Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim McDougall
Your suggestion on the intriguing alphabet of this Bosnian Cyrillic language of Bosnian Muslim nobility seems well placed. These colorful hussar and Pandour type units were well known across Europe, and many Hungarian blades have mysterious inscriptions such as those mentioned here.As this flamboyant military tradition extended across Europe, so did the blade inscriptions used on the swords.
It appears most of these inscriptions used devices and motif representing oriental themes including the turban wearing figure, along with inscriptions using elaborate lettering and indecipherable 'words'. These seem to have been from numerous 'magic' alphabets which used letters and symbols which were taken from various sources and languages.
Some of these were from the Vehmic and 'inquisition' alphabets which resemble runes, hermetic or alchemical symbols, Hebrew letters, and various others. In most cases these seem to be amalgamations, so it is possible that this kind of alphabet might have lent characters to some of these inscriptions.
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Hi Jim, I first learned about this Bosnian alphabet in this forum, see post #51:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...t=14049&page=2. I understand it was used primarily in the territory of Bosnia and parts of Dalmatia (the coastal cities did a lot of trade with the Bosnian hinterland). There are other scripts which were used by the various ethnic groups on the Balkans and I’m sure there are more in the rest of Eastern Europe. Then there is of course also the Greek alphabet which was very influential in the region.