Islamic Calligraphy Research Articles

Looking at Words

Regardless of their semantic meaning, words exist in and through their material, mediated forms. By extension, sacred texts themselves are material forms and engaged in two primary ways: through the ears and eyes. This article focuses on the visible forms of words that can stir emotional and even sacred responses in the eyes of their beholders. Thus words can be said to function iconically, affecting a mutually engaging form of "religious seeing." The way words appear to their readers will change the reader's interaction, devotion, and interpretation. Examples range from modern popular typography to European Christian print culture to Islamic calligraphy. Weaving through the argument are two key dialectics: the relation of words and images, and the relation of the seen and the unseen.

Calligraphy and the Art of Statecraft in the Late Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkish Republic

State building and nationalism have been widely examined in the context of both the late Ottoman Empire and the modern Turkish Republic. This article explores the role of Islamic calligraphy and calligraphers during the final decades of Ottoman rule and through the twentieth century in terms of their contribution, both materially and ideologically, to the development of national identity in Turkey. Because calligraphy in Turkey has always enjoyed a unique relationship with Islam, it has been impossible to fully separate the art from the Ottoman-Islamic past. Having survived the transition in modern Turkey from the Arabic to the Latin script, calligraphy thus serves as an alternative, and perhaps subtly oppositional, form of expression in the Turkish Republic. That Islamic calligraphy continues to be appreciated in Turkey demonstrates resistance to the national identity handed down by Kemalists in an attempt to erase Islam and the Turks’ immediate Ottoman past since the 1920s.

Parchment to Pixel: The Walters Islamic Manuscript Digital Project

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, is nearing completion of an initiative to digitize its Islamic manuscripts—a collection comprised of 128 codices and sixty single leaves, dating from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries and containing extraordinary treasures from the world of Islamic art and calligraphy. The project seeks to create full digital surrogates of the entire collection, capturing preservation-quality, high-resolution digital images, providing appropriate metadata, and making the results available at no charge online under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 3.0 license. This article details the processes and procedures behind the ambitious plan and offers critical analysis of the role the project will play in the collective digital management of visual resources.

Sound and Silence in the Line: Re-Reading Turkish Islamic Calligraphy for Interactive Media Design

The purpose of the research reported is to argue that “formal” design solutions of past cultures can generate innovative ideas in interactive media design. The authors ask how a traditional art in which body motion is used, namely Turkish Islamic calligraphy—Khatt—can help create innovative solutions for digital interaction design. Taking inspiration from Khatt, the authors have developed a project with the aim of allowing an audience with no prior calligraphy background to experience the performance process of calligraphy by reproducing it themselves. By creating a performance interface that provides predictability components, the authors have correlated the visual compositions with sound.

A Modern Master of Islamic Calligraphy and Her Peers

In the Islamic world, an important body of biographical material traces the chains of transmission of calligraphic instruction over many centuries. Although there is comparatively little documentation on women who have practiced calligraphy, scattered references do mention female masters. Nevertheless, one can rarely associate a female master with an extant piece of calligraphy. This article provides an introduction to the person and work of Hilal Kazan, a Turkish female master calligrapher who holds traditional authorizations to practice. Such authorizations accord a prestige that has few parallels in Western societies. Kazan is, in a sense, a living national treasure. The study situates Kazan and other Muslim women in a genealogical tree of master calligraphers. It suggests furthermore that some of these women are akin to religious scholars. Finally, the study demonstrates that there is room for women to advance in this traditional Islamic discipline and that further research is merited.

SHEILA S. BLAIR, Islamic Calligraphy.

Journal Article Sheila S. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy. Get access Sheila S. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2006. Pp. xxxvii + 681. Price: £125.00 hardback. ISBN: 0-7486-1212-2. Colin F. Baker Colin F. Baker The British Library Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Semitic Studies, Volume 54, Issue 2, Autumn 2009, Pages 601–602, https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/fgp026 Published: 01 October 2009

Taking a Line for a Walk, from the Abbasid Caliphate to Vector Graphics

One of the common qualities of both classical Islamic art and contemporary computer‐based art is that the work of art plays out in time, in the performance of algorithms and/or the attentive recognition of observers. This article will illustrate this performativity in terms of the relationship between point and line. From Islamic calligraphy to vector graphics – with a long pause in the linear abstraction of modern artists such as Paul Klee – the line is not a contour but a trajectory, a living, directional, potentially infinite movement. In both Islamic calligraphy and computer media, the freely moving line stumbled on a point: the proportioned Arabic writing of Abbasid vizier Ibn Muqla (885–939 CE), and the pixel‐based graphical user interface. When lines give way to points, does the nature of the infinite change?

Islamic Calligraphy from the Wellcome Library. Compiled by F. Abdullaeva, S. Andreyev, H. Ibrahimnejad, A. Peacock, N. Serikoff and B. Wannel. – Edited by Nikolaj Serikoff. pp. 224. Chicago, The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, Serindia Publications, 2007.

