. That they traded with them - willingly or unwillingly - is also known. They did the same with many other cu…

What would be the purpose of in including Islam as part of Swedish culture? Does Sweden want to get into OPEC?

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

#79

Post by rusk »

Yetanfou wrote: post #62

Placed in the perspective of the current political climate in Sweden I can not be but sceptic against research which tries to make islam part of Sweden's history. While the article is published by the BBC, the research - for what it is - was done in Uppsala. That Vikings travelled to islamic countries is known. That they traded with them - willingly or unwillingly - is also known. They did the same with many other cu…

That all sounds a bit far fetched if you ask me.

A more likely explanation is trade and cultural exchange [EDIT] and expropriation. The Vikings roamed far and wide [0] [1], and Islam even made it as far as Spain at one stage [2]

As far as they went though they probably never got as far as East Asia where they could have encountered Buddhism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings#Viking_Age

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings#/media/File:Vikings_ex...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Spain#History

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

#80

Post by ominous »

DavidAdams wrote: post #49
microcolonel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some suggestion that the Spanish interjection olé is also descended from Allah (or rather some conjugation of it). More or less, each name for God in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions is related to a similar name in one or both other traditions. "Allah" is a modern standard Arabic transliteration of a word which translates quite simply to God. The only reason to translate it as "Allah" is to signi…

Spanish speaking people have an even more obvious loan word from Arabic they use pretty commonly: ojalá. It means, "hopefully," or literally, "God willing."

The word "alphabeth" is also of greek origin.

But no one tries to pass the message of greek influence to the point of there being articles for that in hackernews.

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