# An old copper bracelet with Arabic inscription



## Konstantin Siberia

Hi, guys, I need your help with Arabic! I got a very old copper bracelet, the photos attached below, that seems to be as old as 13-15 century, and It’s my historical curiosity to find out the actual meaning of the Arabic inscription engraved on it. Can anyone tell me how the inscription translates, and what kind of the culture this bracelet is, judging from the engraved Scythian-like motif?

Your ideas and answers will be greatly appreciated!


----------



## Romeel

الله أكبر
God is the greatest


----------



## Konstantin Siberia

Thanks, Romeel. My guess about the inscription was almost close to yours. I thought it says "Allah and Jesus". Can you please comment on the ornamental motif engraved on it, which culture could it belong to? 'Cause this bangle is from Siberia. Thanks, bro.


----------



## WadiH

What part of Siberia specifically?


----------



## Konstantin Siberia

WadiH said:


> What part of Siberia specifically?


It's the South-Western one, called Altai, near the Altai mountains. It's the former territory of Great Tartaria, far back in the times of Chingiz Khan and Tamerlan, and of Gog and Magog who preceded them.


----------



## Romeel

Konstantin Siberia said:


> Thanks, Romeel. My guess about the inscription was almost close to yours. I thought it says "Allah and Jesus". Can you please comment on the ornamental motif engraved on it, which culture could it belong to? 'Cause this bangle is from Siberia. Thanks, bro.


I don't think the word Jesus is possible here

As for the inscriptions, they are Islamic inscriptions, as they avoid drawing animals


----------



## WadiH

This could be from anywhere in the eastern Islamic world from Central Asia down to India and up to the land of the Tatars, or even Iran and the Ottoman empire. Impossible to know really without consulting an academic expert (or several of them).  But if you found it in lands inhabited by Muslim Tatars it could very well be a local product.


----------



## Konstantin Siberia

Romeel said:


> I don't think the word Jesus is possible here
> 
> As for the inscriptions, they are Islamic inscriptions, as they avoid drawing animals


I didn't know that it is forbidden in the Islamic culture to depict any animals on jewelry and household items.


----------



## Konstantin Siberia

WadiH said:


> This could be from anywhere in the eastern Islamic world from Central Asia down to India and up to the land of the Tatars, or even Iran and the Ottoman empire. Impossible to know really without consulting an academic expert (or several of them).  But if you found it in lands inhabited by Muslim Tatars it could very well be a local product.


Thanks, WadiH, I totally share your opinion.


----------



## tracer2

Konstantin Siberia said:


> * .....I got a very old copper bracelet, that seems to be as old as 13-15 century.....*


I agree with the translation of the Arabic inscription provided by Romeel in #2 above, as well as with the suggested origin of the bracelet as being "somewhere" in the Islamic Asian world.

However, I'd be very surprised if the item were actually from the 13-15th centuries as Konstantin in #1 above believes.....that would make the item between 600 to 800 years old and would make the item an astonishing possession to have.  I wonder why Konstantin thinks the bracelet is of that age. Is he just guessing or does he have some concrete proof of age?

The item might be 100 years old or so, I would say, probably produced in one of the countless bazaar metal shops found everywhere from Morocco to the borders of China....very likely made for the "tourist" trade. 

It's simply too well preserved to place it as the product of the early European Middle Ages....almost the Dark Ages.


----------



## Konstantin Siberia

tracer2 said:


> I agree with the translation of the Arabic inscription provided by Romeel in #2 above, as well as with the suggested origin of the bracelet as being "somewhere" in the Islamic Asian world.
> 
> However, I'd be very surprised if the item were actually from the 13-15th centuries as Konstantin in #1 above believes.....that would make the item between 600 to 800 years old and would make the item an astonishing possession to have.  I wonder why Konstantin thinks the bracelet is of that age. Is he just guessing or does he have some concrete proof of age?
> 
> The item might be 100 years old or so, I would say, probably produced in one of the countless bazaar metal shops found everywhere from Morocco to the borders of China....very likely made for the "tourist" trade.
> 
> It's simply too well preserved to place it as the product of the early European Middle Ages....almost the Dark Ages.


Thanks, tracer2 for your comment. Why do I believe it to be about 500 years old? First, it's because this is the only time period in Russia when the arabic/islamic language was yet spoken somewhere within the Siberian territory. Of course, the age I suggested it to be, is my personal guess and nothing more. In the times back to the USSR, such copper bangles were popular across the country and commercially produced or handcrafted, and considered to be wholesome against hypertonia, rheumatism and the like. I've seen a lot of USSR-made copper bracelets that had various ornamental patterns engraved but never seen islamic insriptions like this one "allahu akbar" (God is the greatest)--which is absolutely uncommon. The fact the bangle in question is "too well preserved" can be explained by no one having worn it, and just kept it in a safe place.


