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"THE EYE IS FAVORED for SEEING the WRITING's FORM": on the SENSUAL and the SENSUOUS in ISLAMIC CALLIGRAPHY Author(S): DAVID J

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"THE EYE IS FAVORED FOR SEEING THE WRITING'S FORM": ON THE SENSUAL AND THE SENSUOUS IN ISLAMIC CALLIGRAPHY Author(s): DAVID J. ROXBURGH Source: Muqarnas, Vol. 25, FRONTIERS OF ISLAMIC ART AND ARCHITECTURE: ESSAYS IN CELEBRATION OF OLEG GRABAR'S EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY (2008), pp. 275-298 Published by: BRILL Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27811125 . Accessed: 22/09/2014 13:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. BRILL is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Muqarnas. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Mon, 22 Sep 2014 13:46:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DAVID J. ROXBURGH "THE EYE IS FAVORED FOR SEEING THE WRITING'S FORM": ON THE SENSUAL AND THE SENSUOUS IN ISLAMIC CALLIGRAPHY is to a carrier of Writing is calliphoric, that say beauty, in figs. 1 and 2) attributed to Firuz Mirza Nusrat al and it becomes terpnopoietic by bringing pleasure... Dawla I is an exception that makes the kinetic and Difficulties as soon as one tries to under arise, however, temporal dimensions of the calligrapher's work evi stand what is or even artistic in actually beauty quality dent, available to the eye. The study belongs to a writing. category of works termed siy?h mashq, literally "black Oleg Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament1 writing," in Persian (Arabic musawwada; Turkish kara lama) .4These were ostensibly made as practice exercises The intense noise the writ screeching generated by over the course of a career but or as calligrapher's quickly ing instrument, whether reed bamboo, it flexes developed identifiable, formalized aesthetic features, across the surface of the paper sheet is an experience including superimposed or staggered letters; a text of Islamic calligraphy unknown tomost of us.2 Equally written in opposing directions so as to require differ surprising is the slow movement of the pen by which ent, often multiple, angles of viewing; and the privi the calligrapher generates individual letter shapes leging of visual affect over legibility. Some employed through fastidious, controlled movements, especially writing of different sizes, opposing small and large when writing at larger sizes: it is then that the size script to foreground the value of scale. Though siy?h of the writing tool and the properties of materials? mashqs seem to be about modest practice, they attained such as the of the ink and the of the viscosity expanse a level of The attributed to Firuz on virtuosity.5 example writing surface?place still greater strain the cal Mirza not only reveals process through materiality? Traces of the successive ligrapher's physical capacities. as that was made in time?but also something sug movements of ink are on applying rarely registered another mode of the of are gests temporality by repetition the paper support. When these movements visible words.6 Words are laid over each other, and repeated as a lines of to the eye, they appear series of graded or letter shapes (graphemes) word fragments (combi ink akin to the contours made in sand by the physical nations of two graphemes) are slightlyoffset, suggesting as one sees in two forces of water, squared-off ebbing their translation across the sheet of paper as a rapid blocks their adjacent letter's phonetic values denoting sequence of m?/m?/m?n [grief] in can repetition (e.g., 1). A record of physical movement also be (fig. the third line at top right, or the doubling of the nun visible in the long strokes?principally in lengthened same after j? in the word j?n [soul] at the end of the or letters and the ink becomes joined ligatures?where line). less dense in the passage from right to left (figs. 1 and Broad characterizations of Islamic calligraphy, when 2). the repeatedly returned pen Though calligrapher address formal aspects of writing?and this is curi in they to inkwell to replenish the nib with ink the process ously rare?typically focus exclusively on the attribute of a few he did this in a copying lines, generally way the consummate con of skill, asserting calligrapher's that left little or no indication of the pen's to-ings trol and closely measured steps.7 In the most recent and instead a seamless fro-ings, favoring production assessment to in we are offered a com means appear print, signaled by the absence of certain of encoding parison between Islamic and East Asian calligraphic expressiveness.3 traditions to drive home this a point: Perhaps following the dictates of its genre, spec imen of calligraphy (fig. 3, already shown in detail This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Mon, 22 Sep 2014 13:46:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 276 DAVID J. ROXBURGH a in Fig. 1. Detail of practice exercise (siy?h mashq) nastallq, attributed to Firuz Mirza Nusrat al-Dawla, Iran, ca. 1835-53. on cm Ink, opaque pigment, and gold paper, 41.5 28.9 (folio). Harvard Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, gift of Afsaneh Firouz in honor of her Shahroukh same in in father, Firouz, Fig. 2. Detail of the practice exercise, shown full ? President and Fellows of 2006.119. (Photo: Katya Kallsen, fig. 3. Harvard College) sat con East Asian calligraphers generally motionless, This comparison raises many issues, not least of which is the moment of artistic and templating creation, then, the validity of underwriting a comparison between two a to with burst of creativity, applied brush support. As distinct cultural and artistic traditions?where Islamic a result, the reader is meant to sense the personality calligraphy is defined in opposition, or through, the of the artist the In the through calligraphy. following features of East Asian calligraphy?by invoking a uni the reader a visual of brushstrokes, experiences sequence or versalizing transcultural formalism?that is, defin movement and rest and thus in the participates physical formal features in relation to each other without of creation. ing process concern whether those values were for understanding This scenario does not hold true in the Islamic lands, read by contemporaries within the cultures invoked where the individual artist is thought to have applied in the that we read them or whether is way today, they pen to support in regular, steady strokes...The reader were similar not meant to from assigned meanings. glean the calligrapher's personality to line For the of this however, the script, but rather appreciate the unwavering purposes essay, emphasis and modulated forms that reflect the transcendence of will be given to the commonly accepted assumption movement are in this definition of the traits of Islamic the Almighty. Palpability and replaced by expressed art in ineffability and control, complex characters by simple calligraphy: that the of beautiful writing the strokes.8 historical Islamic lands can be understood to involve This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Mon, 22 Sep 2014 13:46:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "THE EYE IS FAVORED FOR SEEING THE WRITING'S FORM" 277 in to Firuz Mirza Nusrat ca. 1835-53. Fig. 3. Practice exercise (siy?h mashq) nastaliq, attributed al-Dawla, Iran, Ink, opaque on cm Art Arthur M. Sackler of Afsaneh Firouz pigment, and gold paper, 41.5 28.9 (folio). Harvard Museum, Museum, gift in honor of her father, Shahroukh Firouz, 2006.119. (Photo: Katya Kallsen, ? President and Fellows of Harvard College) an of skill (perhaps even to require) the radical omission of the visual pleasure lies solely in appreciation at calligrapher's body in favor of technical perfection and the individual calligrapher's abilities replicat and conformity to established convention in which ing preexisting canonical tradition. Visual pleasure ever context of historical occurrence the artwork was does not entail the apprehension of the calligrapher's is material or time?or the originally made. In this view, Islamic calligraphy process?whether through an as deprived of any form of indexicality?it cannot be gauging of individuality itmight become manifest access that viewers have to in of letter or autograph?and any might idiosyncracies shaping composition. in The antidote to of these apprehending the fact of time passing the making perfect many assumptions, one us to redirect and our of the writing is denied in the finished artwork, which that challenges rephrase its all-at-onceness. In this is a from Timurid insistently signals assessment, questions, calligraphic specimen This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Mon, 22 Sep 2014 13:46:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DAVID J. ROXBURGH a to Ahmad Herat before 1433. Ink on 57.8 4. Calligraphic exercise after model in riqa, attributed al-Rumi, (?), paper, 31b. of Palace cm (written surface). Topkapi Palace Museum, H. 2152, fol. (Photo: courtesy Topkapi Museum, Istanbul) a men Herat made before 1433 (fig. 4). Composed of eighteen phy, here enacted by community of who gath lines that repeat the Arabic saying "Blessings coalesce ered to write after a model, and evidences an actual around -shukr tad?mu the iterations of the gratitude" (bi al-niam), temporality through multiple saying specimen shows how fourteen calligraphers responded written by fourteen individuals.
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