Hafiz Nurullah (calligrapher of Lucknow)

Tarikh-i Khatt o Khattatin says calligraphy flourished in Lucknow under Nawab Asaf al-Dawla, when scholars and artists from declining Delhi took refuge there, and that the most famous calligraphers of the period were Hafiz Nurullah and Qazi Ni'matullah Lahori. Hafiz Nurullah was an accomplished master who learned from Abd al-Rahim "Farman-navis", a pupil of Aqa Abd al-Rashid Daylami; those who make him a direct pupil of Abd al-Rashid are mistaken. On reaching Lucknow he was honoured by the nawab and made head of the office of correspondence. ^{2 1}

Nawab Sa'adat Ali Khan asked him to copy Sa'di's Gulistan. The great calligraphers of the day wrote qit'as and wasli sheets and thought copying whole books beneath them, but he could not refuse, and asked for eighty reams of paper, a hundred pen-knives and thousands of reeds; the astonished nawab supplied them. He died after writing seven chapters, and his son Hafiz Ibrahim completed the eighth and presented it to the nawab. ^{1 3}

The book says his fame spread in his lifetime: ordinary wasli sheets by him sold for an ashrafi each. Ghulam Muhammad Haft-Qalami, who visited Lucknow and met him, praised his courtesy and humility, said his manner resembled Aqa Rashid's, and noted that he was then copying the famous elegy Haft Band-i Kashi for Nawab Asaf al-Dawla. His pupils included his son Hafiz Ibrahim, Wajih al-Din, Muhammad Abbas and others; specimens of his hand survive as panels on the friezes of the Asafi Mosque and above its mihrab. ¹