Viking textile and learning Arabic letters

[cosmolinguist]

I saw, and you might have seen too, excited news stories recently about a 10th-century Viking textile with Arabic on it. My friend Maria shared a great article about how and why we know that this is overstating the case a little, and why it matters.

The style of writing that was claimed to have been used here wasn't developed until five hundred years later in another part of the world. This instead seems to be a "pseudo" version of Arabic script, designs meant to look like Arabic but not to contain any actual words.

I am particularly interested in this because the headline "word" that was supposed to be in this Viking textile was of course "Allah." And my four-lessons worth of Arabic so far is almost exactly enough for me to understand the mistake that needs to be made to think that this says "Allah." Here's the explanation from Stephennie Mulder's article:

the drawing doesn’t actually say “Allah” at all. Instead, it says “lllah” للله, a nonsensical word in Arabic. The first letter is a not an alif (an a), but a lam, (an l). Though the Arabic letters alif and lam resemble each other, alif never connects to the letters following it, as lam does. Arabic phrases like al-hamdulillah (الحمد لله) incorporate the phrase “li-llāh,” which in that context means (praise) to God. However the phrase “to God” doesn’t typically stand alone, and it’s always spelled لله with two uprights, not three. To argue that “lllah” and “Allah” are the same would be as absurd as arguing that “Dod” and “God” are the same word.

Most letters in Arabic writing join up (the script itself has been described in my beginner's textbook as a kind of shorthand), but a few of them do not! They were one of the first set of letters we learned, and my teacher calls them "naughty letters" because they don't follow the rule about joining to the letter after them.

I still can't read all the letters, but we're sometimes asked in class to pick out the ones that we're learning from a newspaper headline or whatever, and I've found myself doing this with signs in Arabic that I see in my neighborhood, which is a pretty great feeling (I still can't read the words, because Arabic doesn't write down many of its vowels, so sometimes I can tell you all the letters in a word but they're mostly consonants and I still have no idea what it sounds like, but it's better than seeing them only as undifferentiated squiggles). But I have noticed I've confused alif and lam this way, many times! I still do it though I'm getting better.

I guess it's nice to know it's not just me who struggles with things like this as an absolute beginner. But Mulder's article is mostly not about this, it's mostly full of interesting details and a really good point about why it matters to see the medieval world as the multicultural place scholars know it to be.

this story likely went viral in part because of recent events. Charlottesville revealed to all what has long been known among medievalists: that white supremacists use medieval imagery and symbolism to further their cause. At Charlottesville we saw medieval banners and chants with Crusader phrases like Deus vult (God wills!). White supremacists are attracted to medieval imagery for a simple reason: they believe the medieval era was a time when Europe was white.
...
Many, in the aftermath of Brexit and the election of Trump — both of which events rode on anti-immigrant sentiment and a false narrative of past racial purity — want to see glimpses of our genuinely culturally diverse past. So the Viking “Allah” textile exhibits what Stephen Colbert once called “truthiness.” In other words, it feels like it ought to be right, but in this case, doesn’t stand the test of evidence.

Some might argue that to dismiss any of the evidence for such interaction plays into the hands of white supremacists, and indeed, since I wrote my thread a few right-wing media stories referring to it have appeared, most of which, predictably, distort my overall message. But if we accept a manipulation of the facts, we are no different than white supremacists for whom manipulation of the facts is their stock in trade. It is our method and standard of evidence that separates the work of art historians, historians, archaeologists, and other experts from the hateful distortions peddled by white supremacists.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Great post. Thanks for the peek not Arabic script, as well.

[cosmolinguist]

I am finding learning Arabic a little stressful and overwhelming so it was nice to read something where my struggles are useful and interesting! :)