Hello,

I am trying to design some swords to have custom made. Two of these swords are a saif and a kaskara. Many period examples have arabic inscriptions saying "There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger" Unfortunately everything I have found gives an english translation of the inscription but not a picture of it. I am unsure of what the arabic text for this inscription would like like. Does anyone know?, it would be a great help as I plan to have this on both of these swords.

Thanks,
-James

Depends on how long you're willing to wait. I go to USF, which has a pretty good Arabic department. I'm sure I can get hold of one of the professors and get that translated into an inscription. Finding a scanner might take a day or so after that, at most.

Problem is, term starts Aug. 28. :\

However, I can try contacting some of the summer term professors. The flaw with that is, they may not have a scanner, and I don't want to impose on them (and asking a busy prof to go find a scanner certainly is an imposition!).

Your call.

This sentence you are looking for is the islamic testimony, called Shahada. Knowing that it should be no problem finding pictures of it via google, since it can be found on some arabic national flags (Saudi-Arabia for example).

Your problem might be that there are different types of Arabic script, such as thuluth, Kufi, Diwani etc. Different scripts were used by different regions at different times. These swords you are having made, one you say is a kaskara, so it shouldn't be too hard to find out what type of script is normally on kaskaras. What about the other though? Is it a Persian shamshir? An Ottoman kilij or yataghan?


Two websites which might be helpful are the following, please click on the links:

http://forums.swordforum.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=13
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=2

I'm sure I have some pictures as well. I'll see what I can do.

Hey,

Carl-
Thanks for the help. If you can get it without too much trouble I would be very grateful, but it seems like I may be able to get it before August.

Arne-
Thanks, I didn't know it had a specific name. This should help.

Hisham-
When I searched before making the original post I found arabic script but not the desired phrase. I also had difficulty telling if they were different unless they stated which script it was. Also I didn't know which should be on a kaskara. I will try to find that out, thanks for the links. BTW The other sword will be an early version of a shamshir before it adopted the dramatic curve. It will have some curve but not much.

Thanks,
-James