Arabic, its script and its calligraphy

This lesson asks you to use what you read in the target language to find out about the communities where it is spoken and aspects of their cultures. The museum offers three things to read about: the language, the story told of how its script was devised, and an art of writing. The texts you read, and the communities beyond these, your class brings. ¹

Read how the records present the language, the report on its script and an art of writing. Note which statements are descriptions and which are a report from one narrator, and what you would need to confirm the second kind.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam calls the script of the Umayyad period an imperial script, marked by balance and regularity ². It says the caliph Abd al-Malik required Arabic of the scribes in central and provincial administration and ordered Arabic legends on coins, and it credits his son al-Walid with leaving an epigraphic band of unequalled importance on the walls of the Dome of the Rock ². Letters were sorted into three groups by simple geometric schemes, namely tall straight strokes, loops, and curves below the line ². The same shapes were set rigidly on stone and parchment, or rounded on papyrus for letters ³. See Islamic calligraphy.

For the earliest script, the article says evidence outside literary sources is thin: undated Qur'an fragments and letters on parchment whose authenticity is not firmly shown, an epitaph of 31 AH/652 CE in the Cairo museum, and a dam inscription of 58 AH/677-8 CE in the name of Mu'awiya near al-Ta'if ⁴. It says attempts to read the medieval writing manuals against surviving documents have often reached an impasse ⁴. It calls Arabic palaeography a young discipline with no complete manual ^{5 6 7}.

The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence reports that al-Shafi'i holds knowing Arabic obligatory on every responsible Muslim as far as his effort allows, and that the jurists require Arabic for the recitation of the Qur'an, the call to prayer and the Friday sermon ^{8 9}. Give a reason and an example from a language you know: how might a community's view of its language, like this one, shape the way learners from outside the community approach it?

• Islamic calligraphy: the Encyclopaedia of Islam's account of the Umayyad script, kufic, the rounded scripts and the great masters.
• The Devising and Spread of Arabic Script: al-Baladhuri's report, and the record's note that it is a single report from one narrator.
• Arabic in jurisprudence: the meaning of the word, and what the jurists require of Arabic in worship.

Read the records on the Arabic language and on the devising of the script. Write down the places and people through which the report says the script travelled, then draw them as a map.