CALLIGRAPHY

Arabic writing and calligraphy

Arabic writing has many different styles - there are more than a hundred of them. But there are six main styles - geometric (mainly Kufic and its variants), and italic (naskh, ruka, thulut, etc.).

Tughra is a unique calligraphic technique that is used as a royal seal. These emblems were highly decorative and became especially popular during the heyday of the Ottoman bureaucracy. Nishangi or tughrakesh is a calligrapher specially trained to write tughra.

In zoomorphic calligraphy, words are used to create figures of a person, bird, animal or some other object.

Kufi (or Kufic) is known for its proportional dimensions, angularity and squareness.

Thulut - means “one third”, which refers to the proportions of the pen relative to the earlier Tumaar style. It is used as an ornamental letter.

Nasah, which means “copying”, is one of the earliest writing styles with a developed system of proportions. It is famous for its purity of form and readability, and is used in copying the Koran.