Ta'liq script

Ta'liq, meaning "hanging" or "suspended", evolved, Maryam Ekhtiar writes, over a long period in Iran from the late thirteenth century, later spreading to Ottoman Turkey and the Indian subcontinent. ¹

It shares with some proportional scripts, such as riqa' and tawqi', exaggerated descending loops, connected letters and ligatures, and words sloping upward at the end of a line. It was used mainly for official decrees, documents, deeds, endowments, diplomatic letters and ziyaratnamas — letters issued by shrines to pilgrims — but seldom for poetry or religious texts. ¹ Its fusion with naskh produced nasta'liq. ²

The Met holds a letter in ta'liq dated 911 AH/1505–6 CE, signed by Darvish Abdullah Munshi, a known secretary of the early Safavid period, in which the sender longs for Shiraz, left some seventeen years before, amid prayers and a Persian quatrain. The author thinks it was a gift for a friend, and that its reader had to turn the page several times to read it. ³