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Arabic Script: Mightier than the Sword
Arabic scripts
Following the revelation of Islam in the
seventh century AD, Arabic was established as the language and
script of the Muslim
empire.
Muslims must learn
the Qur'an in its original Arabic. Therefore Arabic spread
with Islam and was eventually used to write languages such as
Persian (Iran), Urdu (India and Pakistan), Dari (Afghanistan),
Ottoman Turkish (until 1928) and the languages of Indonesia and
Malaysia (until
recently).
There are many
different styles of Arabic
scripts.
Angular
scripts
Kufic
developed around the end of the seventh century in Kufa, Iraq (from
which it takes its name) and other centres. Until about the
eleventh century it was the main script used to copy
Qur'ans. The simple and elegant forms were embellished over
time.
Eastern
Kufic was developed by
Persian calligraphers during the tenth century and is distinguished
by short, angled
strokes.
Maghribi
script evolved in North Africa (the Maghreb) and Spain in the tenth
century. Forms of this script are still used in this region
today.
Square
Kufic appears from the
thirteenth century on coins, tilework and elsewhere in the lands of
the Mongols and their
successors.
Rounded
scripts
As
the decorative potential of
Kufic was increasingly
exploited, it became ever more difficult to read and was gradually
abandoned for general use during the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. Rounded scripts were used since early Islamic times for
everyday correspondence on papyrus for example, whereas
Kufic was reserved for
more formal public
texts.
The letter
alif. The calligrapher
Muhammad ibn Muqla (died AD 940) is credited with establishing
rules for writing rounded scripts that would make them as well
proportioned and as beautiful as the
Kufic script and
therefore appropriate for writing the Qur'an. The guiding
principle was the use of a circle, the letter
alif, and a dot formed
by pressing the pen diagonally on paper so that the length of the
dot's equal sides is the same width as the pen nib. This
provided the proportional grid for all
letters.
Naskh
is the 'copyists' hand mainly used from the twelfth
century for writing government documents and also for copying the
Qur'an.
Thuluth,
meaning 'one third', is often used for monumental
inscriptions and was particularly favoured by the Mamluk sultans of
Egypt (AD
1250-1517).
Nasta'liq
is the 'hanging script'. According to legend it was
perfected by the fifteenth-century calligrapher Mir Ali al-Tabrizi
after dreaming of flying geese. It was popular in Iran and Mughal
India from the sixteenth century but is rarely used to copy the
Qur'an.
Divani
was developed by Ottoman Turkish calligraphers during the fifteenth
century and often used on
documents.
Alphabet
and
numerals
The
Arabic alphabet is written from right to left and consists of
twenty-eight letters which are created from seventeen different
letter shapes. In modern Arabic dots above and below letters help
to distinguish them from each other. In early Arabic these dots
were frequently omitted. Many of the letters change their shape
depending on where they are situated within a
word.
Arabic numerals were
developed in India in the fifth century AD and spread with Islam,
replacing Roman numerals. In the ingenious Indo-Arabic method, any
quantity could be represented by figures using a decimal point. The
numerals, unlike the alphabet, are written from left to right.
Their shapes have evolved over the
centuries.
The scripts have
been copied by Nassar Mansour.