It's not complete or exact, but it's complete enough to be published! Before any of y'all eviscerate me, I did this for the love of the game and nothing more. (And besides, Forbidden Ones aren't infamous for peddling canon knowledge.)
Imsy's Qunlat Primer
Included is an expanded dictionary, vocab tables, an in-progress phrase book, and some cultural/philosophical stuff. I reconstructed the dictionary by breaking up the root words and affixes, hoping to make it easier for people to both read and write Qunlat.
Enjoy! <3
(This is still in progress, I'm just impatient and impulsive.)
My Breakdown of the Qun: The Pseudo Confucian-Weirdly Buddhist-Vaguely Islamic-Mostly Platonic-Kinda Communist Frankensteinian Monstrosity
Disclaimer: This post consists of solely my opinions, and please feel free to voice your disagreements should you feel my interpretations are inaccurate.
Social hierarchy-Division of Labour
My first impression of the Qun when I first played the game is that I immediately recognise the "Confucianism" due to my own background. And we learn that compared to the Andrastians, the qunaris have a more well-thought-out view on social hierarchy.
In ancient Chinese society, the four categories of people — 士农工商(shi, nong, gong, shang) or warrior/scholar, farmer, artisan, merchant — was used by Confucian scholars to demarcate the economic usefulness of each class to the society. It was an idealisation rather than a legally binding hierarchy. Social harmony is achieved when everyone adheres to their functions as an individual, as a member of family, and as a member of society. Not dissimilar to how the qunari's emphasis on the well-being of society as a whole that hinges on each individual's responsibility.
Another thing that stands out to me is the functionalist view of gender of the qunari. From DAO, if playing a female PC, we have Sten tell us that "Women are priests, artisans, shopkeepers, or farmers. They don’t fight." And the Arigena is always a woman. Woman or man is associated with their occupation. Not dissimilar to how ancient Chinese view gender as gender roles. Etymologically speaking, the word 男 (man) = 田 (field) +力 (labour) denotes a man's function as labourer; 妇 (woman) = 女 (woman) + 帚 (sweep) denotes a woman's function as a housekeeper, both in the context of family.
The biggest difference is that Confucianism and other "Eastern" philosophies have a monistic view of the world, yet the Qun is not because it is written by white Canadians whose view is entrenched in Cartesianism, hence the distinction of mind (Arishok), body (Ariqun) and soul (Arigena).
Confucianism and the Qun — especially the concept of social harmony and functionalist view of gender — though don't always have a one-to-one sameness, have an overarching overlap, in my opinion. However, the concept of family is basically non-existent in qunari society, a very crucial puzzle piece that doesn't quite fit the "Confucian" picture. Hence the label "pseudo-Confucian" by me.
With that missing piece at the back of my mind, I explored the game further. As I got deeper into the series, the brick that is Plato's Republic metaphorically slapped me across the face (though the copy I owned isn't technically a brick). More specifically, it is Book 3 where Plato discusses the Noble Lie.
The first part of the Noble Lie is autochthony which is about humans are born under the earth, and the earth is their mother. Here, Plato is not talking about literal birth. A person is born into citizenhood when they complete their education. Plato believes that in order to be a proper citizen of the city, one must go through a state education system to be equipped and trained. Once a person is educated, he is said to be born out of ignorance which has kept him under the ground. (I'm using "he" because only "he" was considered a person/citizen.)
The second part of the Noble Lie is the Myth of the Metals. God has deposited different kinds of metals into people’s souls and causing people to have different qualities. There are four types of metals— gold, silver, iron, and bronze. Each metal corresponds to different qualities: Gold = rulers; silver = the guardians of the city; iron = the farmers and other occupations which are considered necessary; bronze = the non-necessary occupations that involve luxury.
(Screenshot of a paper I wrote in uni.)
