The art of the written word
Before the printing press, all books and communications were written by hand. Scribes formalised and embellished handwriting into the art form that is calligraphy. Today, calligraphy continues to hold a key role in the Arab world, balancing tradition even as it modernises.
By Catherine Mazy
For centuries, writers around the world have made words beautiful not only in their meaning but also in their physical representation on the page. Arab culture has devoted so much care to calligraphy that it is the peer of other arts, such as painting or sculpture.
“The art of calligraphy is the jewel of the Islamic art crown,” says Khalid Al Jallaf, one of the most important Emirati calligraphers.
Unesco last December added Arabic calligraphy to its register of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Sharjah is hosting its 10th Calligraphy Biennial, October 5 to November 30, in buildings around Calligraphy Square and Sharjah Art Museum. Al Jallaf and Mahfood Thanoon from Iraq will have solo exhibitions. There will also be honorary exhibitions and eight winners chosen from the general exhibition.
Sharjah has “a very big history in the art of calligraphy,” says Al Jallaf, who is also head of the selection and jury committees for the Calligraphy Biennial. “His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohamed Al Qasimi, the ruler of Sharjah, wants to promote Islamic arts, which are our identity as Arabs and as Muslims.”
Opening image: GEOMETRY 2 (2022) by Wissam Shawkat. Ink and acrylic colours on handmade paper. This work will be exhibited in Shawkat’s solo show at Mestaria Gallery in Dubai in November. Above: The ‘Blue Quran’ was written in kufic script during the 10th century and is believed to have been produced in either North Africa or Spain.
Scribes enjoyed high social status for their skills and knowledge, as well as their importance for inscribing rulers’ communications. “It’s why Islamic calligraphy was so prominent—the competition and perfection to reach the most beautiful form of elegance.”
The Arabic alphabet grew out of the writing of the Nabataeans—the nomadic tribes who gave us Petra, Jordan, and Madain Saleh and Al Ula in Saudi Arabia. It was the birth and spread of Islam, however, that cemented calligraphy in the foundation of Arab culture. In fact, other languages use the Arabic alphabet—Farsi in Iran, Dari in Afghanistan, Tajik in Tajikistan, Pashto in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Urdu in Pakistan and India, Kurdish in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Turkey used the Arabic alphabet until 1928, when it switched to Latin letters.
As Islam spread across continents, distribution of the Quran helped keep far-flung outposts on the same page, so to speak.
“At that time, Muslims started writing down the word of God, just to record it,” says Dr. Nassar Mansour, professor of the art of Arabic calligraphy at Al Balqa Applied University in Amman, Jordan, and one of the most accomplished contemporary calligraphers in the Arab world. “Muslims feel differently towards the word of God compared to writing for daily circumstances. So scribes started to distinguish between writing the word of God, which has to be beautiful, and daily use. They want to show the word of God in the best way.”
In addition, people liked to hang holy verses in their homes, Al Jallaf notes, and they wanted the writing to be beautiful.
Scribes enjoyed high social status for their skills and knowledge, as well as their importance for inscribing rulers’ communications. “It’s why Islamic calligraphy was so prominent—the competition and perfection to reach the most beautiful form of elegance,” says Basma Al Hamdy, associate professor of graphic design at Virginia Commonwealth University in Doha and author of Khatt: Egypt’s Calligraphic Landscape. “Calligraphy was associated with purity.”
Top: Basmala “From Solomon”, Quran 27:30, Muhaqqaq Jali, gold, ink, gouache on treated paper by Dr. Nassar Mansour. Dr. Mansour writing in squared kufic script. The letters alif and ain using the proportional system based on rhombic dots.
Kufic is the oldest style still in use today. It is said to have originated in Kufah, Iraq, in the early years of Islam. Its angularity lends itself to architectural use even today. While at the beginning it was minimalist, calligraphers developed ornate versions, such as plaited/knotted, floriated or foliated kufic.
Kufic did not have i’jam, or diacritical marks, which were added later. “From 17 basic shapes, depending on what you add in terms of dots or additions you can create 28 or 29 letters,” Al Hamdy says. For example, ba ﺏ, ta ﺕ, and tha ﺙ use the same basic shape, which is differentiated with dots. Each letter also has four forms, depending on whether it stands alone, or is at the beginning, middle, or end of a word.
Harakat are diacriticals that mark short vowels. Before their introduction, readers were expected to know, from context and practice, what the likely vowel sounds were.
The dots took on new importance with the great calligrapher Ibn Muqla in the early 10th century under the Abbasid Caliphate. He is credited with developing the cursive scripts known as the “six pens”: thuluth, naskh, muhaqqaq, rayhani, tawqi and riq’ah.
Ibn Muqla laid out the aesthetic rules for Arabic calligraphy, by defining proportions for letters based on the rhombic dot created when a reed pen is applied to paper, or based on a circle whose diameter is the alif, the first letter of the alphabet.
