Sample Caliographic styles

The Art of Islamic Calligraphy


The autograph copy of Adab al-mashq now preserved in the Punjab University Library Lahore Pakistan was once the property of the royal library in Bijapur. The `Adil Shahi kings were noted connoisseurs of calligraphy, and had enticed talented calligraphers to the Deccan from the Safavi court in Iran. Baba Shah undoubtedly would have approved of the presence of his books in Bijapur, since he maintained that the finest and most expensive paper for calligraphy, "which the craftsman calls a rose without a thorn," was made in the `Adil Shahi kingdom. It is worth noticing in passing that Baba Shah found another Deccan paper, the Sultani of Daulatabad, to be next best after the `Adil Shahi; the ancient paper factory at Kaghazipura, between Daulatabad and Khuldabad, has maintained a tradition of producing fine paper from the Tughluq period to the present day. From Bijapur Baba Shah's book fell into the hands of Awrangzib when he conquered the city in 1097/1686 and took over the royal library.

An eloquent description of the spiritual basis of Islamic calligraphy is contained in an old and beautiful Persian manuscript in the Punjab University Library, Lahore. Entitled Adab al-mashq ("Manners of Practice"), this book is an autograph written in the seventeenth century by the Iranian calligrapher Baba Shah Isfahani. Despite stains and wear, it is still clear and legible, and the first two pages have fine gold illumination. Mawlavi Muhammad Shafi` marhum edited this work and published it, with a valuable introduction in Urdu, in the first volume of his collected papers. The present article is a discussion of Baba Shah's explanation of the secrets of his art. Adab al-mashq is an unusually complete presentation of the aesthetic and religious basis of Islamic calligraphy, and it reveals in particular a visionary method of concentration strongly influenced by Sufism. Baba Shah's treatise also comprehensively illustrates the stages in the development of a master calligrapher. It is no exaggeration to say that Adab al-mashq is one of the most revealing documents of the later development of Islamic calligraphy.

Baba Shah Isfahani was famed as a master of the nasta`liq style of calligraphy, the beautiful Persian hand developed primarily at the Timuri and Uzbek ateliers in Herat and Bukhara. A modern authority on calligraphy has remarked, "By general agreement of historians contemporary with and later than Baba Shah, no calligrapher had reached his level in writing nasta`liq before Baba Shah appeared. He was adorned with an elegant style and a sweet hand, and even the great calligraphers recognized his mastery."

Adab al-mashq belongs to a special class of writings by calligraphers about calligraphy, but it stands out by its relatively greater emphasis on the internal aspects of the art. Even philosophers and aestheticians seem generally to have placed more importance on the formal aspects of calligraphy than on the act of concentration. Baba Shah's originality in this respect is evident from his distinction, discussed below, between the acquired and the unacquired "parts of script"; the acquired aspects begin with stylistic features, but culminate in intellectual mastery, purification of the heart, and intense love. Baba Shah deliberately distinguishes these qualities from the formal categories of the classical Arab calligraphers. We can also get an idea of Baba Shah's originality by comparing his work to Sultan `Ali Mashhadi's poem on calligraphy, which Baba Shah admired and used as a model for Adab al-mashq, in which he quotes or refers to Sultan `Ali by name over a dozen times. Sultan `Ali's poem, in some two hundred-odd verses, begins with a brief invocation and some autobiographical observations, and proceeds to discuss various aspects of calligraphy, mostly regarding preparation of materials (pen, ink, paper) and stylistic formation of letters. Sultan `Ali only makes a few comments on the development of inner concentration, and on the nature of calligraphic practice (mashq), perhaps feeling that these subjects should be reserved for oral teaching. By comparison, Baba Shah's extensive commentary on the ethics, internal discipline, and levels of mastery of calligraphy amounts to a major disclosure of the master-calligrapher's practice.

