How to Read Islamic Calligraphy

How to Read Islamic Calligraphy is a book by Maryam D. Ekhtiar in the "How to Read" series of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, printed in 2018 and distributed by Yale University Press. ^{3 4} It uses works from the Museum's collection to explore the place of the written word in the Islamic world, introducing the major script types and the sacred and secular settings in which each was used, from illuminated Qur'ans to glass, metalwork and textiles. ¹

An introduction on Islamic calligraphy, calligraphers and their tools is followed by three chapters: "The Arabic Script: Origins, Development, and Variations", "Embellishing the Word of God: Arabic and the Art of the Qur'an", and "Ornament and Abstraction: The Triumph of Form over Content", then chapter sources, a bibliography, a glossary and a table of dynasties. ² Each chapter has an essay followed by numbered, annotated catalogue entries. ⁵

The first chapter follows kufic, the new style, and the theory of proportional script and the six pens of Ibn Muqla, Ibn al-Bawwab and Yaqut al-Musta'simi, then the chancery scripts — ta'liq, shikasta, divani and the tughra — and the regional scripts maghribi and nasta'liq. ⁶ The second traces the copying of the Qur'an from hijazi to its divisions and ornament. ⁷ The third covers siyah mashq and calligraphy in modern art. ^{8 9}