Reviving a Calligraphic Style: the Rich Heritage of Kufic Script by Chip Rossetti

showdaily Reviving a Calligraphic Style: The rich heritage of Kufic script by Chip Rossetti

His interest in the study and revival of Kufic script led him to form a group of like-minded scholars, font-designers, and historians. Known as the KuficPedia Project (www.kuficpedia. org), the group brings together experts on Kufic from the Middle East, Europe, and North America, all drawn by a shared interest in this script. “We are the only group in the world studying this script,” says Jazayeri.

His work has also led him to the related skill of contemporary typeface design, although informed by his calligraphic background. It “complements the artistry and workmanship skills that were used in the past,” he says. As the KuficPedia website demonstrates, Jazayeri’s devotion to Kufic calligraphy has a lighter, albeit spiritual, side as well: he designs spinning circular toys: tops decorated in Kufic lettering that, when spun on yarn or string, display a bright whirl of color. He refers to them as “metaphysical toys” that he makes as a “form of conversation”: “They are One of the most striking Arabic and Persian typefaces, the effect classes have expanded into organized the product of prolonged thought and is jarring: the Kufic script appeared at workshops and training sessions for are academic investigation and spiritual sights at Seyed Mohammad an early stage of Arabic writing, when budding calligraphers. expression in equal parts,” he says. Vahid Mousavi Jazayeri’s stand consonants with the same shape were distinguished by single or multiple His research into Kufic writing led him Whether in bold strokes carved in at the Illustrators’ Corner is short strokes placed above or below in two seemingly opposite directions: stone or on delicate spinning paper, the the meter-long rectangular, a letter (rather than by dots as they to historical research and to modern Kufic script that Jazayeri has spent his leather-bound book. The book are now.) At the same time—also typeface design. His historical research, life mastering is a gorgeous example of confusing to the modern eye!—the however, comes with a practical a rich calligraphic heritage, revived and is even more impressive when short strokes that are now used to edge: in addition to researching Kufic reintroduced in the modern era. opened: the pages, laced with indicate vowels are represented by script on stone, coins, ceramics, and gold leaf, and inked in bold large colored dots in Kufic. manuscripts, it involved learning the very traditional skill of cutting his own black strokes dotted in red, The craftsman who made this pen, known as a qalam. The Arabic is a handcrafted manuscript impressive work was born in Tehran in word “qalam” is derived from the 1969, and he has made a career out Greek word “kalamos,” meaning a of Sura 36 (“Ya Sin”) from the of reviving this ancient style of Arabic reed. And just like his Greek, Roman, Qur’an. Even more striking and Persian writing. For his lifelong Arab, and Persian predecessors, is the Arabic calligraphic work with the Kufic script, he has been Jazayeri has learned how to cut his awarded the equivalent of an honorary qalam from an actual hollow reed, style itself, a very old form of Ph.D. from the Iranian Ministry of which lends a unique quality to the written Arabic known as Early Culture. Although he originally studied stroke of ink. He learned the lost art of other well-known calligraphic styles, cutting a reed for the express purpose (or Primary) Kufic. such as Thulth and Naskh, Jazayeri of replicating the Early Kufic style on Named for the city of Kufa, one of the was drawn to Kufic for its letters and display in the Illustrators’ Corner. earliest “garrison cities” founded by what they could do: “Its calligraphic early Muslims in Iraq, Kufic emerged capabilities attracted me,” he says, Drawing on his research, he also Seyed Mohammad Vahid Mousavi around the end of the first Islamic although at the time, “no one in Iran produces ceramics and calligraphic Jazayeri will be leading his second century (late 7th century AD), and knew the Kufic script any more.” paintings with Kufic inscriptions workshop on Kufic calligraphy, “How for the next three centuries, it was and designs. (He has a side business to Do Primary Kufic Calligraphy on the primary script used for copying After almost ten years of training and producing Kufic logos and graphics for Manuscripts,” today at the Illustrators’ the Qur’an. For anyone accustomed research into this now forgotten art, businesses, which includes even “Latin Corner, 17:00-18:30. to more recent writing styles, such as he began teaching Kufic calligraphy in Kufic”—that is, Roman alphabet script Naskh, Thuluth, and especially modern Tehran in 1991. Since then, his initial in a Kufic-looking style.)