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Calligraphy a Noble Art
To the Arab world calligraphy is more than handwriting. It is a
"spiritual technique" that beaches out with grace and elegance to engage
the eve, mind and soul...
by Kamel Al-Baba
In a broad sense, calligraphy is merely handwriting, a means of
recording and transmitting information, sometimes clearly, sometimes
not, but in most instances hastily and with little regard for its
appearance. In the Arab world calligraphy is something more. It is an
art—indeed the chief form of visual art—with a history, a gallery of
great masters and hallowed traditions. It is an art of grace and
elegance which inspires wonderment for its appearance alone.
What distinguishes calligraphy from ordinary handwriting is, quite
simply, beauty. Handwriting may express ideas, even great ideas, but to
the Arab it must express, too, the richer dimension of aesthetics.
Calligraphy to the Arab is, as the Alexandrian philosopher Euclid
expressed it, "a spiritual technique," flowing quite naturally from the
influence of Islam.
For thirteen centuries the dominant influence in the Arab world has been
the Islamic religion. Its sacred book, the Holy Koran, as the word of
God revealed to Muhammad in the Arabic tongue, has inspired generations
of calligraphars who have sought to reproduce its words with a
perfection of style worthy of its contents. Islam has exerted also a
more subtle, a more indirect influence on the development of
calligraphy: by discouraging the graphic representation of human beings
and animals it channeled the creative energies of Muslim artists toward
other decorative arts, especially calligraphy. Because the Koran itself
has always been the most widely owned and widely read book in the Muslim
world, the incentive to produce beautiful transcripts of the work has
been powerful and constant. And because the final product was portable
and relatively durable, the art acquired status among a people with
nomadic origins.
Historians disagree on both the birthplace and the birth date of Arabic
writing, but the most widely accepted theory is that it developed from
Nabataean, one of the many west Aramaic dialects which served as the
international language of the Middle East from about the 4th century
B.C. until the 7th century A.D. In that period, however, the vigorous
tide of Muslim expansion flooded the Middle East, and the Arabic of the
Arabian Peninsula quickly supplanted Aramaic as the lingua franca of the
area. So thorough was the Arab conquest of the vast Nabataean empire
that today only the "rose-red city" of Petra remains, the silent tomb of
a city in the Jordanian desert.
Of the two styles of Nabataean script—Early and Late—the Early style is
characterized by its angularity and straight strokes; it is the
precursor of kufic script. The Late style developed from commercial
need. The Nabataean nation, astride the crossroads of the Orient,
required a fast, flowing writing style to record its transactions, and
the smooth and cursive naskhi was the natural result. The kufic and
naskhi styles were the first to be used by the ancient Arabs. For
inscriptions on stones, kufic script proved to be at once the easiest to
incise and the most majestic in appearance. The impressive style was
carried over to record sacred works on parchment.
As the oldest Arabic script, kufic was used during the early Islamic
period for copying the Koran. But the Prophet Muhammad's scribes
themselves favored naskhi when they wrote letters and other everyday
communications. One of the scribes, a Companion of the Prophet, named
Zaid ibn Thabit, who wrote down the first complete version of the Koran,
assisted by three members of Muhammad's tribe, produced another in
naskhi during the Caliphate of 'Uthman. The latter version superseded,
throughout Islam, all earlier transcriptions, which were ordered burned.
The revision of 'Uthman, the only standard text of the Koran up to the
present day, was immediately copied and distributed in the Arab centers
of Mecca, Damascus, Basra, Kufa and Yemen, where regional variations in
script in time evolved into other styles.
During the Umayyad era (661-750) of Damascus, shortly after the death of
the Prophet, Arabic calligraphy flourished. Late in the Umayyad period
the celebrated Katabah—the Scribes—began the modification of kufic
script, which became the form employed today in calligraphic
decorations. The Katabah are also credited with the invention of thuluth
script. Another famed penman, Khalid ibn al-Hajjaj, who was well known
for his elegant copies of the Koran, wrote the 91st and subsequent suras
(chapters) of the Koran in letters of gold in the prayer niche of the
Prophet's Mosque in Medina. Unfortunately, this work flaked off bit by
bit through the centuries, until today there is nothing left.
In the 'Abbasid era, which followed the Umayyad dynasty, Vizier Abu 'All
ibn Muqlah (d. 940) achieved great renown by completing the development
of kufic from its ancient forms into modern forms, and his elegant new
style was copied throughout Islam. After Ibn Muqlah, leadership in the
art of calligraphy passed to 'AH ibn Hilal, better known as Ibn al-Bawwab
("Son of the Doorman") (d. 1022), who perfected the rules of penmanship
and conceived a number of variations of thuluth script. Most
calligraphers who followed him carried on his concept of design until
the Caliphate fell to the Ottoman Turks and Arab creativity declined in
the East.
