I have been asking my local Herald about badges, since it was suggested by Lady Senena! It is a wonderful way of uniting all the dancers and hopefully not just in my local group. I have been searching for other Middle Eastern dancing Guilds and while they are out there and active, there are no badges.
There have been three badges of the same design in three ways. The Arabic (which is done in a lot of ME heraldry) reads as “Awalim” or learned women. Please let me know your opinion, if you like a particular one or none of them at all!
Unfortunately, after referring to another Herald, the field-less badges such as designs two and three, would not be passed. So while design number two and three are very striking, they shouldn’t be considered…
Design number one.
Design number two.
Design number three.
or there are three badges with fields-
Design number four.
Design number five.
Design number six.
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Miriam's Middle Eastern Research Blog 
I’m Absolutely loving the simple gold and white of design three. though the designs with fields look lovely too.
Just heard back from another Herald that design 2 & 3 wouldn’t pass 😦
number 1 seems to be the easiest to look at and the same with number 6, but as stated the simplicity of number 3 does stand out aswell…..Maybe a poll is needed…
Spoken to my local Herald who just went to the Hund meeting- the third design wouldn’t pass, as it is field-less and the parts don’t connect…
But number one is still good!
Design 4 does it for me, but I agree that number 3 would also work. I would suggest that we probably need to give consideration to how it would most often be displayed (ie. textile? as pewter tokens? burnt onto timber?) to be able to decide which one will work best for the majority of display types. Are these designs conducive to the type of ‘blackwork’ found in period for ME type cultures?
Can’t use design #3 as it wouldn’t pass being field-less…
It would be seen in the same place as any device- anywhere you want it. On pewter tokens, carved into wood, on a device. The choices are endless!
Check out the Heraldry page!
If you are going to make a badge for a “guild” maybe you should not make it gender specific. The words in the middle mean “learned women”….. How will that make a male dancer feel about the welcome he might get in such a group? I hang out almost exclusively with ME dancers and musicians in the SCA and in real life. There are more men than ever. I cant tell you how many invitations I have gotten to perform, with my troupe (there are 6 women and 2 men), via an e-mail telling all of us “ladies” one thing or another about the event. Even after correcting the misstatement it will invariably be in the next reminder e-mail they send out. Sometimes the MC will even thank all the “ladies that performed tonight”. In those words exactly, and this after seeing me and another man perform just minutes before. I have got to tell you it really puts me off and makes me feel invisible or even unwanted. I don’t think you want that.
Waian of Ankara
If we take the word out, then it would leave the interlocking squares. I would be happy with that, as then design three with the gold & silver could be used.
Although the Arabic word was used in period heraldry… What word would you suggest?
What about Ottoman Turkish “Çengi”?
Depending on the time and place, it seems to have been applied to both male and female dancers and musicians, although it only seems to encompass the male dancers usually called köçek in the 17th century.
Quoting:
“Those who had danced during the early period of the
Ottomans were called Çengi, which also referred to female dancers…”
From: http://www.pera-ensemble.com/images/stories/artists/sehvar/musical%20gender%20identity.pdf
The same article also mentions ‘Kol’, meaning ‘group’, but the internet seems to imply that it was the name given to a male-only troupe, not a mixed-gender one.
Not sure if any of that is useful for the guild, though.
I would suggest the word “joy”
Reblogged this on Middle Eastern Dance Guild and commented:
Just to renew interest!
I like 1, 4, 5 and 6 – Not sure which I like best of those.. maybe #1. I’m not as keen on the yellow on white (if the word was taken out to allow it to pass), and I think that from a practical point of view you’ll lose the details from a distance (because you wouldn’t see any outline for the white). You’d only see the yellow.
I agree that using a gender neutral word would be better. What does “Raks” (“Dance”) look like in Arabic writing?
Raqs = رقص
Thanks for the translation. I don’t speak or read Arabic!
Which is the bare noun, but I don’t know enough Arabic to know if it would appear as such without an article, or instead as الرقص (al-raqs, the dance) or رقصة (raqsah or raqsat, “of the dance?” Argh, give me Old Irish any day… Arabic is breaking my brain.)
But even then, that would concentrate the emphasis on the dance, and downplay the rest: all the rest of the Mediaeval Dar al-Islam and associated areas and times. I like awalim, as derived from عالم, “scientist, scholar” < "science". The trouble is that, again, I don't know enough Arabic grammar to be able to decline the noun correctly. Is Awalim specifically the feminine plural, or is it the same plural for both genders? Google translate gives علماء “`alma`” for “scientists”, so it kind of does look like “`awalim” is feminine, except all the references I can find translate it as “worlds”… My Arabic fails.