Here we may review the contents of the treatise. As in the masnavi poem mentioned above, Baba Shah apparently wrote Adab al-mashq with the beginning calligrapher in mind. The author says in his introduction that in his youth he, "in faqir-i haqir-i fani, Baba Shah-i Isfahani," once happened to be studying the nasta`liq script. "In searching for the light of the true beloved's beauty, he trod the path of the representation of script." Then he happened to see some verses in the superb hand of Sultan `Ali Mashhadi, perhaps the calligraphic treatise mentioned above; the formation of the letters in this sample illustrated the nasta`liq style in a most enchanting way. "His alifs were like the tall sapling-figures that give peace to the soul, and the eye of his sad was like the eye of the youthful sweethearts. His dal and lam were like the tresses of heart-ravishing beloveds, and the circles of the nun were like the eyebrows of devastating beauties. Every one of his dots was like the pupil of the darkeyed, and every one of his strokes was like the water of life in the darkness of running ink." In short, seeing these lines inspired Baba Shah with the desire to achieve perfection in the art of writing, so he apprenticed himself to masters of the profession. Now in writing this treatise he wished to communicate the fruit of his experience and practice, so that the beginner should be made happy and pray for the welfare of the author. The book comprises six parts: first, on avoiding blameworthy qualities; second, on the parts of script; third, on the excellence and duties of copying; fourth, on cutting the pen; fifth, on the manner of composition; and sixth, on the preparation of paper.

Although the technical and stylistic parts of Adab al-mashq are certainly valuable, we wish to concentrate here on Baba Shah's expression of the spiritual aspects of calligraphy. His concern for the symbolic aspect of the penman's art is evident from the opening invocations of the treatise. Here the faculty of reading and writing is God's gift to humanity through Adam. The ability to comprehend the divine message is not merely intellectual, however, but involves the heart as well. The merest reflection of God's writing on Adam's heart has inspired the world's greatest lovers:

Recollection and praise be to the lord who created the simples and compounds of the world and chose Adam out of all beings for the nobility of his capacity for knowledge, and who inscribed some letters with the pen of might on the page of his fortunate mind. The gleam of the sparks of that writing's light cast a glimmer of the sun of Joseph's beauty into the heart of Zulaykha, and made her famous throughout the world as a lover. And a scent from the bower of that writing found its way from the rose of Layla's face and was scented by Majnun, so that he fled in amazement to the desert of disgrace. And a letter from the notebook of that writing's beauty came from Shirin's lip to the ear of Farhad, who tore the clothes of life in the mountains of madness.

Baba Shah reserves a special praise for the Prophet Muhammad, whom he describes in traditional Islamic terms as the meaning of the book of existence, and as the source of the cosmological principles known as the Tablet and the Pen; thus the Prophet is that intelligible essence without which the world would have no meaning or existence:

And blessings without end be on the luminous shrine of the Prophet, for if [he,] the object of the appearance of the book of existence, had not come from the hidden world to the world of appearance, the Tablet and the Pen would not have arisen, and were it not for [him,] the reason for the production of the parts of the script of that book, neither the form of length in heaven nor the form of width on earth would have appeared.
Baba Shah reminds us of the calligraphic art with all the terms he uses to describe the intelligibility of the world; the Pen and Tablet are the metaphysical principles to which Islamic theologians ascribe the working out of creation and destiny, while the "length (dur)" and "width (sath)" of letters are two of the twelve "parts of the script" mentioned later in the text, which he says "must be copied from the script of the master."

The treatise's brief first section summarizes the ethical aspect of calligraphic practice. Baba Shah's main point is practical; the practice of the calligraphic art requires moderation and balance in the soul, without which the expression of the divine beauty with pen and ink becomes flawed.

"Authority" is that condition in which the scribe becomes enraptured from its display when it is found in writing, and he has done with egotism. When the scribe's pen possesses "authority," heedless of the pleasures of the world, he turns his heart toward practice (mashq), and the luminous sparks of the real beloved's beauty appear in his vision.
(Verse:) Everywhere the sparks of the beloved's face are found.

"Imaginative practice" is when the scribe writes not according to a model but with reference to the power of his own nature, and he writes every composition that appears [to him]. The benefit of this practice is that it makes the scribe a master of spontaneity (tasarruf), and when this practice mostly takes the place of pen practice, one's writing becomes non-reflective (bi-maghz). If someone makes a habit of pen practice and avoids imaginative practice, he lacks spontaneity, and is like the reader who grasps the writing of others but himself cannot write. Spontaneity is not permitted in pen practice.

