Arabian Tongue Institute Blog (History of Arabic Calligraphy)

History of Arabic Calligraphy

Calligraphy is one of the world’s most ancient and respected art forms. In many parts of the world, the practice and importance of calligraphy has waned, but in Arabic culture, the more than 2,000-year-old tradition remains as vibrant and revered as ever. Arabic calligraphy offers a strong and appealing contrast by treating writing and the written word as sacred things

There are two reasons for this development in Arabic calligraphy. The first one is the expansion of the Islamic civilization to cover large areas on earth and many cultures from Africa, Asia, and Europe. Each of these cultures has made its remarkable contribution to developing Arabic calligraphy and its master calligraphers.

The second reason was the early interest in learning to communicate across these wide areas of the Islamic civilization. Many artists and scientists used Arabic scripts to spread their art or scientific theories.

Arabic calligraphy’s early development was not a linear process. A wide variety of scripts rose and fell in popularity in regions as far-flung as Damascus, Baghdad, Morocco, and Spain.2 Kufic, named for the city of Kufah in Iraq, was the first universal script, and it dominated Arabic calligraphy from the 7th to the 11thcentury, but it was still rough and relatively unsystematized, especially in comparison to the systematization it would undergo during the “Golden Age” of calligraphy, which began around 1000 B.C. and lasted until the middle of the 13th century

Moving forward, the Arabic calligraphy continued to develop through the different ruling dynasties in Kufa of Iraq, Baghdad, and Cairo. This era saw the emergence of different Arabic scripts, such as the Kufi, Thuluth, Naskh, Muhaqqaq, Riqa’a, and Tawql.

In Persia another script, called the Ta’aleeq, was developed in the early ninth century that was later combined with the Nask script to form the Nesta’sleeq. The evolution of Arabic calligraphy continued until the last dynasty of the Islamic empire, which was the Ottoman reign in Istanbul, Turkey. During this period more complex scripts have appeared, such as the Diwani, Jeli Diwani, Tughra’a, and Siyaqat.

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