ARABIC CALLIGRAPHY

with the expansion of islam, Arabic the language of the Qur'an, became the cultural language of the Muslim world during the ninth century A.D. With the development of education institution in cities such as Baghdad and Marv, works of alien cultures for example, Greek, Indian, Turkish, and Persian in the field of the Music, Mathematics, Astronomy, Natural Sciences, Medicine, and Philosophy, wich had so far been transleted only into Syiriac, were studied systematically, developed and documented in Arabic.

Calligraphy in Arabic is referred to as " Handasat Al-Khot" (the geometry of line). Khot (line) meaning letter or writing.

Since the rise of Islam, calligraphy has been a major art form. Numerous manuscript have survived describing new methods of writing and combining different scripts and also explaining diligently the shaping and proportioning of letters, the making and manipulation of pens for each script and the preparation of colours, inks and paper.

It is claimed that distinguished Abbasid Wazir (Minister) and Calligrapher Ibnu Muqlah 327 H/939 AD were the first to have developed a geometric method of construction and proportioning of Arabic letter in the cursive script. From the Abbased period on-words, the Arabic alphabet was adopted to other languages, such as Persian, Seljuk and Ottoman turkish, Hindustani, pushtu, Malay, Berber and Swahili.

The Naskhi Ta' liq script was developed in persia in the eleventh century A.D and the Diwani scripts were uset as the official script of the Ottoman Turkish and Empire. With the invention of these different cursiv scripts, calligraphy developed into major decoration art form, which provided scope for self expression to the artist in the Muslim world.