Islamic calligraphy

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The stylized signature of Sultan Mahmud Khan of the Ottoman Empire was written in an expressive calligraphy. It reads Mahmud Khan son of Abdulhamid is forever victorious.

page of a 12th century Qur'an written in the Andalusi script

Islamic calligraphy is an aspect of Islamic art that has co-evolved alongside the religion of Islam and the Arabic language.

Arabic/Persian calligraphy is associated with geometric Islamic art (the Arabesque) on the walls and ceilings of mosques as well as on the page. Contemporary artists in the Islamic world draw on the heritage of calligraphy to use calligraphic inscriptions or abstractions in their work.

Instead of recalling something related to the reality of the spoken word, calligraphy for the Muslim is a visible expression of the highest art of all, the art of the spiritual world. Calligraphy has arguably become the most venerated form of Islamic art because it provides a link between the languages of the Muslims with the religion of Islam. The holy book of Islam, al-Qur'an, has played an important role in the development and evolution of the Arabic language, and by extension, calligraphy in the Arabic alphabet. Proverbs and complete passages from the Qur'an are still active sources for Islamic calligraphy.

The North Arabic script, which was influenced by the Nabatian script, was established in north-eastern Arabia and flourished in the 5th century among the Arabian tribes who inhabited Hirah and Anbar. It spread to Hijaz in western Arabia, and its use was popularized among the aristocracy of Quraysh, the tribe of the Prophet Muhammad, by Harb ibn Ummayyah.

Although early Arabic sources mention several calligraphic styles in reference to the cities in which they were used, they generally fit into two broad categories with some minor variations, these are the "dry styles", the early predecessors of Kufic, and the "moist styles", the early predecessors of the cursive family or scripts.

Cursive scripts coexisted with Kufic and date back to before Islam, but because in the early stages of their development they lacked discipline and elegance, they were usually used for secular purposes only.

Under the Ummayads and Abbasids, court requirements for correspondence and record keeping resulted in many developments to the cursive scripts, and several styles were devised to fulfill these needs. Abu Ali Muhammad Ibn Muqlah (d. 940), along with his brother, became accomplished calligraphers in Baghdad in an early age. Abu Ali became a Wazir to three Abbasid caliphs, and is credited with developing the first script to obey strict proportional rules. His system utilized the dot as a measuring unit for line proportions, and a circle with a diameter equal to the Alef's height as a measuring unit for letter proportions.

Ibn Muqlah's system became a powerful tool in the development and standardization of cursive scripts, and his calligraphic work elevated the previous cursive styles into a place of prominence, and made them acceptable as worthy of writing the Qur'an.

Islamic calligraphy is often displayed in Muslim art, because it serves as an inspiration. The practice of calligraphy is a topic of much Islamic philosophy. When used decoratively, the writing is so ornate and complex as to be almost unreadable. Calligraphy grew in part because of religious restrictions on representational art.

In the beginnings of Islam, the Qur'an was mostly recorded in the memory of those who memorized the entire text; they are known as the Huffaz. After witnessing the unreliability of such a form of transmission, mostly because of the untimely death of many of those Huffaz in battle, it was decided to record it in written form and compile it into one book instead of several pieces.

Given its sacred nature to Muslims, as the Qur'an is considered the word of Allah, the book would be made with great attention to quality and legibility. Given Islam's taboo against pictorial representation, however, drawings could not be used to illustrate the book, as was done in the Christian world. Thus, the art of calligraphy became very important in the Muslim world, and today it is still a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. The aesthetic of their art, which allows for the teaching of the Qur'an, is a unifying aspect of Islam.

After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.

The first of those to gain popularity was known as the Kufic script; it was angular, made of square and short horizontal strokes, long verticals, and bold, compact circles. It would be the main script used to copy the Qur'an for three centuries; its static aspect made it suitable for monumental inscriptions, too. It would develop many serifs, small decorations added to each character.

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In the 13th century, the Thuluth would take on the ornamental role formerly associated with the Kufic script. Thuluth meaning "one third", it is based on the principle that one third of each letter slides downward. As such it has a strong cursive aspect and is usually written in ample curves.

As Islam extended farther east, the Persians were converted, who took to using Arabic script for their own language, Persian. They contributed to Arabic calligraphy the Ta'liq and Nasta'liq styles. The latter is extremely cursive, with exaggeratedly long horizontal strokes; one of its peculiarities is that vertical strokes lean to the right rather than (as more commonly) to the left, making Nasta'liq writing particularly well flowing. The Persians also developed a style called shekasteh ('broken' in Persian). Shekasteh has seldom been used for scripting Arabic texts, though it is an Arabic calligraphy style.

The Diwani script is a cursive style of Arabic calligraphy developed during the reign of the early Ottoman Turks (16th and early 17th centuries). It was invented by Housam Roumi and reached its height of popularity under Süleyman I the Magnificent (1520–66). As decorative as it was communicative, Diwani was distinguished by the complexity of the line within the letter and the close juxtaposition of the letters within the word.

A variation of the Diwani, the Diwani Al Jali, is characterized by its abundance of diacritical and ornamental marks.

Finally, the most commonly used script for everyday use is Riq'a. Simple and easy to write, its movements are small, without much amplitude. It is the one most commonly seen. It's also considered a step up from the Naskh script, and as children get older they are taught this script in school.

The traditional instrument of the Arabic calligrapher is the qalam, a pen made of dried reed; the ink is often in color, and chosen such that its intensity can vary greatly, so that the greater strokes of the compositions can be very dynamic in their effect.

Indeed, Arabic calligraphy hasn't fallen out of use as in the western world. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition that is often indecipherable. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy.

In China, a calligraphic form Sini has been developed. This form has evident influences from Chinese calligraphy, using a horsehair brush as opposed to the standard reed pen. A famous modern calligrapher in this tradition is Hajji Noor Deen Mi Guangjiang [link].

Calligrams

In the teachings of calligraphy figurative imagery is used to help visualize the shape of letters to trace (such as "initial ha' looks in nasta'liq similar to two eyes like his Persian name implies: "ha' two eyes" he' do tcheshm). In literature and poetry seeing in letters a reflection of the natural world goes back to the Abbasid times.

See also

• Calligraphy
• Arabic alphabet
• Arabic language
• Persian language
• Islamic architecture
• Islamic pottery
• Islamic Golden Age

External links

• [Arabic Calligraphy Blog]
• [Muhammad Zakariya]
• [Gallery of Arabic calligraphy]
• [Islamic calligraphy]

 

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