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The identification of Amal with "work" is somewhat dubious — no such word meaning work is attested in any ancient Germanic text, and the only similar words in any modern languages are more recently derived from older words meaning "plague, harass", and the sense of the modern words (aml in Icelandic and amla Norwegian) is "futile, unending work". It may not be Germanic at all — the eastern tribes where the name "Amal" first occurs were in contact with and at times federated with both Turkic and Aryan (often denoted as Persian in the broadest sense as they had remained in Central Asia rather than emigrating from Persia) tribes such as the Alans — compare the Avestan Ama 'power, male power, attack power', adj. 'Strong'.