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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Madeleine wrote: >Can you say a bit more about the 'pseudo-calligraphy' - it sounds rather >reminiscent of Tom Bredehoft's work on pseudo-writing on pilgrim badges Quite a few Islamic textiles are decorated with calligraphy -- usually rather stylized (i.e. it often doesn't look a whole lot like written Arabic at first glance). It's quite possible this has something to do with the Islamic reluctance to use images as decoration: many of the other motifs that show up together with the calligraphy are geometric, such as stars. The inscriptions (depending on context) can be short or long, and many of them are religious -- "The blessing of Allah upon so-and-so", for instance, or "Allah is most glorious." Others are more secular: "Success and happiness", for instance. This custom seems to have originated with the *tiraz* textiles that were given as rewards to courtiers by various rulers. As the use of such motifs spread, imitations arose, and as designers played with the idea, decorative patterns arose which look a great deal like calligraphy at first glance, but which actually don't say anything. Either they are nonsensical combinations of letters, or in some cases they look rather like Arabic letters but aren't identifiable. This also happened as these designs migrated to Europe, where the significance of the calligraphy wasn't understood, but it occurs in Islamic textiles as well. Islamic lettering is rather flexible, in that the shapes of the letters can be somewhat distorted and still quite legible. In particular, the ascenders and descenders can be long or short, and there is definitely a fashion for manipulating lettering so that it also forms a picture -- something that looks like a row of buildings, for instance. I've seen modern lettering that reads "Peace" in the shape of a dove, and I have pictures of an 11th century Islamic textile where the word "Victory" has been shaped so that the vertical lines suggest a pillared hall with hanging lamps. My problem is, since I'm not able to *read* the lettering, I can't easily tell whether an inscription I'm looking at is real (but distorted) lettering that actually spells something, or whether it's pseudo-calligraphy. And before I publish an assertion that something is meaningless (or meaningful), I'd like to be assured that I'm right ;) ____________________________________________________________ 0 Chris Laning | <[log in to unmask]> + Davis, California http://paternoster-row.org - http://paternosters.blogspot.com ____________________________________________________________ ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html