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 signs, symbols and style in art works. The museum links records on the Arabic script and its early styles, and on Islamic calligraphy; your class will add the signs and styles of other art works. 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 The lesson
What is a letter telling you?
Look at the expectation: it asks you to read signs and style. Choose a line of writing and ask what its letters stand for, then ask what its style adds to the words.
Go deeper
Who wrote, and for what, shaped how they wrote. The Encyclopaedia of Islam says that government scribes, calligraphers working for luxury patrons, pious copyists of the Qur'an, scholars taking dictation, merchants writing letters and makers of amulets did not all write alike, and that how legible a text had to be shaped its letters. It cites decorative scripts on objects, such as figural letters on inlaid metalwork and rigid angular figures on astrolabes. It also says that leading calligraphers often drew models on paper for inscriptions made in other materials, so it rejects a sharp divide between inscriptional and manuscript scripts 2. See Islamic calligraphy.
Why they did it
The records print no sentence in which Yaqut al-Musta'simi says why he fixed the six principal hands. They show where he worked and who patronised him. Sheila Blair says he became a secretary in the Abbasid chancery, and that after Hulegu took Baghdad in 1258 his career flourished under Mongol patronage. He taught calligraphy to the sons of Ata-Malik al-Juvayni, who governed the city for the Mongols 3. The TDV encyclopaedia says that in the seventh century AH he fixed the six principal hands, and that his great change was to cut the reed pen at a slant 4.
Often misunderstood
The older view holds that Kufic and naskhi were two originally separate scripts, one angular and one flexible. The Encyclopaedia of Islam rejects this and stresses the basic unity of early Arabic writing. It still places in the Umayyad period the start of the two branches that later diverged 5.
Think about it
Kufic and naskh look very different on the page, yet the encyclopaedia stresses the unity of early Arabic writing. What can you tell about a script's family just by looking at its letters, what can you not, and why?
Into the museum
- Islamic calligraphy: the Encyclopaedia of Islam on the early scripts, the rounded hands and the great masters.
- The Arabic script: the accounts of Ibn al-Nadim and the order of the early scripts.
- Yaqut al-Musta'simi: his life according to Sheila Blair, and the difficulty of knowing his hand.
- The calligrapher: the six principal hands and the masters who set them.
Try this
Read Islamic calligraphy and The Arabic script. Pick two scripts the records name and write one sentence on each describing what makes its shape different.
3 Carry it further
Where this lesson leads in the museum.
4 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does The Arabic script have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Meccan, Medinan, Basran, Kufic. In the Fihrist, Ibn al-Nadim surveys the accounts of the beginning of Arabic writing. He says the first of the Arabic scripts was the Meccan, then the Medinan, then the Basran, then the Kufic, and he notes in the Meccan and Medinan an inclination of the alifs toward the right hand. The record adds that he gives several accounts without preference. How could you tell one style of writing from another?
In your own words: what does Islamic calligraphy have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Beautiful writing. Islamic calligraphy is the art of writing and shaping the Arabic letter beautifully. Its scripts include Kufic, Naskh, Thuluth and Diwani. What does the style of a piece of writing tell you beyond the words it spells?
I can now
Notes
- 1. Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum: The Arts
- 2. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2008), 13 volumes, vol. 4 p. 1159
- 3. Sheila S. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), p. 282
- 4. HAT — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (M. Uğur Derman), p.427-437
- 5. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2008), 13 volumes, vol. 4 p. 1165