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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

#161

Post by sctb »

AmIFirstToThink wrote: post #27
leyth wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, talk about conjecture! If they found these artifacts in their graves, the closes thing to truth is that they were Muslims, nothing else.

and that would explain all the raiding and pillaging and terrorizing done by Vikings. I don't think they thought this through. BBC, lol

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

#162

Post by posterboy »

nvahalik wrote: post #136
jfaucett wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can confirm this. We say "Allah." Is there any difference at all? I was under the impression that all abrahamic religions referenced the same "God". So when a Muslim, Jew, and Christian say "God" are they not all referring to the same deity?

Well both Christians and Muslims have "names for God" that extend beyond just the simple word "God". Christians have described God in myriad ways[1] since the Old Testament times. Muslims also have the "99 Names of Allah"[2]. I don't think Muslims have another name for Allah like the Christians/Jews do (i.e. "Yahweh" or "Jehovah", depending upon your pronunciation). [1]: https://www.gotquestions.org/names-of-God.html…

muslims have something else of equal importance, mohammed is a demi-god by mere association, in christian terms he'd be one aspect of the trinity.

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

#163

Post by sctb »

norikki wrote: post #7
Glyptodon wrote: post #3

What makes it plausible to assume a deeper connection than trade for an average case of this sort?

Nothing. But they will push the idea of a deeper connection because European governments are scrambling for historical and cultural justification for the massive third-world immigration which is quickly turning many European countries like Sweden into Islamic war-zones, along with all the social and economic problems you would imagine that entails.

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

#164

Post by pdpi »

theprotocol wrote: post #134
jfaucett wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can confirm this. We say "Allah." Is there any difference at all? I was under the impression that all abrahamic religions referenced the same "God". So when a Muslim, Jew, and Christian say "God" are they not all referring to the same deity?

There is no grammatical difference. @smnrchrds above is spot on in his explanation of the etymology. "Elah" is "god" with a lowercase g (as in, a god). "Al" means "the" in Arabic. "Allah" = "Al Elah" = "the god" = "God." Now, whether the Abrahamic religions consider their God to be one and the same is a philosophical question. It depends on what "the same" means. Each of them claims to refer to the same entity, at le…

Islam is, AIUI quite explicit in saying that they worship the same deity as Christians, agree that Mary was a virgin, and that the birth of Christ was a miracle. They just consider Christ to be (one of?) God’s favourite prophet, rather than God incarnate.

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

#165

Post by Grustaf »

posterboy wrote: post #156
kingofpandora wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't. "kh" should be read as a single sound (Arabic or Persian خ) not a sequence of two sounds.

both khan and kahn come out as british can't modulo t does, I guess, though noone knows what it sounded like originally.

No they don't, kh is an aspirated k sound. In any case that is not what was mistyped in the original post, it was the second and third syllables that hade changed places.

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

#166

Post by Grustaf »

theprotocol wrote: post #72
smnrchrds wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "Go…

Exactly, the real question is why the muslim God is referred to as "Allah" even in English. It's not like the Christian God is called "Theos" or something in other languages. At least as far as I know.

In Japanese for example they use the same word, Kami, as the use for the more spirit like gods of Shinto.

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

#167

Post by posterboy »

hprotagonist wrote: post #6
senatorobama wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii_Lakshmi

another good one: the Hallstatt salt mines in what is now Austria have been around since the late Iron Age. I recall but cannot currently find studies that have found bags of the mined salt in graves and digs all along the silk road over a time period of millennia. "The Dark Ages" is a horrible name. It was coined to denote "a period that we, historians, don't know much about because we don't have nearly as many anal…

> we don't have nearly as many anal romans writing everything down

Please, they burned books simply because those didn't suit thier idea of history.

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

#168

Post by Grustaf »

ominous wrote: post #80
DavidAdams wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>The word "alphabeth" is also of greek origin.

Yes and no. It came through Greek (though to us via Latin) but of course the names for Alpha and Beta (and most other letters) are based on the Phoenician Aleph and Bet.

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

#169

Post by Grustaf »

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…

Since there most definitely were Christian Vikings even in the early days (later they were all Christian), it seems quite probable that some would have also converted to Islam.

But I agree that embroidered pieces of cloth doesn't really say much at all.

It's also pretty strange that the article seems to say that Vikings got the idea for an eternal life after death from Islam. First of all there are very similar ideas in Norse Paganism (cognate to Greek and Roman Paganism), even if it's not in paradise. Secondly the idea also exists in Christianity, and by the 9th century most of Europe, and many Vikings, were of course Christian.

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

#170

Post by Grustaf »

int_19h wrote: post #61
lucaspiller wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's entirely possible that there were converts, as well. Many European cultures pre-Christianization had pretty broad-minded attitudes towards religion, and while the majority would adhere to the predominant pagan tradition, some individuals and families would sometimes convert to another religion when exposed to it. Especially given the rather pragmatic attitude towards religious worship among pagans at the time, c…

>According to the legend, Islam was rejected first, solely on account of banning alcohol.

That may be one version. In another the people tasked with finding a new faith came back to Vladimir and talked about how boring the muslim rituals were, "they first look this way, then that way", whereas when they came to Hagia Sophia they "thought they were in heaven".

There were also geopolitical considerations, Byzantium was still very strong and Vladimir wanted to marry the emperor's sister Anna (Porphyrogenita).

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