Through the discipline of total adherence to the models of tradition, and the spiritual influence of the great masters, the student moves towards the pinnacle of the calligraphic art. Here, the meditative contemplation of the divine beauty overflows into the intricate forms of ink on paper. Baba Shah ends his treatise abruptly after giving three more technical sections on cutting the pen, composition of letters, and the preparation of paper, so any conclusion about the inner aspect of calligraphy is now up to us to formulate.

Baba Shah's whole intent in describing calligraphic concentration is to focus on the visual contemplation of God's beauty as conveyed by the intricate shapes of black letters on white paper, and the aesthetic basis for this contemplation appears to be closely bound up with Sufi mysticism. It is well known that Islamic calligraphy has been closely involved with the development of Sufism, and that many calligraphers were trained as disciples by Sufi masters. Baba Shah himself was known for his inclination toward mysticism, and it has even been suggested that he belonged to an esoteric order known as the Nuqtaviyya, a little-known group that was strongly influenced by letter-mysticism. With this background in mind, we can review some of the religious sources of Islamic calligraphy, and then recapitulate the main features of Baba Shah's treatise, in order to determine the points of impact of Sufism on his vision of the calligraphic art.


Sample Caliographic styles Cover of the Quran and inner page

The religious aspect of Islamic calligraphy springs from the Qur'an, the word of God as expressed to Muhammad, which of necessity had a strongly visual component. The Qur'an itself frequently alludes to the pen and writing, generally in contexts that emphasize writing as a medium for conveying the divine message to humanity. The earliest Qur'ans exhibit large letters on parchment in the austere yet graceful Kufic style, so that the relatively small number of words on the page appear more like a visual icon than an ordinary book. Visualization of the actual form of the Arabic script in the Qur'an seems to have played an important role in Muslim religious experience from an early date, centered as it was on recitation from the holy book. The controversies that raged over whether the Qur'an was co-eternal with God are an indication of the extraordinary position that the scripture assumed for the Muslim community. As Anthony Welch has written, "The written form of the Qur'an is the visual equivalent of the eternal Qur'an and is humanity's perceptual glimpse of the divine." Visual concentration on the Qur'an as the word of God was the closest possible approximation on earth to seeing God face to face.



Al Quran and inner page - 1485 CE

The mystical aesthetic of Islamic calligraphy derives in particular from what Schimmel calls "the tendency to equate human figures to letters," a symbolism that links the human to the divine through the medium of writing. Regardless of its precise origin, the depiction of the human face or form as comprised of letters is a fascinating artistic phenomenon. The cabalistic faces comprised of the names of `Ali, Muhammad, and Allah testify to a fundamental conviction that the human being is essentially composed of spiritual elements. This seemingly abstract concept is a graphic representation of an intuition of the intelligibility of the world. Everything is made of the word. The equation of the human face with the Qur'an itself is both a scriptural understanding of human nature and a calligraphic illustration of the hadith of the Prophet, "Do not disfigure the face, for God created Adam in his own image (la taqabbahu al-wajha, fa-inna allaha khalaqa adama `ala suratihi)." Not only can the human face be understood as scripture, but also the form of the sacred writing is a manifestation of the divine essence. To save a symbol like the "face of God (wajh allah)" from anthropomorphism, the Sufis understood it symbolically as the theophany of positive divine attributes that sustains the world in existence. In this symbolic configuration, the "face" of the divine being's positive or gracious attributes is framed by the black tresses of the negative or wrathful attributes, a contrast that immediately suggests white paper covered with black letters. When punning poets constantly compare the writing (khatt) on the page with the dark down (khatt) on the white cheek of the beloved, they surely intend this metaphor of the book as the manifestation of the divine countenance. But metaphor is not anthropomorphism. The Sufis clearly understand the image of the written divine face to mean both the intelligible factor in human nature and the revelation of the divine nature. Thus the modern Sufi Shah Zawqi writes, "the divine face . . . comprehends the totality of manifestations of the essence and unlimited knowledge, gnosis, and secrets." Like gazing at beautiful human faces, contemplating the beautiful faces of calligraphy is a metaphorical love (`ishq-i majazi) that can lead to real love (`ishq-i haqiqi).

4. The confusion over Baba Shah's dates has been noticed already by Annemarie Schimmel,

Calligraphy and Islamic Culture (New York: New York University Press, 1984), p. 174, n. 99.