Basil Dragonstrike

Basil Dragonstrike used to be my primary name; it is now an alternate name, and my primary name is Mālik ibn Qārin ibn al-Māridī ibn Jinnī al-ʻAbdārī al-Shaybānī.

Orignally, I could not settle on a place & time for a "persona." However, a few years back I read John Julius Norwich's Normans in the South books, and started concentrating on 11th and 12th century CE Sicily. However, the more I reasearched, the less interested in the Normans and other "Firandj" I became, and the more interested in the Muslims I became. Eventually, I decided a 10th century CE Muslim with connections to Sicily and al-Andalus was where and when I wanted to base my "persona" on.

Obviously, in that case the name "Basil Dragonstrike" would not do. I submitted and passed an Arabic name that used "Bāsil" and a lot of other stuff. However, upon consideration, I decided that if I was going to play a character, I wanted to get away from "Basil"---after all, "Basil Dragonstrike" is sort of known among heralds, and people of my branch (Porte de l'Eau/Madrone), and has been around a long, long time, and has associations that don't fit the character I want to play. So, I'm keeping "Basil Dragonstrke" for out-of-character stuff, and introducing Mālik ibn Ḳārin ibn al-Māridī ibn Jinnī al-ʻAbdarī al-Shaybānī as a mostly in-character "persona". Note that I first registered Mālik ibn Djinnī al-Shaybānī; the longer form has now been registered.

I've been researching Islamdom and Muslim culture, particularly of the 9th - 11th centuries CE, for about a decade or so. I've written a number of articles on Arabic names (index of all articles), and plan to expand to articles on the culture of Mālik's time and place, though I'm not sure where to put those online; I may have to start a blog or some such thing.

I'm trying to get into storytelling, but being distinctly introverted doesn't help with that.

Notes on things

I put "persona" into quotes as I dislike what it has come to mean. Originally, as I was told, it was a fictional but history-based someone-who-might-have-been, that one "carried" to events and pretended to be. However, in my experience, it has become a pile of facts and numbers and dates and so-on some people memorize and talk about, rather than portray. Hence my use of "character"---this is someone I can pretend to be at an event. And it is that which interests me. Even though I've studied a lot about what and where and when that Mālik ibn Qārin ibn al-Māridī ibn Jinnī al-ʻAbdarī al-Shaybānī might have experienced, I have done so it make him more "real" in my mind, so I can more easily and more thoroughly immerse myself in the co-operative improvisational role-playing I want my SCA experience to be.

Which leads to my objection to the utter lack of role-playing I see in An Tir events these days. I really hope this will turn around, though I don't know what, if anything, I can do to make that happen.

Oh yeah, my vast colletion of awards:
[1]
And my device/arms:
[2]