Resources and References?

I thought it might be nice to have a place for sharing any interesting resources or helpful material that we find while trying to inform our RP!

I was pretty tentative about making this thread, as I realize references for different subjects tend to be shared under their respective threads as questions come up. Maybe this could be a place to share those random things that don't necessarily fit anywhere (yet) but people think would be helpful to others in the community?

I have a couple small ones to start:

• Mama Lisa's page of children's songs/rhymes from around the world. The topic of nursery songs came up in a scene and I scrambled to find a sample to modify and use. This website has so many examples! I don't know how thoroughly vetted everything is, but I checked the materials for my native language and those looked okay, so that made me feel better about sharing this here. Translations are rough around the edges but seem to get the point across.
• Introducing: The Oud - this seemed like a very nice, succinct (11 min), surface-level educational video on the oud and related music theory!

Wow! The Mama Lisa site is amazeballs. Thank you so much for sharing!

You're so welcome! <33 Glad it's helpful!

Does anyone else fall into Wikipedia rabbit holes in their spare time? I fell into a Middle-Eastern and Islamic architecture rabbit hole a while back and forgot that I bookmarked a bunch of pages until yesterday. Here are a few of the articles that I found interesting!

• Qa'a - reception chamber
• Mashrabiya - a type of latticed window (please forgive my oversimplified descriptions!)
• Sabil - a public water distribution center (see also: shadirvan)
• Salsabil - a type of water fountain/feature also used for evaporative cooling
• Riyad - interior garden/courtyard
• Badgir - "windcatcher" towers built for cooling and ventilation
• Iwan - a type of vaulted space often used for entrances/facades

Also, the Metropolitan Museum has a really amazing (and extensive, and free) online collection of Islamic Art! There are roughly 15,000 viewable objects online. @_@ You can filter them by region, time period, and type of object. They also have some cool in-depth highlights - for example of the Damascus Room.

It really helps me to have some visual idea of what the environment might look like around our characters, so I thought maybe these might be of interest to others too. :)

I love this thread.

Huge +1 to the Met Museum link from pof Marwa, I will give a special shout-out to these two sub-pages that have been useful for me in thinking about what is feasible as it pertains to decoration in bladesmithing, armor-making, and other metal-working crafts in general.

1. Islamic Arms and Armor - Part of the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History that is on the page pof Marwa linked, this is a great (little) overview on what was common arms and armor in the Middle East and North Africa from the 13th century to the 16th.
2. Techniques of Decoration on Arms and Armor - Not theme specific necessarily, but a great overview of various kinds of armor and blade decorative techniques.

I'm sure most of the content on the above pages will be old hat to folks well versed in this topic, but as a newbie to this, I found it crucial!

(I have some more references I've been collecting on forging and working with bloomery furnaces, but I'm still making my way through some of that, so maybe will share later on in the thread)

The first link was something I was looking at for art in trying to figure out colours for fires/firewood

How hot is fire?

This link from a spreadsheet I had saved from, although I can't remember why exactly. The writer is attempting to map out the effects of blows inflicted by weapons. I thought it could be interesting to share in the context of the wounding system in game, and for those using a weapon possibly helpful for written descriptions on attempting strikes or wounds recieved.

(content warnings for discussions of wounds, some historical pictures of (the gory one towards the end of the article), and descriptions in the text, alongside period typical racism from the written accounts.)

A good portion are cavalry related. A notable part of the article is that many historical fights weren't with the intent to kill, but in the case of this spreadsheet the accounts focused on when both parties *were* attempting to kill one another.

My favourite is the usage of broken swords being thrown pommel first or used as blunt weapons.

The recommendation from the link for the spreadsheet is to "Make sure to turn on the Filter function in Excel’s Data tab! That unlocks the magic that allows you to sort by weapon, attack type, etc."

wounding-in-the-kunst-des-fechtens-tradition

Gosh, I love all of the above! And that spreadsheet of inflicted injuries is so morbidly fascinating, thank you pof Ighlaf!

I wanted to link this webpage, Period Arabic Names and Naming Practices, which I stumbled across while trying to learn about diminutives/nickname conventions in Arabic and Persian. I haven't found a nice resource for that yet (so if anyone knows more about this please let me know/post here?), however, this webpage was a really fascinating and fun read despite not being exactly what I was looking for! It breaks down the various components and proper ordering of formal Arabic names/titles, with step-by-step explanations. I know it's not directly applicable, but still makes for interesting reading I think! And toward the end, the page has a list of some common male and female names compiled from a 10th century historical text. I thought that bit could come in handy for character name brainstorming. :)

Just wanted to link a series of blog posts from the Library of Congress about Arabic/Islamic calligraphy! It was nice to be introduced to the different styles that developed across time and places - and there are lots of images of calligraphic manuscripts to show them all, which are of course fun and interesting and pretty to look at. :)

From Your Hand to Heaven: Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Calligraphy Sheets at the Library of Congress – Part 1

On the Wings of a Flight of Geese: Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Calligraphy Sheets at the Library of Congress – Part 2

Written in Istanbul: Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Calligraphy Sheets at the Library of Congress – Part 3

Edit 9/9/24: Including a direct link to their browsable collection of manuscripts: Selections of Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Calligraphy. It's linked at the end of each blog post, but I figured it might be easily missed. The scans are all high resolution. SO PRETTY!

Linking the Mansoojat Foundation, which is a website/online museum of traditional Saudi Arabian clothing! The various costumes are very interesting to browse. I'm a little disappointed that the 'zoom' function doesn't seem to work for me, and I'm not sure if it's the website or just me/my browser. Thought this might be a nice resource or source of inspiration!

Less specific and more general, here is a link to the British Museum's searchable, highly-filterable collection, which I've already filtered for 'clothing' and can be further narrowed down by geography, time period, people, etc! Tons of historical artifacts to look through.

I love that collection of clothing from different tribes! (Though sadly I couldn't get the zoom to work either, even with trying four different browsers.) The British Museum collection is also amazing. It's very cool to be able to see so many different examples of garments and textiles all in one place.

Thanks so much for sharing these!