It is safe to say that the Triumvirate is mostly based on Platonism. The Ariqun (priesthood) while not quite rulers, corresponds to wisdom, the Arishok corresponds to the auxiliaries/guardians, while the Arigena corresponds to artisans/farmers. It also doesn't help my spiral into this rabbit hole, when visually, the qunari are depicted to have metallic skin tones.
And that is also where I found the missing puzzle piece — the absence of family. In Plato's ideal city-state, he advocates for a sort of public ownership of women as opposed to in IRL ancient Greek society, "woman" is subsumed into the family (with the man as the head) along with slaves (whereby the woman is essentially the head of the slaves). Children born with "gold" quality are to be raised and educated by the "gold" class; everyone has their own functions determined since birth (correct me if I'm wrong, bc I haven't read the Republic in ages). Similar to how the Tamassrans are in charge of child-rearing, education, and the categorisation of each qunari into their respective function.
Hence that is why I stated the qunari society as "mostly Platonic." Really, Bioware? Plato, that is the best you can do? At least add your own twist and flavour to it like al-Farabi in al-Madinah al-Fadhilah.
Then there is the "kinda Communist" part. To be honest, I don't really see it except maybe the fact there is no currency in qunari society. Merchants' job is strictly the distribution of goods, not trade. So basically, a post-market society? But none of the communist societies IRL moved past market.
Unless there is a dividend/stipend system during land reforms in China and many other socialist nations, but I couldn't find anything like this regarding the qunari. And I don't think Thedas as a whole had even moved past feudalism, let alone capitalism—which precedes socialism/communism if you actually read Marx, even though he was wrong on a lot of things (especially about the third world), but I digress.
(Average Theodosian when reading Marx: What tf is primitive accumulation?)
Proselytisation
Here we are in the section that sparked this whole rant-like essay. And let's get the double-standard of the writings between the Qun and the Chant out of the way. I don't even have to look meta-textually to see the difference. Content-wise, the Chant had infinitely more passages than the Qun, and everywhere, at least in the first three games, we hear the Chant spoken throughout.
In-game wise, we see the preaching of the Chant by clergy members, be they Mother Giselle or Leliana, and it is treated as it is in text (meaning no condemnation from the writers' self-insert). See how we can be objective and Andrastianism is treated as the objectively established religion in the world, but not when it comes to the Qun.
We never discuss about the Qun itself (i.e. the religious text), save maybe Sten's first encounter and Taash's motto (Shokra to ebra) as opposed to how the Chant is constantly uttered by the clergy. Instead, we have people's view on the Qun, on qunari, on their society, on their politics, every single motherfucker has something to say about the way in which the qunari organise their society. Sounds familiar? That is basically how Islam is treated in western discourse. Nobody knows shit about the Quran, yet everyone acts like an expert on the politics of West Asia. Is that the writers' unconscious biases or something more insidious? 🤷♀️
We constantly hear about how the qunari want to convert everyone into the Qun, how harshly they treat dissenters, and once again every single mofo has something to say about it. Let's just call a spade a spade at this point: the depiction concerning the qunari's proselytisation of their faith is Islamophobic in nature. From how the game depicts how the qunari see the Qun as the righteous and only path to how the issue of apostacy is handled.
And guess what, we don't see characters in game calling the Chantry's proclamation of the Maker as the true god and their condemnation of "false gods" tyrannical or dictatorial. Their treatment of mages, yes, the Chantry as an institution, occasionally; but the religion itself, almost never, save maybe that few banters between Morrigan and Leliana that is reminiscent of r/atheism.
This issue is compounded by yet another aspect that is "re-education" as we learn from Bull regarding the Ben-Hassrath. Which is basically a secret agency like the KGB of the Soviet. And the re-education camp whereby the members undergo physical labour is basically gulag. Something straight out of a Red Terror McCarthyite-style commentary. At this point, just add every stereotype into the mix and call it the Qun.
The Qun itself
Let's go through what little excerpts we have regarding the actual Qun itself.
Existence is a choice.
There is no chaos in the world, only complexity.
Knowledge of the complex is wisdom.
From wisdom of the world comes wisdom of the self.
