Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to understand the variety of ways in which art works, including applied and commercial ones, can be presented to reach different audiences and for different purposes. The museum offers one case from the Islamic world: the forms and places in which a calligrapher's work reached the people who saw it. Choosing how to present your own work is for your class. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- A3.3 demonstrate an understanding of the variety of ways in which art works, including applied and commercial art works, can be presented to reach a variety of audiences […] and for different purposes […]
2 The lesson
Who is the audience, and where do they meet the work?
List the forms and places the record names. For each, ask who would see the work there, and for what purpose, and what you would add to or leave out of a piece meant for it.
What changes when the place changes?
Compare a piece kept in a book or a case with one that runs round a wall or a dome. Which is seen by more people, and how might that affect what is written?
Go deeper
Some of a calligrapher's work was written on walls, not on paper. Architectural inscriptions were written in jali thuluth, on marble and tile, in mihrabs, on the bands around walls and on the drums of domes 2. The earliest famous example the entry names is an inscription of 883 AH (1478 CE) by Ali ibn Yahya al-Sufi on the Bab-i Humayun. It counts Sami Efendi's set of inscriptions for the Mihrimah mosque at Edirnekapı among the most complete 2. Other pieces were made for the hand: a single-sided sheet, an album of mounted decorated pieces, a scroll kept in a leather case, a framed panel, or a hilye 2.
How do we know?
Not every piece names its maker. The record says many calligraphers left work unsigned out of modesty, so a master is recognised by his manner and the shape of his letters 2. One example is the unsigned inscription of the Bayezid Public Library, which the entry on Hasan Riza Efendi counts among his jali ta'liq work and says was judged less successful than his naskh 3. Some pieces have not survived: the hilye that Sultan Reşad presented to the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne has been lost since 1995 3.
Think about it
Many calligraphers left their work unsigned out of modesty. For a piece that thousands will see on a wall, should the maker's name be on it, and what is the strongest objection to your answer?
Into the museum
- The calligrapher: the forms of the work and the places where calligraphy was taught.
- Hasan Riza Efendi: his Qur'an copies, his large hilye panels and his teaching.
- Sami Efendi: the tughra and the jali inscriptions he is known for.
Try this
Read the record of Calligrapher. Draw a table with two columns: the form or place, and who sees the work there. Add a row for a piece of your own.
3 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Calligrapher (khattat) have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Where a calligrapher's work was shown. The main output of the calligrapher is books, above all the mushaf, but the entry also lists the single-sided sheet, the album of decorated pieces, the scroll kept in a leather case, and the framed panel popular in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Architectural inscriptions were written on marble and tile, in mihrabs, on the bands around walls and the drums of domes. Which setting would suit your work?
I can now