Shikasta script

Shikasta, "broken", originated and developed in Iran after the sixteenth century, according to Maryam Ekhtiar. Like ta'liq it contains unconventional ligatures between letters that do not traditionally connect, and so suited speed: a skilled calligrapher could complete a word in one stroke without lifting the pen. She calls it the Persian equivalent of shorthand, prizing irregularity and movement over horizontal regularity, with undulating words and lines set at various angles. ^{1 2} With shikasta-nasta'liq, the tughra and divani, it is among the scripts that arose in Iran and Ottoman Turkey for administration, some of them purposely hard to read so that a message reached only a few. ¹

The Met holds a letter in shikasta dated 1176 AH/1763 CE by Abd al-Majid Taliqani, one of its great masters: eight lines, six written diagonally and two horizontally at the bottom, with words sloping up and stacking at line ends. ⁴ It also holds an edict of Muhammad Shah Qajar (r. 1834–48) in shikasta-nasta'liq, a script used only for edicts and letters; each line sits in a cloud-shaped cartouche on gold leaf, and the last words of each line stack and slope upward as in divani. ³