Three types of contemporary script are thus wholly of Arab origin: kufic,
naskhi and thuluth. Of these the kufic style is unquestionably the
greatest achievement in Arabic calligraphy. Its beauty and majesty make
it ideal for ornamental purposes. With the spread of Arab conquests in
the East and West, and the building of new places of worship, palaces
and homes, the people felt the need to embellish the structures with
ornamental designs. But because Islam discouraged the depiction of the
human body, the Arabs turned to other sources of design to decorate
their utensils, ceilings and walls. Kufic script supplied artists with
another medium of expression, which was and is widely used for the
decoration of building spandrels and entablatures.
The Arabs of medieval times used interlaced geometric lines derived from
the kufic style to adorn the walls of palaces and mosques, and the name
of this decoration—arabesque—is a constant reminder of its cultural
origins. Arabic calligraphy forms a central part of the ornamentation of
the Moorish palace of Alhambra, in the province of Granada, Spain. This
famous citadel, overlooking the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountain
range, and the Great Mosque of Cordoba, also in southern Spain, are
monumental examples of decoration which combine kufic and arabesque.
The Moors of Spain enlisted the services of their Christian compatriots
to apply arabesque designs. Some of these so-called dhimmis, or protégés
of Islam, had no knowledge of Arabic and made designs in kufic script
without the slightest understanding of what they were writing. As a
result, some old Andalusian vases exist today with ornamental
inscriptions which make no sense whatsoever. The letters were merely
strung together by an artist intent on creating something beautiful,
rather than meaningful.
It was during the 17th century, under the Ottoman Empire, that Arabic
calligraphy attained its highest development. The Ottoman sultans who
acceded to the Caliphate showed high regard for their court
calligraphers who, among other commissions, executed the royal insignia.
Called the "Imperial Monogram," it consisted of tiny, exquisite
interlaced writing in the thuluth script, denoting the names of the
reigning sultan and his father. The monogram was stamped on imperial
orders and royal decrees, and appeared on coins of the realm in the same
way that, elsewhere, a monarch's likeness is used. Similar monograms are
still in use in Iran today by ordinary citizens.
Two great 17th-century Turkish artists—al-Hafiz Osman and Mustafa Rakim—are
especially worthy of mention. Osman received fame for his naskhi
writings and for the many copies of the Koran which he penned in ink and
gilt. Mustafa Rakim rebelled against the lifeless conventionalism which
characterized much Arabic calligraphy up to his time. He was always
seeking ways to bring a more dynamic beauty to the art, even to the
extent of sometimes drawing his characters to resemble the form or
features of a woman. The suggestion of a tall figure could be seen in
his alif (ﺍ), the letter in Arabic which corresponds to the letter "A"
in the Roman alphabet. His 'ain (ﻉ) was often drawn to resemble a
provocative arched eyebrow.
Happily, Rakim was able to enjoy the appreciation and admiration of his
contemporaries. It is on record that Sultan Mahmud II used to stand
before him, as a pupil before his teacher, holding his inkstand while
the master drew. It is not surprising that the sultan should show such
admiration, for he himself was a noted penman—an expert who recognized
expert performance.
The Ottomans, however, were not content merely to improve the types of
script which they inherited from the Arabs. They also added to the
calligraphers' repertoire the dizaani script, with its two variants, and
the ruq'ah script which, because of its stenographic simplicity, is now
used by most Arabs for their everyday writing.
The use of Arabic script continued in Turkey until the last days of its
Ottoman rulers, but lost status with the demise of the Empire at the end
of World War I. During the presidency of Kemal Atatiirk, father of
modern Turkey, Arabic characters were replaced by the Roman alphabet,
slightly modified, which continues in use today. The magnificent
calligraphic legacy of the scribes of former times can still be seen in
the mosques, museums and palaces of Istanbul, and even now calligraphers
throughout the Middle East regard Istanbul as the spiritual home of
their art.
When the great days of Ottoman calligraphy passed, Egypt fell heir to
the role of protector and preserver of the art of Arabic writing. In
1921, King Fuad I called the famous Turkish calligrapher, Muhammad 'Abd
al-'Aziz ar-Rifa'i to Cairo, where he transcribed the Koran and gilded
the result. Soon afterward King Fuad founded a school to pass on the
learning and artistry of the finest calligraphers of our time. This
school is still in existence. Urdu, Kurdish and Persian are among the
languages which still use an Arabic script, even though genetically they
are more closely related to English than they are to Arabic. Yet there
is little likelihood that these language groups, or the Arabs, will
exchange their writing system for the Roman alphabet, though this has
often been urged for the sake of uniformity, simplicity and adaptability
to printing devices such as typewriters. With four forms possible for
each of the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet, any mechanical means of
printing is relatively costly and complicated. But cultural as well as
religious pressures argue against the adoption of any such system. Not
only is the Holy Koran written with a script which is, for all practical
purposes, the same as that used in daily life, but the vast treasury of
Arabic poetry, which every Arab reveres, is inseparably associated with
the script in which it was originally written.
Kamel al-Baba, one of Lebanon's leading professional
calligraphers, studied under Najib Hatoawini, former calligrapher to the
Royal Court of Egypt. Mr. al-Baba lives and works in Beirut.
This article appeared on pages 1-7 of the July/August 1964 print
edition of Saudi Aramco World...
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