allahallahIn the angel Jibreel's first revelation to Muhammad, there is a reference to "teaching by the pen." The written word has played a very powerful role not only in Islamic thought, but also in Islamic art. Calligraphers copying the Qur'an embellished the Arabic letters and shaped them in remarkable ways. Dr. Ishtiaq Husain Qureishi, former Minister of Education in Pakistan, once explained that "the guiding tendency in Muslim art is its passion for abstraction.... the Muslims chose calligraphy as their primary medium of aesthetic expression because no other art embodies so complete and so absolute an abstraction." The earliest styles of calligraphy, the Kufic and the Naskhi of the 10th century, gave way to the later Nasta'liq script. The Nasta'liq style allowed for far more decoration; words could be curved and looped inside each other, and spread across the page in new ways. Quite literally, a new dimension had been added: whereas earlier scripts were strictly one-dimensional, all along horizontal lines, the Nasta'liq script could be written freely in two dimensions. This led to very elaborate (often practically illegible) calligraphy.



The above calligraphy is translated: "Say: Nothing will happen to us except what Allah has decreed for us: He is our Protector: and on Allah let the Believers put their trust." (Qur'an, Surah 9:51)


allahallahIn addition to demonstrating a love of abstraction, Islamic calligraphy has connections with mathematics. Every calligraphic work was designed using three initial measurements: the dot, the alif, and the imaginary circle formed from the alif. The dot is the shape made when the calligrapher gently pressed the reed pen onto the paper. The alif, the first letter of the alphabet, is a vertical stroke whose width is, of course, the same as the dot. Its height was crucial; the number of dots it was high served as the diameter of an imaginary circle. This circle was used to properly proportion all the other writing on the page or object being decorated.

allahallah Although there are many other Islamic arts that may be more well known, Islamic calligraphy represents the beginning of Islamic art. All the most important elements of later art were already present: abstraction, a love of symmetry and curves, and an awareness of proportion and mathematics. Despite concerns about representational art, much calligraphy suggested flowers or other shapes in the real world. For example, much calligraphy was "zoomorphic," shaped like animals:





allahallahIslamic calligraphy is not just an old, dead tradition: new styles are still being developed. One of the most recent is al-Khat al-Hurr which was developed in the 1980's. Let's move on to learn about the relationship between Islamic Art and Islam.