Mastery of the self is mastery of the world. Loss of the self is the source of suffering.
Suffering is a choice, and we can refuse it.
It is in our own power to create the world, or destroy it.
Canto 1
When the Ashkaari looked upon the destruction wrought by locusts,
He saw at last the order in the world.
A plague must cause suffering for as long as it endures,
Earthquakes must shatter the land.
They are bound by their being.
Asit tal-eb. It is to be.
For the world and the self are one.
Existence is a choice.
A self of suffering, brings only suffering to the world.
It is a choice, and we can refuse it.
Canto 4
First of all, I will temporarily disregard the socio-political context and just focus on the text.
"Existence is a choice." In Mahayana Buddhism (as far as I know), highly enlightened individuals (i.e. boddhisatva), who are out of karmic compulsion (or the cycle of birth and death), choose their continued existence voluntarily as their vow to enlighten others.
"There is no chaos in the world, only complexity. Knowledge of the complex is wisdom." Buddhism also does not view the world as inherently chaotic; impermanent, but not chaotic. Knowledge is seen as important to end suffering, to put it very crudely. There are different kinds of knowledge, but I can't tell which one this passage is implying because it's written in English. Knowledge, even in a western context, doesn't always denote wisdom either. Buddha possesses the wisdom to see through all; hence Buddhahood (enlightenment) is to strive for.
Then we have "Mastery of the self is mastery of the world." I don't personally interpret it in a Buddhist way since the self is treated as illusory. Maybe overcoming the illusion of a permanent self (ego)? Also, Confucianism also applies in the context of self-cultivation — 仁义礼智信 (ren, yi, li, zhi, xin) — to be one with heaven, 天人合一 (tian ren he yi) for "the world and the self are one," but not mastery, which implies a certain ownership. "Westerners stop the colonialist epistemology" challenge failed.
In my delulu mind, even the concept of "Insan Kamil" by Muhammad Iqbal, who was quite influenced by Sufism (correct me if I'm wrong) can apply to the interpretation of this sentence. But then that would be me putting too much faith in Bioware writers, to believe that they had somehow read Iqbal or any Muslim philosophers at all, ancient or contemporary.
"Suffering is a choice, and we can refuse it." Here's where the wishy washiness comes in. Buddhism, at least in my understanding does not see suffering as a choice. Suffering is caused by ignorance, to put it very crudely again, and one does not choose to be ignorant. One can only reduce suffering, not refuse. Because it is not something one chooses.
Also, I would just like to point out the verbiage used is reminiscent of western Buddhism turned self-help. Not actually Buddhism practiced in other parts of the world.
Overall, I think the content of the Qun itself is weirdly Buddhist. Weird in the sense that another concept of Buddhism is not adapted. And I am talking about equality/egalitarianism, a quality the qunari society doesn't possess despite in-game insistence from various qunari characters, neither does Andrastian society.
Just like other major religions in the world, egalitarianism is central philosophically, but politically not always. The historical context in which Buddhism sprung up was in opposition with the major religion — Hinduism which was entrenched in the caste system of India at the time. Even though later the Buddhist clergy was also consisted of mostly Brahmin scholars, but I digress.
What I wanted to say was:
When you disregard the socio-politico-historical context of each philosophy/religion and stitch them together forcefully, and voilà, we have a Frankensteined creature that is the Qun.
