Skyler Eastin
12-17-13
H-Block
Mr. Ward
Written word is one of the few
things all civilizations have in common. While many civilizations had different
languages, many also had different alphabets. Having one alphabet that the
whole world uses and understands was not around hundreds of years ago like it
is today. Civilizations had their own alphabet to communicate with the people
in their empire. Because only people in the empire would read that particular
alphabet, it didn’t matter whether or not it was the same alphabet or language
as any other empire. The Greeks and Romans had different alphabets, the Chinese
and Japanese had different alphabets, and even today the Spanish and the
English have a few different characters in their respective alphabets such as
the ch, the ll, the ñ,
and the rr. Byzantine and Islamic empires were no different. The cultures were
very different and there writing style is a reflection of that. As you can see
in the two pieces of writing, they had vastly different alphabets and styles of
writing in the two different empires. The left
is an exerpt of the Koran writin in the Islamic alphabet, and the left is the
first part of Phaedrus
by Plato.
Acording
to Michael Sells of the University of Chicago, this is a exerpt of the book of
Sura 22, and only those who already know the Koran orally can speak it.
Acording
to experts at Fordham University, this text is a play by Plato and is meant to
be used to study or practice the byzantine and greek languages.
Outline
·
The 2 cultures different writing styles show
cultures difference.
·
The Islamic alphabet came from the tribes that
settled in the Sinai Peninsula.
·
The byzantine alphabet came directly from the Greek
alphabet.
Islamic letters or characters are
very similar to those of the Nabataea nomadic tribes who lived around the Sinai
Peninsula, and started to decline in the same time and same place as the
Islamic culture began. All the different letters are made by taking one symbol
and making minor alterations to it to get different letters. So having one dot
over a symbol is a different letter than one with two dots which is different than
one with three dots. This alphabet was and is still known as Arabic. In ancient
times, students learned the alphabet by copying down the letter repeatedly and
the copying words repeatedly, similar to the way we teach children handwriting
in America today. Arabic calligraphy was a very popular art form in Islamic
culture. Many texts such as the Koran are written many rewritten by many
calligraphers or students. This was one of the most popular art forms in
Islamic culture.
Here is the Arabic alphabet.
The Byzantine Empire controlled
most of Greece, Turkey, and parts of Italy. The
Byzantines spoke greek, and therfore also wrote with the greek alphabet.
However, their greek alphabet and the alphabet used by the byzantines werent
identical. Over time it did evolve slightly, especially the xi, sigma, psi, and
omega, but it is still the same general alphabet. Byzantine students learned
greek similar to how the greeks did. They
wrote, memorized, and sometimes recited poetry, even some by Homer, and
famous greek plays. The Byzantines were Eastern Orthodox, and unlike the western
Catholics, they translated the bible and religious sermons to greek so that
people could better understand them, as apposed to the Catholic practice of
only using the original latin version.
Here
is the Greek(left) and Byzantine (right) alphabets placed side by side.
Citations:
Ratman, Marcus. Daily Life in The Byzantine Empire. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Khalili, Nasser D. Islamic Art and Culture, A Visual History. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
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