Arabic calligraphy: the main scripts and their story

Short answer: Arabic calligraphy (khaṭṭ) is the art of writing Arabic beautifully with a reed pen. It grew from copying the Quran, which Muslims treat with great care, and it became the main art of mosques. The best known scripts are Kufic (angular, the oldest), Naskh (small and clear, used for most Qurans today), Thuluth (large and sweeping, on mosque walls and the Kaaba's kiswah), Diwani (the flowing Ottoman court hand), Nastaliq (the hanging Persian hand) and Maghribi (the rounded script of North Africa).

What Arabic calligraphy is

The Arabic word for calligraphy is khaṭṭ, "line", and a calligrapher is a khaṭṭāṭ. Arabic is written from right to left, and most letters join to the next, so a whole word flows as one line. That joined, stretchable shape is what lets a calligrapher lengthen a stroke, stack letters, or fit a phrase into a circle or a square.

The pen has a special place in Islam. The first revelation to the Prophet ﷺ speaks of it:

And a whole surah opens with an oath by it:

How it grew from writing the mushaf

The Arabic script grew from the script of the Nabataeans, and at the time of the Prophet ﷺ it was written without dots or vowel marks. The earliest copies of the Quran are in a slanting script that scholars call Hijazi. Some surviving leaves, such as the Birmingham folios, have been radiocarbon dated to the first decades of Islam. To learn how the written Quran was gathered, read the history of the Quran.

As Islam spread to people who did not grow up speaking Arabic, marks were added to protect the recitation. The classical accounts credit Abu al-Aswad al-Duʾali with dots that showed the vowels, and later al-Khalil ibn Ahmad (d. 786) with the small vowel signs still used today: fatha, kasra, damma, sukun and shadda. Dots to tell letters like ب ت ث apart came in the same Umayyad period. You can see all of these marks in our Arabic alphabet lessons.

In Baghdad, the vizier and calligrapher Ibn Muqla (d. 940) set rules of proportion: every letter is measured in rhombic dots made by the pen, against the height of the alif and a circle based on it. His system, called "proportioned writing", is the reason a well-written letter looks right. Ibn al-Bawwab (d. 1022) refined it, and a Quran he copied in 1000 to 1001 is kept today in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. Yaqut al-Mustaʿsimi (d. 1298) gave the classic "six pens": Thuluth, Naskh, Muhaqqaq, Rayhani, Tawqiʿ and Riqaʿ. Later, in Istanbul, Sheikh Hamdullah (d. 1520) and Hafiz Osman (d. 1698) shaped the Naskh and Thuluth that are still taught.

The main scripts

Here is each major script, what it looks like and where you will see it.

Kufic

Kufic is named after Kufa in Iraq. It is the oldest of the classic styles: angular, with long flat strokes along the line and sharp corners. Early Qurans on parchment were written in it, often in a wide, landscape page with only a few lines. It was carved in stone and set in mosaic, including the inscription inside the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (691 to 692). Later forms added leaves and knots (floriated Kufic), and square Kufic builds words from straight lines on a grid, so it can be laid in bricks and tiles. You will see it on the walls of mosques in Iran and Central Asia.

Naskh

Naskh means "copying". It is the clear, rounded book hand, and it is the script you are most likely reading when you open a Quran. The widely used Madinah Mushaf, written by the Syrian calligrapher Uthman Taha and printed in Madinah since the 1980s, is in Naskh. Almost every Arabic font on phones and computers is based on it. This is Naskh, set in the two typefaces this site uses:

Thuluth

Thuluth, "one third", is the grand display script. Its letters are tall, its tails sweep in long curves, and words are often stacked on top of each other and woven together. It is the script of mosque domes and doorways, of surah titles, and of the verses embroidered in gold thread on the kiswah of the Kaaba. A calligrapher is often judged by his Thuluth.

Diwani

Diwani is the Ottoman court hand, named after the diwan, the imperial chancery. It reached its height in the sixteenth century. Its letters slope, overlap and pack tightly into a line, which made royal decrees beautiful and, it is often said, hard to alter. Today it is loved for wedding invitations and decorative panels. A fuller ornamental form is called jali diwani.

Nastaliq

Nastaliq grew in Iran in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and Mir Ali Tabrizi is traditionally named as its master. Each word seems to hang and slope down from right to left, with short verticals and long, light horizontal strokes. It became the main script for Persian and for Urdu, where it is still used in books, newspapers and poetry. Persian writers called it the bride of scripts.

Maghribi

Maghribi is the script of North Africa and al-Andalus. It grew from early Kufic in its own direction: rounded, with deep bowls below the line and an open, even rhythm. It also dots two letters differently: fa (ف) has its dot below, and qaf (ق) has a single dot above. Qurans in the Warsh reading are still copied and printed in Maghribi in Morocco and nearby countries.

Ruqʿah

Ruqʿah is the plain, quick script most Arabs use when they write by hand. It drops most flourishes and sits close to the line, so it is fast to write and easy to read. It was standardised under the Ottomans in the nineteenth century.

The tools of the calligrapher

• The qalam: a pen cut from dried reed or bamboo. The calligrapher cuts the nib at an angle with a knife, and the width of that nib sets the size of every letter.
• Ink (midad): traditionally made from soot, gum arabic and water, kept in an inkwell with a little silk floss so the pen picks up an even amount.
• Paper: polished smooth so the reed glides, often coated and burnished by hand.
• The ijazah: a student practises by copying a master's models for years. When the master is satisfied, he gives a licence to sign one's work, much like the ijazah given in Quran recitation.

Why mosques are full of writing

Mosques are not decorated with images of living beings, so the written word, above all the words of the Quran, became their main ornament. A verse over a door, the names of Allah and the Prophet ﷺ in great roundels, Ayat al-Kursi around a dome: the decoration also reminds the one praying of what it says. Calligraphy sits alongside geometric patterns and plant scrolls, and together they make what most people picture as Islamic art.

How to start

Every calligrapher starts with the letters. Learn the 28 letters and their four shapes first, on our alphabet page, which also has a printable chart. Then pick one script, usually Ruqʿah for everyday writing or Naskh for the Quran, buy a few reed or bamboo pens, and copy one letter many times, checking its size against the dots. A local teacher, or an online course with a teacher who checks your work, will take you much further than practising alone. To see a name written out, try your name in Arabic.

FAQ

Sources

1. Quran 96:3 to 5 and 68:1, Arabic from the Uthmani text, translation by Sahih International.
2. Sheila S. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy (Edinburgh University Press, 2006), on the scripts, Ibn Muqla, Ibn al-Bawwab and Yaqut.
3. Chester Beatty Library, Dublin: the Quran of Ibn al-Bawwab (391 AH / 1000 to 1001 CE).
4. University of Birmingham (2015), radiocarbon dating of the Birmingham Quran folios.
5. King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Quran, Madinah: the Madinah Mushaf, written by Uthman Taha.

Photos by Abdulloh Fauzan, Le Mucky, Tolga Ahmetler and Paul Bill on Unsplash.