Talk:Tamğas of Turkestan

A little OT: I've been reading quite a bit about house marks used in Germanic countries (this is one of the better sites), and in the process I've found that very old Polish symbols are variously called both "house marks" and "tamgas"; Russia used similar signs before Peter the Great. I wonder if there's some kind of common cultural root for these sorts of marks, since Poland and Russia seem to link the Germanic and the Central Asian traditions. Then again, I suppose it's fairly easy for different cultures to devise simple linear symbols. Both tam(ğ/g)as and house marks actually remind me a lot of American cattle brands, which I believe were imported from Spain. Right now I'm kicking around the idea of Gardiners Island's tenant population using a system of house marks borrowed from the Pennsylvaanish people. Benkarnell 16:47, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Fascinating! I'd heard of tamgas in Poland, and presumed they were related somehow, as it's pretty much the same word and concept. But I didn't know the Germanic nations had them too. American cattle brands are the same concept, especially as the actual usage of tamgas in Turkic Central Asia, where most scholars seem to place the origin of these markings. But (I assume) US cattle brands were developed independently, though if they got those from Spain there may be some kind of linkage there through the Islamic world. But I've never heard of anything like this in Arab cultures that the Spanish could have got the idea from. Thank you for the info. Most interesting. Geoff 21:58, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia says the word tamgha exists in Egypt, but that it was brought by the Turks - which would have been long after the heyday of Islam in Spain. This does seem to be a vast nearly unexplored field of research. I like that they're alive and well in IB, anyway. Benkarnell 01:40, 25 August 2009 (UTC)