Hafiz Ibrahim ibn Nurullah (calligrapher of Lucknow)

حافظ إبراهيم بن نور الله (خطاط لكهنؤ)

Lucknow (Awadh)

Nasta'liq calligrapher of Lucknow, son and pupil of Hafiz Nurullah, who completed his father's Gulistan so closely that critics could hardly tell the hands apart, and introduced elliptical bowls into nasta'liq 1.

Depth

At a glance

Roles
calligrapher
Era
The Colonial Era
Region
South Asia

Arts of the book

Summary

Hafiz Ibrahim, son of the calligrapher Hafiz Nurullah, completed his training with his father and became an accomplished master of nasta'liq. His skill showed when he wrote the eighth chapter of the Gulistan of Sa'di that his father had left unfinished at his death, matching his father's pen so closely that critics found it hard to tell them apart. 2 1

Elliptical bowls

Tarikh-i Khatt o Khattatin says that he modified, by his own taste, the shape of the bowls in nasta'liq letters: until then only one kind, the round "solar" bowl, was in use, and he introduced for the first time elliptical bowls tilting slightly to the left, which critics admired and most calligraphers adopted. His best-known pupils were Munshi Hadi Ali Khan and Munshi Nisaram Kashmiri. 1

Connections

Explore the connections

Child of
Hafiz Nurullah (calligrapher of Lucknow)
Studied under
Hafiz Nurullah (calligrapher of Lucknow)
Lived in
Lucknow (Awadh)
Exemplifies
Nasta'liq script

People and things also explored

Nasta'liq script· Hafiz Nurullah (calligrapher of Lucknow)· Abd al-Rahim Khwarazmi, known as Anisi· Sultan Ali Mashhadi· Tarikh-i Khatt o Khattatin (History of Script and Calligraphers)· Abbasid tin-glazed ware· Ahmadnagar painting· Proportional script and the six pens (al-aqlam al-sitta)

Sources

  1. Syed Muhammad Salim, Tarikh-i Khatt o Khattatin, ed. Syed Aziz al-Rahman (Karachi: Zawwar Academy Publications, 1422/2001) , p. 265
  2. Syed Muhammad Salim, Tarikh-i Khatt o Khattatin, ed. Syed Aziz al-Rahman (Karachi: Zawwar Academy Publications, 1422/2001) , p. 264
Cite this page

islam.museum contributors. “Hafiz Ibrahim ibn Nurullah (calligrapher of Lucknow)”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/hafiz-ibrahim-lucknowi/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-11-04.

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Related

Nasta'liq script

An elegant Persian script that grew in Shiraz and Tabriz in the second half of the fourteenth century from a merging of naskh and ta'liq; called the "bride of scripts", it became the script of Persian poetry and spread to Mughal India and Ottoman Turkey.