Islamic Calligraphy from the Wellcome Library. Compiled by F. Abdullaeva, S. Andreyev, H. Ibrahimnejad, A. Peacock, N. Serikoff and B. Wannel. – Edited by Nikolaj Serikoff. pp. 224. Chicago, The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, Serindia Publications, 2007.

“The Eye Is Favored for Seeing the Writing’s Form”: On the Sensual and the Sensuous in Islamic Calligraphy

“The Eye Is Favored for Seeing the Writing’s Form”: On the Sensual and the Sensuous in Islamic Calligraphy

The Iconicity of Islamic Calligraphy in Turkey

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Iconicity of Islamic Calligraphy in Turkeyİrvin Cemi̇l Schickİrvin Cemi̇l Schick Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Res Volume 53-54Spring-Autumn 2008 Published in association with the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/RESvn1ms25608818 Views: 149Total views on this site Copyright The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegePDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Islamic calligraphy

Islamic calligraphy

Ink and gold: Islamic calligraphy

Ink and gold: Islamic calligraphy

Calligraphy and Islamic culture: reflections on some new epigraphical discoveries in Gaur and Pandua, two early capitals of Muslim Bengal

The first part of this article seeks to discuss the development of Islamic architectural calligraphy in Sultanate Bengal in the context of its cultural history. Most early Islamic monuments of the region had some kind of calligraphic embellishment since in Islamic culture inscriptions are considered a powerful medium for conveying visual, cultural and spiritual messages. These inscriptions were rendered in various styles: Ku¯fi¯, thulth, naskh, riqa¯‘, rayha¯ni¯, muhaqqaq, tughra¯‘ and Biha¯ri¯. The second part focuses on some hitherto unpublished inscriptions discovered by the author in Gaur and Pandua, two early capitals of the Sultans of Bengal. Special attention is paid to deciphering and editing these new epigraphic texts, and to the analysis of information derived from them in their historical context, such as the names of the contemporary rulers, local administrative officers, religious figures, military commanders and their titles. These findings help us understand the contemporary political, administrative, social, religious and cultural implications for the region.

Tessellations in Islamic Calligraphy

The authors provide a brief history of the art of calligraphy in Muslim cultures, highlighting examples of tessellations of words. The underlying principles for designing a word tessellation inscribed in a hexagon are discussed, and a test for determining which words can be tessellated is provided. The authors demonstrate their attempts at tessellating the word “Ali.”

Islamic Calligraphy

Islamic Calligraphy

W. E. Begley: Monumental Islamic calligraphy from India. 144 pp. Villa Park, Illinois: Islamic Foundation, 1985. (Distributed by University of Washington Press, $17.85, paper $10.95.)

W. E. Begley: Monumental Islamic calligraphy from India. 144 pp. Villa Park, Illinois: Islamic Foundation, 1985. (Distributed by University of Washington Press, $17.85, paper $10.95.)

From Concept to Context: Approaches to Asian and Islamic Calligraphy, by Shen Fee, Glen D. Lowry, and Ann Yonemura. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.1986.

From Concept to Context: Approaches to Asian and Islamic Calligraphy, by Shen Fee, Glen D. Lowry, and Ann Yonemura. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.1986.

Monumental Islamic Calligraphy from India, by W. E. Begley. Exhibition catalogue. 144 pages, bibliography, table, map, index. Islamic Foundation, Villa Park, Illinois, 1985.

Monumental Islamic Calligraphy from India, by W. E. Begley. Exhibition catalogue. 144 pages, bibliography, table, map, index. Islamic Foundation, Villa Park, Illinois, 1985.

Islamic Calligraphy

Islamic Calligraphy

PROSES KREATIF PELUKIS KALIGRAFI ISLAM: SEBUAH PENELITIAN KUALITATIF

The aim of this study is to descriptively explore the creative process experienced by Islamic calligraphy painters. The research subjects were active muslim calligraphy painters whose age were above 21 years old and have produced more than 5 Islamic calligraphy paintings. Subjects of this research were: Munichy B. Edrees, H. Ashady and Syaiful Adnan. The data was obtained from a semi-structured interview. The use of this method of data was intended to identify the creative process among those Islamic calligraphy painters.The results of this research on the creative process in Islamic calligraphy painters were of the followings: (1) it took a good mood and tranquil mind to paint, (2) specified situations may generate inspiration, (3) a desire to paint which were derived from the surrounding reality and occurences, both social and spiritual, (4) the painters‘ feeling of horizontal and vertical satisfaction resulting from painting. (5) the need to probe for a certain theme through the collection of relevant information, (6) the creative process influenced by religious activities, (7) the painters‘ interest and concern on specific themes, (8) the creative process influenced by technical skills of calligraphy painting, (9) the painters’ compliance to follow their hand movements as they were believed to be inspired by Allah. There were, in fact, similarities and differences found in each calligraphy painters in their creative painting process. Keywords: creative process, calligraphy painter