“Every letter has to be written in proportion to alif. Every letter carries a certain number of dots in proportion to that letter. If you make the alif for seven dots, then ba has to be between five and seven dots,” Dr. Mansour explains. “It’s like the human form—hand size works with the head, eye, finger, the size of the person. Everything is in proportion.”
Thuluth script is commonly used on architecture, including on the Taj Mahal.
Each era brought refinements. In the 15th century, Sheikh Hamdullah “invented a way to redesign script and teach it, so people could write books and documents and have consistency,” says Mohamed Zakariya, a calligrapher in Arlington, Virginia, who designed US postage stamps celebrating Eid and who was commissioned by President Barack Obama to create a piece for Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.
Of the six pens, naskh was favoured for administrative documents because it could be written quickly and in small size, and it remains popular today. Riq’ah or ruq’ah is also popular because it’s simple, almost dashed off—the name comes from the word for rag. Today it’s often used in newspaper headlines, Al Hamdy notes.
Thuluth may come from the word for one-third—in this script, one-third of each letter slopes. It may also come from the size of the pen, which was one-third as big as had typically been used, which allowed for finer writing. It tends to be used for titles or architecture (it’s on the Taj Mahal), with bigger letters, and the letters may interlace.
Other scripts developed regionally—diwani in Ottoman Turkey; magribi in North Africa; ta’liq and nas’taliq in Persia, where four letters were added to the alphabet for the Farsi language.
“Arabic script is like a wave. There’s a constant motion from right to left,” Zakariya says. “It makes for faster reading and faster writing, but it takes a long time to learn it.”
While some calligraphers are self-taught, traditionally they studied with a master to earn an ijaza, a diploma or licence. Dr. Mansour received his from Hasan Çelebi, the celebrated Turkish calligrapher. “Although Jordan is one of the most important locations where Arabic writing started, at the time there were no great masters of calligraphy, no museums or libraries where one interested in this art could go to look at those works.” So Dr. Mansour created the Institute of Traditional Islamic Arts at Al Balqa Applied University in 1998.
“Everyone wants to have an ijaza as if it’s the magic lantern that will open all the doors,” says Zakariya, who has two, also from Çelebi. “Ijazas allowed people who pursued certain studies to be allowed to practice as a scholar or a business. One of the easier ijazas was for calligraphy. It also had a prettier document.”
This piece by Khalid Al Jallaf will be part of the Sharjah Calligraphy Biennial.
“Arabic script is like a wave. There’s a constant motion from right to left. It makes for faster reading and faster writing, but it takes a long time to learn it.”
Zakariya doesn’t just produce the script, but does the whole process by hand. Regular paper is too absorbent, so ancient calligraphers would add starch, fish glues or gum arabic to give it some resistance to water. He mixes 15-30 egg whites with alum until they go from sticky and thick to liquid. “I let it sit until the bubbles go away. Then I wipe it across the paper, let it dry, and do it the other way, until I have three layers,” he explains. “When it’s almost dry, I put it on a piece of wood and polish it with an agate stone. You have to hold it with two hands and rub it with all your strength. It becomes very, very smooth and glossy. Almost like warm human skin. You put that away for at least one year. Maybe two. If you use it right away, the ink will curdle upon it. You have to let time change the chemical structure.”
The border around calligraphy poses another challenge. “Most people took the route of making elaborate borders on manuscripts with gold and colour,” Zakariya says. “It took a lot of work and it would fall apart after 200 years.” Ebru, similar to marbling, was developed to last longer. Zakariya also makes his own ebru. In a tub of water, he floats gum tragacanth. “You mix it and filter it so it’s like a thin cream. Then you take a pigment of colour and add things to make it more resistant—you want the paint to float. A drop will float and spread out in a circle. Then you lay a piece of paper on the circle of paint and it will stick on the paper. Or you can take a little wire and run it through the dot to make a design, like ripples when you throw a rock into water.”
Zakariya also grinds his own gold, which he uses to paint. Different alloys give a green, white or yellow hue. He prefers 23-carat gold, which is “a little harder, not as gummy and soft as 24 carat. I pulverise it in a plate of glass or porcelain. I do 500 sheets at a time. You rub it in your fingers until it becomes a paste. Then you wash it. It takes a couple of days for it to become sediment in a jar. Then you take the gold and mix it with a bit of fish glue from a sturgeon or a little gum arabic and you can apply it with a brush. You take an agate to polish it and you’ve got something very beautiful. If you do it with a sheet of paper between the gold and the burnishing stone, you get a matte effect.”
LET THE DAYS GO FORTH (2015). Acrylic on canvas by Mawadah Muhtasib, based on a poem by Imam Al-Shafi.
Zakariya, in the US, can’t call on the same teamwork that Al Jallaf enjoys in the UAE. “When you see a great piece of classical calligraphy, three or four people worked on it. There are specialists doing paper, doing ebru. The most important one is the calligrapher.”