----------



## WadiH

Muslims use Arabic religious phrases even when they don’t speak Arabic, and until the 20th century nearly all of them used the Arabic script to write their native languages.  So you don’t need to find a time when Arabic itself was spoken in the area - Islam is sufficient.


----------



## Konstantin Siberia

WadiH said:


> Muslims use Arabic religious phrases even when they don’t speak Arabic, and until the 20th century nearly all of them used the Arabic script to write their native languages.  So you don’t need to find a time when Arabic itself was spoken in the area - Islam is sufficient.


Thanks, WadiH. Agree, your words cannot be disputed. But I want to exemplify my idea by the helmet of the last konung (Knyaz) of Rus, the Tsar of Rus Ivan the Terrible (16th cent.), which is being kept in the Stockholm museum. You can see both the arabic and the old Slavic characters (the line beneath the Arabic) inscribed on the helmet. This is the very last case where arabic inscriptions were oficially employed as ornamental motif in former times of Russia.


----------



## WadiH

Yes, because this was around the time that Moscow conquered the last remnants of the Muslim Mongol and Tatar khanates.


----------



## tracer2

I apologize for again questioning what has been presented above but.....

Is that *really Arabic* on Ivan's helmet?  I agree that the writing appears to be some kind of stylized Arabic script perhaps used as "decoration" with no meaning* or, more likely,* it is a Mongolian or Turkic language used in Russia at the time which used the Arabic script as suggested by WadiH above.

There's no doubt the script is a modified Arabic of some kind, but I doubt the language it represents _(if any)_ is the Arabic *language*.  

Also, why would the "Arabic" script be 3 times the size of the Slavic script?  Because that language (whatever it might be) was more important to Ivan than his own Slavic language?  Highly doubtful. The more I think about it, the more the "Arabic" script appears to me to be  some kind of decoration.  Am I mistaken?


----------



## Konstantin Siberia

tracer2 said:


> I apologize for again questioning what has been presented above but.....
> 
> Is that *really Arabic* on Ivan's helmet?  I agree that the writing appears to be some kind of stylized Arabic script perhaps used as "decoration" with no meaning* or, more likely,* it is a Mongolian or Turkic language used in Russia at the time which used the Arabic script as suggested by WadiH above.
> 
> There's no doubt the script is a modified Arabic of some kind, but I doubt the language it represents _(if any)_ is the Arabic *language*.
> 
> Also, why would the "Arabic" script be 3 times the size of the Slavic script?  Because that language (whatever it might be) was more important to Ivan than his own Slavic language?  Highly doubtful. The more I think about it, the more the "Arabic" script appears to me to be  some kind of decoration.  Am I mistaken?


I don't think you're mistaken; you're saying fairly reasonable things. The matter is that the two cultures -- the Slavic and the Siberian-Asian were co-existent at a time. There is a theory that the bilingualism was in daily use in those times and there equally existed the old Slavic (or the old Rus) language and the Turkic (Tartaric or Mongolian/Mogulian -- not that Mongolia you are seeing on the map today) language which is widely viewed as Arabic nowadays.


----------



## Mahaodeh

tracer2 said:


> Is that *really Arabic* on Ivan's helmet?


I don’t even think it’s an actual script. It seems to be some lines that resemble Arabic script only.

Perhaps the helmet was copying other helmets made elsewhere where that is actually script. Perhaps the craftsman who made it doesn’t even know that he was imitating the script of another language.


----------



## Konstantin Siberia

Mahaodeh said:


> I don’t even think it’s an actual script. It seems to be some lines that resemble Arabic script only.
> 
> Perhaps the helmet was copying other helmets made elsewhere where that is actually script. Perhaps the craftsman who made it doesn’t even know that he was imitating the script of another language.


Hi, Mahaodeh, thanks for the comment. A lot of people do actually think the same way...umm..about the Arabic-style imitation or copying the Arabic script as applied to the Rus jewelry, especially to the armory of the Rus worriors in the Middle Ages. But the facts are on the contrary. I got a lot of photos from the Russian museum as regards the Arabic scripts (in Russia, we call it the Arabic ligatured script) inscribed on the armour (helmets, blades, shileds) dated between 14 and 18 centuries, and I can share this literature source with you with pleasure.


----------

