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 read and interpret style in art works, and to describe some of the ways art forms and styles reflect the beliefs and traditions of the cultures that made them. The museum offers two Arabic scripts, Kufic and nasta'liq, with what the records say of where each was used. Works from other cultures your class must bring. 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 […]
- D3.1 identify and describe some of the ways in which visual art forms and styles reflect the beliefs and traditions of a variety of cultures and civilizations […]
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
How can you tell a style at a glance?
Look first for the features you can see: the angles, the spacing, the way letters stretch along the line. Then ask what the writing was for and who read it. A style often carries both its look and its purpose.
Go deeper
The Met holds two pages from the Shah Jahan Album, which Jahangir began and Shah Jahan continued. One is by Sultan Ali Mashhadi, with love verses rich in Sufi metaphor written in diagonal lines. The other is a quatrain by Ibn Yamin, signed by Mir Ali Haravi. Both were reset in seventeenth-century illuminated margins, and the second has birds and animals painted by Nanha 2 3 4. Maryam Ekhtiar calls nasta'liq the favoured script of Persian poetry 5. Kufic, by contrast, is marked by clarity, generous spacing and the horizontal extension of letters along the baseline 6.
Why they did it
The records print no sentence in which Sultan Ali Mashhadi says why he wrote. They show where he worked and what he left. Sheila Blair says he spent most of his long career in Herat working for the great bibliophiles of the Timurid court, Sultan Husayn Bayqara and Ali Shir Nava'i. In 1514, after retiring to Mashhad, he wrote a verse treatise on calligraphy. Blair says it contains practical and autobiographical information and shows the close association between religious discipline and the practice of calligraphy 7.
Two views
How did nasta'liq begin? Ekhtiar reports a legend that Mir Ali Tabrizi invented it after Ali ibn Abi Talib (may God be pleased with him) appeared to him in a dream and told him to make letters like the wings of flying geese. Scholars, she says, hold that it developed in the second half of the fourteenth century in Shiraz and Tabriz, from a gradual merging of naskh and ta'liq 5. The Encyclopaedia of Islam says tradition credits Mir Ali Tabrizi, but that surviving manuscripts show nasta'liq existed by the seventh century AH 8.
Think about it
Kufic is marked by clarity, generous spacing and letters stretched along the line. Nasta'liq joins the evenness of naskh to the sweeping strokes of ta'liq. Using only those features, which script would you choose for a poem on a page and which for writing seen from far away, and why?
Into the museum
- Kufic script: the angular script, its features and its Qur'ans.
- Nasta'liq script: the line of masters from Mir Ali Tabrizi to Mir Imad.
- Sultan Ali Mashhadi: his years in Herat and his treatise.
- Islamic calligraphy: the Encyclopaedia of Islam on the Persian hands.
Try this
Read about Kufic script and then about nasta'liq. For each, list the features the record names and one use the record gives, then say which feature you could spot first.
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
Kufic: an angular script. Kufic is a family of angular Arabic scripts following precise rules for calibrated letters with geometric proportion. The name comes from Kufa but denotes a category, not necessarily a place of production. Maryam Ekhtiar counts its rise in the late seventh to early eighth century as a major development; it was the preferred script for copying the Qur'an until about the mid- to late tenth century. What does the shape of a script tell its reader?
In your own words: what does Nasta'liq script have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Nasta'liq: a lyrical script for poetry. For Maryam Ekhtiar, nasta'liq is an elegant, lyrical script that originated in Iran and Central Asia and spread east to Mughal India and west to Ottoman Turkey. As the favoured script of Persian poetry, called the "bride of scripts", it was especially popular in Iran from the fifteenth century. Scholars hold that it developed in Shiraz and Tabriz as a gradual merging of naskh and ta'liq. What might a poem gain from a lyrical script?
I can now
Notes
- 1. Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum: The Arts
- 2. Maryam D. Ekhtiar, How to Read Islamic Calligraphy (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018), p. 53
- 3. Maryam D. Ekhtiar, How to Read Islamic Calligraphy (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018), p. 54
- 4. Maryam D. Ekhtiar, How to Read Islamic Calligraphy (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018), p. 56
- 5. Maryam D. Ekhtiar, How to Read Islamic Calligraphy (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018), p. 27
- 6. Maryam D. Ekhtiar, How to Read Islamic Calligraphy (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018), p. 23
- 7. Sheila S. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), p. 320
- 8. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2008), 13 volumes, vol. 4 p. 1168