In conclusion, out of all the philosophies/religions I have recognised as potential inspirations of the Qun, it is safe to say that Plato's Republic got the most accurate depiction since they literally just copy-pasted it. And why am I not surprised? White people do be white peopling. :)
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in certain parts. I haven't read a lot of these philosophers in ages. This is just me sort of winging it as I go. And feel free to add anything I missed. You're a champ if you managed to read through all of my rambling. 👍
would honestly love to hear how you'd change the qunari lore.... big fan of the lork dragon age opinions tag, and the canon qunari lore has been slowly driving me mad. if you feel like making a post about it my ears are up and my hands are open 🤲
Oh, I feel flattered. Thank you 🥺💕
So, hmm, I feel like I have to caveat this with the admission that I don't think I'm the best or even uniquely suited to write on this topic. I think there are a lot of ways one could lean better into the Qunari lore. But though I err more on the side of enjoying the Qunari in a historical fiction context than a speculative fiction context, I'm also not really taking a purist approach to that where I'm mapping one specific historical and material culture onto the Qunari. Like it would be great imho if someone really wanted to go all in on making the Qunari Ottoman or making the Qunari Confucian, but I don't really have the background to do that and I don't really have a horse in that race in that same way I do when I write about the Tabris family being Latinx. And to make it worse I'm a pretty intuitive pattern based learner that operates a lot on ~vibes~ which I think honestly mimics a good portion of what got the canon writers in hot water.
But at the end of the day I'm a guy who really likes yapping about this stuff. So here are too many paragraphs about my philosophy on approaching the Qunari lore and then a list of general headcanons and changes I like to make:
So I do really like what DAO did with Sten and the Qunari a lot. I don't think there was ever a point where the lore was 100% what I wanted it to be or executed 100% to my satisfaction, but all the overhead themes that DAO was trying to hit knocked it out of the park for me: You meet Sten when he's locked in a cage like a dangerous animal. He's a foreigner that looks entirely unlike the other people surrounding you who you're familiar with. He just went on a murderous rampage he has no meaningful excuse or explanation for. He is startlingly easy to dehumanise, and the Chantry Mother and the other people in Lothering have already done so. But you also meet him while he's in the middle of prayer recitations. Your companions urge you to bring him with you. And the more you get to know Sten, the more you're encouraged to see him as a person. He can't fully summarise what Qunari are like so you can have an easy understanding of his entire race. He tells you that people are complicated and diverse. That he's just a soldier, and that if you want to know more about culture or religion, you might try asking a priest. Some of what he tells you is uncomfortable. His society has different ideas about gender. It has different ideas about mages. It has different ideas about labour. It's more communal and collectivist, and doesn't value social independence and individualism to the same degree western/Fereldan culture does. But Sten is also just a guy who likes flowers and cookies and art, who loves his home and his people perhaps as much as Loghain loves his, perhaps as much as you love yours.
I think the big place that DAO fell short of the mark for me was making Sten the only Qunari character in the game with a significant amount of speaking lines. I think it's sensible that there Kossith/Vashoth women are more rare to see in Ferelden simply because men are the ones populating the military who are the ones making excursions into the rest of Thedas. But it feels like an oversight to me that we don't see any Kossith/Vashoth women at all. And, worse, I think, despite what Sten says about how you can't take him as exemplary of his people, he did very much set the standard for how the Arishok in DA2 was characterised. I spoke briefly about how I really liked Sten's dream in the Fade and how I felt it made Sten feel more like an individual the moment you can go 'oh, it's not that all Qunari are stoic and stern and laconic and philosophical and loyal to the extreme, it's that Sten is like that, and the soldiers in his platoon were more lackadaisical and hedonistic and think he could stand to relax a bit. But, yeah, I do not like how the revelation is hidden behind specifically needing Sten in a party of four during this main quest. FRUSTRATING.
So I know why Gaider got a lot of flack for whatever he said about the Qunari sort of encompassing fears about Ottoman invaders and the Mongol hordes, but I do actually really like the idea of 'what if-ing' a lot of nebulous social fears both historical and contemporary about cultural takeover and foreign invasion into a concrete 'race' of people and then using that to tease open the dialogue about how we let xenophobia become dehumanisation. Like- How do we conceptualise the nebulous and fluctuating boundary between the Occident and the Orient? How do we interface with people and societies with different ideas about individual and collective identity, and what our responsibilities and roles within our respective societies are? Whose needs are prioritised by one set of cultural standards, what about the other? Are there certain individuals or 'personalities' that find one set of cultural standards more 'natural' or 'preferable' to the other? These are questions I find very interesting that are repeatedly asked by both Sten's and Bull's storylines (though I think Bull's was ultimately botched in soooo many unsatisfying ways).
