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 show an understanding of how to read and interpret signs, symbols and style in art works. The museum offers two Arabic scripts, Kufic and nasta'liq, in which you can read a style's name, its features and the story of its origin. The symbols and styles of other arts your class must bring from elsewhere. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- D2.3 demonstrate an understanding of how to read and interpret signs, symbols, and style in art works […]
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
What does a style's name tell you?
Read the name of the script and ask whether it points to a place or to a shape, and what in the text is your evidence.
What is the difference between a legend and the scholars' account?
Put each in its own column. Ask what each one explains and what it leaves unexplained.
Go deeper
A double leaf from an Abbasid Qur'an at The Met carries seven lines of bold Kufic. The record says the letters are stretched out sideways, and this may have told the reciter to hold a letter or a word longer. The vowels are red or green dots 2. Maryam Ekhtiar says Kufic is marked by clarity, generous spacing and letters that stretch along the line 3.
Think about it
The letters on this page are stretched wide, and the vowels are red or green dots. If you were reading aloud from this page, which of the two would help you more, and why?
Into the museum
- Kufic script: the angular script, and the page of the Qur'an at The Met.
- Nasta'liq script: the second script of the lesson, with the legend of its beginning and the scholars' account.
- Hijazi script: the script that Kufic replaced for copying the Qur'an.
Try this
Read about Kufic script and nasta'liq script. List three features of each as the text describes them, then decide which feature is enough to recognise a script among others.
4 Carry it further
Where this lesson leads in the museum.
5 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Kufic script have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
A script named for a city. Maryam Ekhtiar counts the rise of Kufic in the late seventh to early eighth century as a major development in the history of Islamic calligraphy. The name comes from Kufa, but it denotes a category of angular scripts with many variations, not necessarily a place of production. It is marked by clarity, generous spacing and the horizontal extension of letters along the baseline. What can a style's name tell you, and what can it hide?
In your own words: what does Nasta'liq script have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
A legend and the scholars' account. Ekhtiar reports a legend that Mir Ali Tabrizi invented nasta'liq after Ali ibn Abi Talib, traditionally regarded as the first calligrapher in Islam, appeared to him in a dream and told him to make letters like the wings of flying geese. Scholars, however, hold that it developed in the second half of the fourteenth century in Shiraz and Tabriz as a gradual merging of naskh and ta'liq. How do the legend and the scholars' account differ in what they explain?
I can now