Ghubar script

Ghubar, literally "dust", is the smallest of the scripts, said to be so named because its letters resemble motes of dust. Its opposite is tumar, used large for scrolls and occasionally for documents; some authors treated the pair as separate scripts, while many Iranian chroniclers considered tumar to be any of the Six Pens written large and ghubar any of them written small. ¹

Ghubar is often thought to derive from riqa' and/or naskh, and modern writers speak of naskh-i ghubar, a very small naskh. Its letters are usually under 3 mm and often as small as 1.3 mm. Mamluk sources give it other names — ghubar al-hulba ("dust of the fenugreek"), ghubar al-hilya ("dust of the decoration"), al-janah ("wing") and al-bata'iq ("slips of paper"), because it was used for messages — and, being so small, it left no room for a serif, as al-Qalqashandi says. ^{1 2}

Al-Athari counted it among seven derived scripts (with ash'ar, rayhan, manthur, khafif al-thuluth, hawashi and musalsal), against seven fundamental ones: thuluth, riqa', muhaqqaq, naskh, tawqi', waddah and tumar. ³