And on a personal level, I spent a pretty significant amount of time in college reading social critiques of both Imperial and Soviet Russia written by Russians, and have had a lot of interesting conversations with diaspora from Eastern Europe and East Asia. And though I feel not all of their criticisms have been fair, and many of their talking points have been co-opted and propagandised by USAmerican imperial interests, I feel like it can be a very rewarding conversation to talk about the ways equality and community belonging and big political ideals like communism remain, well, ideals. Ideals worth fighting for, perhaps! But ideals none the less. How might the Qun's policies favour the Kossith/Vashoth ethnic majority the way white European Russian nationals or Han Chinese are favoured in their respective countries? Who in contrast is disfavoured? Do certain jobs within the Qun accommodate social clout or allow the workers access to resources that other jobs wouldn't? How does a responsibility towards social equity and wealth redistribution conflict with the ideals of the patriarchal family and the desire to accumulate wealth for the comfort and security of one's family and offspring? Don't I, as a painfully USAmerican westerner, ALSO have some difficulties attempting to balance what I feel I owe my family, what I feel I owe society at large, and how I feel I must protect my well-being and identity as an individual? Isn't the truth that none of us have entirely cracked the code on how best to resolve this conflict, either personally or as a society? This is a topic I'm very interested in so a lot of my Qunari lore revisions are designed to enable discussion about this.
So biggest change is definitely that I want the family unit to exist within the Qun. People in almost every society have been extremely if not uniformly invested in the right and privilege to build families and homes and raise their biological children, even if this doesn't always manifest for them personally. I'm saying now that Qunari typically spend their childhoods in a home with one or more biological parent.
Then around age ten they’re systematically assessed by the Tamassrans and assigned a role or at least preliminary training in specialised job fields. If you're in the city, this usually means you're getting apprenticed in a trade or sent to some type of military or technical or academic or religious boarding school (you get to go home for vacation). In the country this might just mean you get told you're a fieldworker like your father and it's your responsibility to show up to do a couple hours of work each day until you work up to longer shifts. But there is a sense of meritocracy about this so any Qunari from anywhere can be recognised for their talent.
This also means Qunari have regular boring ass family names and surnames that they got called as kids. They don't typically use them due to the complex system of titles and honorifics they use in their adult professional lives. It's just considered too intimate to call your acquaintance or coworker by their surname.
'Tamassran' covers a wide variety of different niche jobs (as it does in canon tbh) but they are essentially social workers who do a variety of things including assessment for jobs and education, assessment for medical and social services, counseling, matchmaking and family planning, running orphanages and elder homes, etc etc. 'Tama' still means something like 'mommy' so they're like state appointed godmothers. They can be very helpful and very invasive about your social life.
Many marriages are love matches between friends or coworkers, but there's also a pretty significant arranged marriage market run by the Tamassrans and a LOT of social pressure to marry. It's your job to have kids for the Qun.
The Tamassrans will also give you state-appointed handjobs or sign you up for a meeting with another state-appointed sex worker if they feel you meet the diagnostic criteria. Extremely common diagnosis for Qunari working in male-dominated fields. So Bull wasn't entirely bullshitting about that.
Interracial marriage between Kossith/Vashoth with humans/elves/dwarves isn't allowed though. And the Tamassrans WILL take away any biracial kids you happen to have outside wedlock.
Same-sex relationships aren't penalised, but there is no explicit social recognition of it beyond 'wow, you two kadans are very good friends'.
The Qun does have an extremely wide variety of social services provided at basically no extra cost to individual citizens. Social and economic support for single moms? Social and economic support for the disabled? Full medical and dental coverage for most common procedures? Free daycare for when you're at work? The Qun has all of these widely and systematically available. Everywhere else in Thedas you get to rot in Darktown, or try to beg pity and charity off the Chantry.
