medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
V. Kerry Inman wrote:
>
> Not so crazy a possibility as it sounds. Offa, King of Mercia, had a
> coin struck which said in Arabic: There is one God, he has no peers.
> One can actually find a picture of it on the web or go to a museum in
> England and see it. There was also a published article which argued
> that Offa had converted to Islam.
>
> I personally believe the coin was an imitation of ones brought back
> to Mercia by pilgrims to Jerusalem, but in any case intercourse (not
> a pun) between the Anglo Saxon world and the Muslim world was greater
> than previously believed. (Actually, maybe that was a pun.)
The Arab traveller Ibrahim Al-Tartushi visited the Viking trading post of
Hedeby (in Schleswig) in the 10th century. He apparently described the town
as "an appalling place, noisy and filthy".
At some stage, St Cuthbert's body at Durham was wrapped in a length of silk
with a pretty design around the edge. The pretty design is, of course, a
quotation from the Koran!
John Briggs
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