Devshirme

One of our Gospel readers for the Agape service this Sunday will be Jody Athanasiou, who will be reading from her grandmother’s Portuguese bible.  In preparation for this she has gone through many of her grandmother’s religious books and stuff and sent me some cool pictures – here is one:

This is courtesy of Robert Irwin and his superfabulous book Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism & Its Discontents.  It is a serious work but there are many fun moments.  On page 30 he talks about the enthusiasm with which translators in Medieval Spain took on the works of Islamic science, including some of the more dubious sciences or pseudosciences:  “They translated works on astrology, alchemy, numerology, omplatoscopy (divination from the cracks on scorched sheep’s bones), geomancy (divination from marks in the sand) haruspication (divination from entrails), and similar recondite practices.”  A great read, and I highly recommend it.

I stumbled upon this Wikipedia article by accident – don’t ask – but it is both informative and, on another level, absolutely hysterical.  My language posts are usually pretty dry, but this one is purely for fun.  Warning: some grim language.