Saarebas is what is generally understood as translating to 'mage' in bas languages, but they are actually a specific undercaste of Kossith/Vashoth magi, who are among the worst treated in the Qunari heirarchy (I prefer the tongue removal canon from DAO to the sewn lips introduced in DA2, personally). There are several other societal roles that are filled by mages, including positions in medicine, industry, and the priesthood. Ironically, human and elf mage Qunari converts are more likely to be assigned medical and industry roles.
But generally Qunari converts who are not Kossith/Vashoth are treated much worse, given much poorer jobs, and allowed fewer opportunities for advancement than your average Kossith/Vashoth.
And there is an illicit Tamassran breeding and medical experimentation program... it's just not populated by established rank and file Kossith/Vashoth. It's populated by refugees and orphans and other people who won't be missed.
All these headcanons are about Seheron and mainland Par Vollen. The struggles of governing Qunari colonies abroad that are mostly populated by non-Kossith/Vashoth inhabitants has its own unique challenges with its own eclectic culture. Kont-aar has to be insane.
And on a smaller note, they don't walk around shirtless all the time. I really like how the Qunari wore metal armour in DAO. It made it feel like their martial prowess was based on having the same metallurgy technology that the Chantries do (but the Dalish elves don't) and not on them having some 'racial' physiological advantage.
And I've been thinking a lot about what I want the Iron Bull storyline to look like... I think the idea of the Iron Bull struggling between his loyalty to his homeland and the ease with which he finds himself attached to the life and culture he finds abroad and the friends he makes there is very interesting. But I feel more and more like we should throw out the canon quest about it entirely. I kind of want him to live in that unresolved state of being two things at once. Maybe he should just continue to be Qunari and get to deal with how many corners he cuts and details he elides on his Ben-Hassrath reports for the sake of also protecting the interests of the Chargers and the Inquisition? Or maybe he eventually decides to leave the Qun himself for entirely selfish reasons? Fakes his own death? Is reborn anew as Tal-Vashoth nobody? Idk, I feel like his quest undercuts his own agency an identity in a really horrible way, and then resolves it way too simplistically. I just want more internal conflict with less right answers.
"I am denied Par Vollen until I alone recover what was lost under my command. That is why this elf and her shadows are unimportant. That is why I do not simply walk away from this pustule of a city.
Fixing your mess is not a demand of the Qun, and you should all be grateful!"
Do you think about The Iron Bull's reaction when finding out about Solas being Fen'Harel? Because I do. A lot. He was unto something. All the "you are not flashy like the other mages" talk. Solas notices the same details that Bull does about the baker. Solas at court. Bull knew there was SOMETHING about Solas, but he never had quite the grasp on what that could be. And then he finds out what Solas has been hiding. Under his big fat ben hasserath nose. Under Leliana's web of spies. Under the whole Inquisition. AND YET Solas was his friend. Granted, he argued about the Qun way too much, but he also played chess with him when he thought his mind will go savage. He kept his mind, and sanity, in check by playing fucking chess with him. And he supported his choice to leave the Qun, to be free. So when he finds out do you think he is angry? At Solas? At himself? Do you think he blames himself for not seeing it? Do you think he wants to punch Solas? Do you think he Fears Solas? Is that still his companion, his friend even?
I do wish to point out: My arguments against the Qunari and the Qun, its orientalist utilization of Islamic history, and the overall racism in lumping the countless societies of Africa and Asia into one monolithic group, is not to say that the Qunari should chiefly be representatives of Islam, and such negate the other equally mischaracterized and mistreated groups in Asia and Africa, and chiefly reside the Qunari within the context of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, but instead draw forth BioWare's inherent cowardice and racism in drawing forth these purposeful inspiration, but then deny the connection between the Qun and Islam, because indeed how racist the Qunari are as a narrative construct.
Others might rightfully argue against my statements that bring forth the reality that Muhammad and his community did not exist in some empty void or secluded arena of the world, and say that there is no Thedasian group that represents Judaism, despite the fact that Christianity sprouted from 1st Century CE Judaism within the confines of Roman empire - so complaints about how the lack of a Thedasian Muhammad or Islam is moot because of it.