This ancient ecosystem, which continues today, won recognition last year when Unesco added Arabic calligraphy to its Cultural Heritage list. Fifteen countries joined Saudi Arabia in nominating Arabic calligraphy. “Unesco said it was a great effort by Saudi Arabia to show the collaboration and the diverse culture and cross culture ties between Arab regions,” says Rehaf Gassas, director of the heritage department at the Saudi Heritage Preservation Society, which spearheaded the application. “It’s part of religion, culture and society. Speaking the language is something; communicating through writing is another. It’s also an art form passed from generation to generation.”
Perhaps one reason why Arabic calligraphy has such modern importance is that it was late to digitisation. “The early computers in the 1980s could not support really elaborate, beautiful calligraphic scripts,” says Bahia Shehab, professor of the practice of design and founder of the graphic design programme at the American University in Cairo.
Today, Arabic type designers are creating a new visual language, adapting calligraphy to the digital sphere. “They are also innovating, which is important for the continuity of the culture,” Shehab adds.
Wissam Shawkat is one of those innovators. The Dubai-based artist taught himself—growing up in war-torn Iraq, formal studies were difficult, so he mostly learned from sign makers. “Since I was a kid, I asked ‘what if this is not produced in a classical way?’” He experimented. “I have the right to do that because I mastered the classical secrets. Now I want to move forward, not stay in the 17th or 18th century.”
Shawkat creates calligraforms, a movement within modern calligraphy that focuses on the shape of individual letters, thin strokes, thick strokes and negative space. He is influenced by the simplicity of Bauhaus. “My latest work is very modern, abstract. Some have the word ‘love’. Sometimes they’re just celebrating the letters themselves.”
In 2004, as the calligrapher at a design agency, Shawkat was asked to create a logo with edge. “At that time, I was very traditional in the way I worked. I didn’t dare create new art. I did some sketches. I liked what I did. I asked myself, ‘if I managed to create one word, six letters, then can I finish the alphabet?’”
GOLD SEAL RING, cast and incised, Iran, 1600-1700 at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art.
“It’s not only about symmetry of design,” he says, “but the fluidity, repetition, variation and many other principles of design related to Arabic calligraphy without being literal.”
He succeeded, and clients wanted to use the new script in projects. As Shawkat published his work on Instagram in 2013, he named the script after himself: Al Wissam.
That same year, Mawadah Muhtasib was a 17-year-old visual artist in Jeddah. “Each era had different forms of calligraphy. After studying different forms, I decided to create my own,” she says, based on urban calligraphy or calligraffiti.
“One of the main purposes was to write from a different perspective,” she says. Indeed, to read what she has written, the work must be viewed in a mirror. But mostly she wants “to focus on the form of the letters rather than what is actually written. It focuses solely on the beauty of how one letter can contain so many shapes.”
Her work has won attention from major brands, such as Mont Blanc, Sephora and Tory Burch. For some clients, she customises special edition projects, such as bags, by writing customers’ names in Arabic or English. Others want a painting or pure calligraphy.
Banks in the Arab world incorporate calligraphy in their visual identity, such as visual design, logos or architecture. “On one side, there is modernity in materials and forms. On the other, they are expressing that they share the same roots and tradition as their customers,” says Ayman Safi Zaid, design instructor at Birzeit University and founder of ASZ Studio in Ramallah, Palestine.
Calligraffiti by Bahia Shehab, from the series NO, A THOUSAND TIMES NO (2011, Cairo).
Modern brands also use calligraphy in architecture. “There is a strong link between calligraphy and contemporary architecture which tries to have a connection with heritage or identity itself,” Zaid says. “In searching for authenticity in design, architects go back to principles that are also found in calligraphy. This doesn’t mean laser cuts in stone or pieces of texts. I mean the principles such as the pattern of the calligraphy, the repetition, the fluidity of the font or the shapes, and all the intersections, the rotations, all those elements are unique features that we see in architecture today.”
Zaid cites Basuna Mosque in Egypt, by Dar Arafa Architecture, whose angular minaret rotates and whose dome is covered with extruded elements that resemble calligraphic dots.
“It’s not only about symmetry of design,” he says, “but the fluidity, repetition, variation and many other principles of design related to Arabic calligraphy without being literal.”
Buildings may be the canvas for large-scale calligraphy, or calligraffiti. Shehab and French-Tunisian artist eL Seed shared the Unesco-Sharjah Prize for Arabic Culture in 2016 for their innovative use of Arabic calligraphy in street art. For Shehab, the award acknowledged her powerful No, A Thousand Times No project, an art installation that became a graffiti series during the 2011 Egyptian uprising.
Calligraphy is “a continuity of tradition, of history, a way for people to connect with their culture,” Shehab says. “Today we can just enjoy the beauty of Arabic calligraphy without the burden of legibility.”
Photographs: Geometry II Courtesy of Wissam Shawkat; Blue Quran courtesy of Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art; Basmala courtesy of Dr. Nassar Mansour; Dr. Mansour courtesy of Bagri Foundation; Lettering courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Khalid Al Jallaf courtesy of Sharjah Calligraphy Biennial; “LET THE DAYS GO FORTH” courtesy of Mawadah Muhtasib; Gold Seal Ring courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum; “NO, A THOUSAND TIMES NO” courtesy of Bahia Shehab.
