Western glass for the muslim world

Glass amulets with Arabic script

Updates August 22, 2024

Looking at a very specific type of amulet in this blog post: the pressed glass plaquettes inscribed with what looks like Arabic calligraphy. Are those texts even real? And how old are these?

Glass amulets with Arabic text: their shape and origin

Let’s look at their shape first. This is similar to much older pendants that were popular in for example Iran and India. In the gallery above, you’ll see an example from Iran which dates to the 18^th century. It carries writing on both sides. The other example is a jade pendant from India, also densely inscribed, which even older: it dates to the 17th century.

Plaquettes of similar shape, dating to the late 1800’s, are in the collection of the British Museum, and all seem to point to the Shi’ite realm in their texts. [1] So this shape is one that was familiar to many people, notably (but not exclusively!) Shia muslims.

Glass pendants with Arabic text: Western production

The glass amulets with what looks like Arabic script, as you see above, are much newer. They have been produced widely in the Western world, with the aim of selling these to the Islamic world. Like in so many other cases, these companies created objects that were already known and popular, but offered them in larger quantities than ever before: mass production processes flooded the markets and, very often, upended local economies.

One of the companies that created these was Sachse & Co., who specialised in glass objects for trade around the world. They created not just beads and pendants for the Islamic world, but also, for example, imitations of teeth and bone for the trade with Oceania – and much more.

In the late 1800s, when these glass pendants were produced, Jablonec, the town where the company was located, was still part of Austria and known as Gablonz. [2] The light blue, translucent pendant that I’m holding in the photo above carries the text Czechoslovakia – thus establishing their date of production at least after 1918 and before 1938. Nowadays, this is known as the Czech Republic.

Glass pendants with Arabic text: where and how were they used?

Glass amulets with Arabic text were used in a variety of ways. One of its uses that I really love, is mentioned by Barbara Black Koltuv. She describes how clear glass amulets of this type, which she purchased in Jerusalem, were attached to Bayer aspirin bottles: surely, aspirins would work if encouraged by the name of God! [3] I have reached out the Bayer company archive to enquire if this practice was known to them. It was not, so I believe that these were attached to the bottles in the Middle East itself by entrepreneurial sellers.

Another one of these amulets was strung on cord much like jewellery from Rajasthan in India, and worn as a necklace. You’ll see it in the gallery below: compare the stringing to that of the antique jade pendant from India above. In fact, a few of the examples in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford have labels attached specifying where they were traded to, like Singapore [4].

But their use was not limited to the eastern Mediterranean and further east, such as Iran, India, Singapore or Indonesia. One such pendant was part of an amulet obtained in Algeria in 1906. Interestingly, this was part of a set consisting of one coral bead, two cowrie shells, one green glass bead and a black glass bead decorated with two bands, painted in gold. [5]

Glass pendants with Arabic calligraphy: what does it say?

This is where it gets more complicated. Because not all of these amulets actually carry legible text, but some of them absolutely do! And whether or not they do is confusing, to museum curators and speakers of Arabic alike.

See the two examples above (click to enlarge the images): the blue amulet reads Hasbi Allah, meaning ‘God Suffices’, or ‘God is enough for me’. Try this with your online translation app, and it will most likely come back with a legible result. Now the pendant next to it is the same, but is labelled with ‘bogus inscription’. This one, too, reads ‘God Suffices’, but the first letter is drawn slightly different: there is more of a downward line. That also goes for the third pendant, where the first letter looks like a single diagonal line.

For the dark blue pendant with elaborate calligraphy as shown above in the first gallery, I reached out to the community and wow, what an amazing response! Hatem Arafa, who is a calligraphy artist and designer based in Turkey, and Youmna Elsabry, an Egyptian jewellery designer,  explained to me what it says: ‘What God willed [has occurred], there is no power except in God’, a reading conformed by many others. [6]

Glass pendants with text: how old are these?

Going over the examples in museums and those available in the trade today, it seems these glass plaquettes of a form originally associated with Shi’ite pendants were created up until the Interbellum. Incredibly important here is the acquisition date of objects, as that shows you when these things became available on the market, when they were at the peak of their availability, and when they ceased to be offered.

A quick overview shows that the glass amulets with the most elaborate inscriptions (such as the dark blue example above) have been collected at the beginning of the 19^th century, and those with simpler forms (like the one I am holding above) seem to have been produced up until the 1930s. They do not seem to appear later – of course, the popular beads known as ‘hajj beads’ continued to be produced, but these are of a very different shape.

This blog will be continued with an article on Czech glass hajj beads and their use!

—

Find out more about the symbolism of jewellery in the e-courses!

More posts on amulets, charms and magic? Browse them all here!

Join the Jewellery List and receive new articles, jewellery news and more in your inbox!

—

References

[1] Porter, V. 2011. Arabic and Persian Seals and Amulets in the British Museum, p. 154.

[2] As researched here by Pitt Rivers Museum.

[3] Black Koltuv, B. 2005. Amulets, Talismans and Magical Jewelry. A Way to the Unseen, Ever-Present, Almighty God. Nicholas-Hays, Berwick, p. 135.

[4] Accession number 1900.27.17. See it here.

[5] Accession number 1985.50.1050. See it here.

[6] See the comments on this Instagram post, where I asked the community for their insights and several people responded.

The Bedouin Silver blog gives credit where credit is due! Transparent referencing and citing sources helps us all grow. Would you like to do the same and quote this article? Here’s how:

S. van Roode, [write the title as you see it above this post], published on the Bedouin Silver website [paste the exact link to this article], accessed on [the date you are reading this article and decided it was useful for you].