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Calligrapher scripts success with
Arabic style
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Erling Hoh
A BEIJING — In this age of colliding cultures, Chen Jinhui melds two of
the more ancient ones simply by using a wolf-hair brush and some finely
ground Tie Zhai Ong ink.
He is a Chinese calligrapher writing Arabic script, which in his
sanguine, rotund person brings together two of the world's greatest
traditions of beautiful writing.
Chinese as well as Islamic culture may revere calligraphy as the highest
form of art, but in many ways, the similarity ends there. Where Chinese
calligraphy is spontaneous and intuitive, Arabic calligraphy appears
intellectual and infinitely premeditated.
While Chinese calligraphy can strike the eye with the liberating effect
of a tempest, Arabic calligraphy exudes the cool elegance of an
intricate mathematical equation. To fuse them is no mean feat, and by
having done so for the past 40 years, Mr. Chen is sparking new synapses
and garnering accolades all the way from Beijing to Istanbul.
Seated in his spartan office at the Institute of Islamic Theology in the
southern part of Beijing, Mr. Chen, the institute's retired librarian,
is not one to dwell on aesthetic dialectics of Chinese and Arabic
calligraphy. He will, however, relate the story of his hero, the famous
Arabic calligrapher Ibn Mukla, a vizier in Baghdad during the Abbasid
dynasty, which ruled from A.D. 750 to 1258.
"His influence was greater than the caliph's, because of his
calligraphy," Mr. Chen said. Out of jealousy, Mr. Chen said, the caliph
persecuted the Arabic calligrapher. But when the ruler ordered that the
artist's hand be cut off, he simply tied the pen to the remaining stump
and continued writing.
"That is why they consider him a god. He was attacked so many times, but
he never forgot his calligraphy," Mr. Chen said.
When Islam spread to China 1,000 years ago, Chinese Muslims began using
the traditional brush and ink to copy the Koran. The oldest handwritten
copy of the Koran in China dates to 1318. In time, an original form of
Arabic calligraphy with distinct Chinese characteristics, known as Sini,
evolved.
Following in the footstep of such famous Chinese Arabic calligraphers as
Huababa, a Qing dynasty scholar from the province of Henan, Mr. Chen
took up Arabic calligraphy as a student at Institute of Islamic Theology
in the 1950s.
During Mao Tse-tung's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, however,
Islam was virtually forbidden and Arabic calligraphy was denounced as
part of the "four olds."
After China reopened its doors in the late 1970s, the country's Muslims
were allowed to practice their religion and re-establish ties with the
Islamic world. Mr. Chen made his first hajj to Mecca in 1989.
A year earlier, he had received an honorable mention at the first Iraqi
International Festival of Arabic Calligraphy and Islamic Decorative Art,
and in 1995, he was placed ninth in Kufic script at the Third
International Arabic Calligraphy Competition in Turkey. His biggest
triumph came when he won first prize at the Second International
Calligraphy Competition in Pakistan in 1999.
In a selection of his works, published last year by China's
Nationalities Photographic Art Publishing House, Mr. Chen demonstrated
his mastery of all the major Arabic styles — Thulethi, Kufic, Persian,
Diwani, Diwani-jili, as well as the Sinicized Arabic script.
With his success in international competitions, his calligraphy has been
attracting patrons from around the Islamic world.
"They didn't know anything about Chinese Muslims. 'You can read the
Koran too,' they exclaimed. They were very surprised," Mr. Chen said
about his trips to various competitions in the Middle East.
A major difference between Chinese and Arabic calligraphy is that when
the art form began to evolve on the Arabian Peninsula in the sixth and
seventh centuries, calligraphers there had to make do with goat skin,
bark and cloth. The roughness and low absorbency of these materials
might have channeled Arabic calligraphers into developing an aesthetic
centered on pattern and intricacy.
In China, where paper was invented in A.D. 105, calligraphers focused
their search for beauty on the rich expressive possibilities of the
brush-ink-paper medium: texture and immediateness.
In A.D. 751, Arab and Chinese armies clashed in a battle on the Talas
River in present-day Kyrgyzstan. The Chinese were defeated, and among
the prisoners taken by the Arabs were Chinese paper makers. Having
learned the art of paper making from Chinese, the Arabs transmitted the
craft to Europe several centuries later.
Chen Jinhui is now busy investigating a cultural diffusion in the other
direction: the history of Arabic calligraphy in China.
"It is very difficult research. I want to fill in all the blanks," Mr.
Chen said. For encouragement, he has only to recall a saying of the
prophet Muhammad:
"Seek wisdom, even if it be in China.".
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