The Cosmic Script

Abstract

This cloth-bound, large-format book set is a quest to understand and apply thecontents of a groundbreaking fourth/tenth-century treatise that reformed Arabicpenmanship and established the canon of calligraphy applied to this day.Muhamad ibn Ali ibn Muqla’s treatise The Proportioned Script acts as the esotericcenter of a riddle not unlike the unraveling of a lost book through otherbooks as seen in Umberto Echo’s The Name of the Rose. In this case, The ProportionedScript is but a succinct treatise, for Ibn Muqla’s two explanatorymanuscripts detailing the proportions and methods are lost – and can only beretraced through subsequent studies and drawn reconstruction.Why such a monumental effort to unravel a single small treatise on Arabicpenmanship? As the authors explain, it was and is the canon of proportion inwriting and reveals a great deal about the sociocultural context and the importanceof script related to faith. Hence the title of the book. The Cosmic Scriptis clearly the result of significant research. The two authors met over fourdecades ago, during which Moustafa completed an MA and a PhD on the subject.They collaborated for eight years on unraveling The Proportioned Scriptthrough other sources and reconstructed the canon of letters by a detailed geometricanalysis and Moustafa’s own artistic practice of application.The first volume includes an introduction and seven chapters outliningthe historical and spiritual background of the Arabic script in terms of ancientpre-Islamic influences. The second volume contains an introduction andtwenty-one chapters, of which nineteen cover the specific letter families andoutline sources and specific graphics for each letter’s formulation.“Decoding the “Geometry of Letters,” the introduction to the first volume,describes Ibn Muqla as having invented the theory of proportioned script thattransformed this art form and had a significant impact upon the culture of theAbbasid era and beyond. He derived his system from the scribal dot (squarein form, on an angle) and thus, according to the authors, linked prophecy, writing,and geometry with the sacred dimensions. The elevated rank of the penand writing were underscored by the first revealed Qur’anic verses and thesacred status of the physical Qur’an. The authors argued that geometry bridged ...