As others in the past have pointed out, while there is no Judaic Thedasian group, the elves draw heavy inspiration of the lived circumstances of both the Jewish and Romani groups in European histories. Rather these depictions are accurate and inoffensive is not my place to say - I am neither Jewish nor Romani.
However, I wish to push against this line of thinking. Yes, there is no "Judaism" compared to Andrastanism as a clear and direct reflection of Christian history and institutional organization and theology, at the same time, the ties of Judaism and Christianity are often felt and utilized within the European-influenced spheres. Elements of the Maker's character bares close resemblances to the "character of God" in the Old Testament; and even ideas such as the Maker having "children" is a direct lineage to polytheistic Levantine cultures, where El was viewed as both the cosmological and the physical father of creation. Although there is no Thedas Abraham, Issac, or Moses, the Christian heritage of its original Jewish roots can still be traced in inspirations found in Andrastanism and more clearly seen in the persecution of the elves. So, while the faith and ethnic identity does not exist to same extent as say Andrastanism serving as an analogy to Christianity or Tevinter to Rome, the inspirations is clear and acknowledged by the wider fandom and developers.
In comparison, Islam has often been viewed as an outsider, and interloper, within the greater Abrahamic inheritance that both Jews and Christians relatively acknowledge one another has, even if Christians only really utilized their inheritance from Judaism to prove Christianity against Judaism, so there is certainly an inherent power imbalance there that was not historically treated equal. Especially within Christian Europe.
As a western company centered in the cultural heritage of Christian Europe, BioWare did not struggle in adopting Christianity into its own fantastical equivalent. Core components remain (Jesus and Andraste, the Crucifixion and Pyre, etc), even if the reasons for their historical development does not (i.e. born out of 1st Century Judaism and within the confines of Roman imperialistic hegonomy). Important doctrinal beliefs - the sacrifice of Andraste, the belief in renewal of spirit in acceptance of Andraste and the Maker - all remain, even if BioWare purposefully changed elements to make Andranstanism unique to its real life counterpart.
Meanwhile, in the perspective of Christian Europe, Islam always existed as the "Other", an antique perspective inherited from Greco-Roman views of Iran and Asia. To many historical Christians, Islam was not a sister faith, but a doppelganger, brought forth by a charlatan who established a false faith - so much so, that for a great long time, Muslims were referred to in the West as "Mohammadans". For Christian Europe, the Jews had but lost divine favor. The Muslims never had it to begin with. For many years, Islam was treated essentially as an isolated accident; and given the later military and economic struggles between the Islamic polities of the Eastern Mediterranean and Iberian Peninsula, the contrast between their teachings and Muhammad's were more clearly defined as incompatible - an element not helped by the later imperial sources starting under the Umayyads but greatly exacerbated under the 'Abbasids transforming Islam as a faith separate and superior to Christians and Jews, an element archeological and epigraphical and scriptural sources seemingly indicate as falsified.
