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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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