This element is found still in the modern day in many western perspectives of Islam, the Qur'an, and Muhammad, both academic and lay. You can readily see many Christians and Jews claiming that the "God of Islam" is not the God of the Bible, ignoring of course that El and Allah are cognate words that mean the same thing, God; and by the time of Muhammad's birth, North Arab Christians wrote of God as al-illah and the Hejaz as Allah. Within the academic sphere, while most historians will acknowledge the difficulties in forming a concrete chronology of early Islam due to lack of readily primary sources, the treatment of Islam was certainly not objective. Revisionist scholars have sought to place the Qur'an in either a "long chronology", like how the Bible was codified into a singular text that took many centuries; to seeking to place the Qur'an outside the Arabian peninsula into the hands of the Levant; or trying to deny the existence of a figure of Muhammad. As Juan Cole wrote in his Rethinking the Qur'an in Late Antiquity:
One can also not rule out the long tradition of hostility toward Muḥammad in the Christian tradition has made this erasure palatable. [Cole, 2025]
And he rightfully points out, as I did in my post yesterday:
The problems with the Buddhist canon are far more complex and daunting, and yet Gautama Siddhartha has not been made to disappear in the same way. [Cole, 2025]
To this extent, there is certainly an unease in which the West has viewed Islam, not only as a faith, but also how it connects with their own heritage within the Abrahamic lineage. This is exemplified in Dragon Age by the fact that although BioWare utilized important Islamic dates (the fall of Mecca and the Prophet's death) and drew forth as a crucial inspiration the belief Islam came spread by the sword, hell-bent on world conquest with the supremacist belief in its theology that no one can renounce except the penalty of death), they are adamant in distancing the Qunari from its clear Islamic heritage. It is not out of some kindness from BioWare's heart, nor are the comparison of Andraste to Muhammad coming from a place of true interest of his character and theology from members of the Dragon Age fandom.
However, as historical evidence has prove time and time again - the idea that Islam grew as a vacuum is inaccurate, or the idea that Muhammad stole from Jewish and Christians in his rendition of faith is insulting. Muhammad was as much an inheritor of the greater Near Eastern trends as the Jewish and Christian faiths were. So much so is this hostility to Muhammad as a figure in history, that one of the most preeminent Western historians of early Islam, Patricia Crone, once wrote this as the publication of Frederick Donner's Muhammad and the Believers:
"Donner's book has already been hailed in a manner showing its thesis appeals deeply to American liberals: Here they find the nice, tolerant, and open Islam they hanker for." And later added: "The main problem is that the only direct evidence for Donner's central thesis is the Quranic verses on the believing People of the Book; all the rest is conjecture."
A reminder: Crone was originally a member of the Revisionist school of Islamic history, and had once argued for a rather Orientalist view that Islam did not develop around Mecca or Medina but within the backdrop as a Samaritan cult in the Levant. It is telling that arguments for a more ecumenical early Islam from the oldest source of Islam is dismissed by western historians display that Orientalist perspective. Although Crone would later admit that the Qur'an came from Muhammad, in her view, any attempts to engage with the tents of the Qur'an against the later sources rather making the Qur'an subservient to the later sources is discredited.
please do not add hate to this post, bring up the art book, or bring up the books/comics. thank you!
(this was part of another upcoming meta but was frankly a tangent)
something i find personally interesting to consider is that a degree of translation is going on in the view of qunari having "male" roles and "female" roles; that, in qunlat, these are perhaps less strictly gendered and more that x role belongs to y type of person, but y is always a culturally-rooted term that is difficult to translate and over time becomes simplified, especially by outsiders, to male or female - and the qun is not particularly interested in being Known or Understood outside of conversion, in which there is clearly a long and ongoing process of teaching their ways
one version - given how tamassarans control procreation - could be titles/descriptions referencing the ability to bear children or to participate in their conception. and would, by outsiders, 100% be translated into "male" and "female" but may actually mean something else in qunlat... for instance, a qunari who can bear children only being known by a certain word after they begin menstruation and until they hit menopause, before and after which they are known by different terms, maybe!
because procreation is a fundamental consideration for societies, and is clearly, canonically a consideration of the qun and part of the duties of the tamassarans
and the iron bull is deeply rooted in qunari culture and has internalized it. i think that he probably understands that krem is not exactly aqun athlok in the way the qun would see it, but i also think that there is a degree of separation and a reason why bull refers to the charger's by masculine terms only, despite having multiple women
to him - as with sten in dao - a warrior is a masculine/translated-as-masculine profession; thus, warriors are men. there is 100% still a part of him that relies on that logic and that perception. i think that while he would get there in the end out of respect and a willingness to acknowledge things even when he doesn't fully understand them, bull would struggle a lot more with a trans woman as one of his chargers. krem makes sense to him, because krem is a man in a man's/translated-as-man's role
