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Bridging The Divide Between The United States And The Muslim World Through Arts And Ideas: Possibilities And Limitations

Appendix IV: Background Paper
Cultural Awareness In A Time Of Crisis

C. Calligraphy

The Arabic script has become the hallmark of most Muslim societies, regardless of language, in the same way that Hebrew script historically accompanied Judaism around the world, no matter what vernacular a Jewish community might speak. But Arabic calligraphy stands out in comparison with other calligraphic traditions in its flexibility of form, from squared off mosaic to hyper–cursive nasta‘liq and shekasteh, and its application to almost every decorative purpose. The evolution and variety of the bookhands that provide the main vehicle for the transmission of written knowledge is paralleled by that of numismatic, architectural, and ornamental scripts where legibility is not the primary intent. The earliest versions of the Arabic script on parchment and papyrus, which date to the first decades after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, are difficult to read, especially since most scribes felt it unnecessary to represent short vowels. During that period, documents and records emanating from Muslim rulers newly installed in the lands conquered by the Arab armies were commonly written in Greek or some other established administrative language. Muslim coins minted in Iran, for example, retained inscriptions in Middle Persian.

However, in the early Abbasid caliphate, that is to say, from the late eighth century onward, the shapes and conventions for writing in Arabic script became more standardized, and this led to Arabic calligraphy bonding with Muslim identity far more firmly than any writing tradition other than the Chinese. It can be argued, in fact, that the Arabic script became more strongly associated with Islam than the Arabic language itself. That is, even illiterate people who could not understand either spoken or written Arabic knew immediately when they were in a Muslim environment when they saw the Arabic script prominently displayed. This distinctive function of the Arabic script continues to the present day.

The history of Arabic calligraphy, like that of poetry, displays significant variations over time and space. But schooling in script for the literate elite was established very early as a basic skill — indeed, an art for the most highly skilled — and often became a sine qua non of social or professional advancement. By the time of the Ottoman Empire, each branch of government utilized its own distinctive calligraphic style, and apprentice bureaucrats went through a lengthy period of preparing rough drafts of documents before being entrusted with producing final drafts. Scholars who have been schooled in the reading of Arabic scripts can often identify at a glance the geographic origin or time period of a book or inscription. In parts of the world far from the Middle East, the adaptation of Arabic script to a local language often becomes a hallmark of the expansion of Islam. In Southeast Asia, for example, the Jawi (from the island of Java) version of the Arabic script first appeared in the early fourteenth century; despite the general adoption of Roman characters in the twentieth century, it continues to be used for ritual purposes in some parts of Malaysia and Indonesia up to the present day.

Nevertheless, there are some Muslim societies that do not use the Arabic script. In some cases, this is because another script had been well established before the extension of Islam into the region, as is the case in Bangladesh where the Bengali language is written in a script that is identical to that of India’s largely Hindu province of Bengal. In other cases, the disuse of the Arabic script was the result of pressure from non–Muslim imperialist powers, notably Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, which forced their Muslim subjects to use the Cyrillic (or occasionally the Roman) alphabet. The Republic of Turkey stands out as the one Muslim country that adopted the Roman alphabet, for nationalistic reasons, in 1931.

Alphabet choice and styles of script acquired special importance with the advent of printing. After a now mostly forgotten period between the ninth and the fourteenth centuries, in which woodblocks and tin plates — called tarsh in Arabic — were used to print Arabic script, there was almost no printing done by Muslims until the nineteenth century.¹⁴ When the printing press did reach the Muslim world, printers used both conventional European typesetting and the lithographic printing process pioneered in Austria by Alois Senefelder (1771–1834). Though Europeans exploited the flexibility of lithographic printing primarily to produce pictures, Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia produced complete books. Since the shapes and styles of Arabic calligraphy could be readily transferred to a lithographic stone, printing did not degrade the fluidity and elegance of handwriting as it did in Europe. This contributed significantly to the retention of calligraphy as an art form in the contemporary Muslim world, while the once artistic handwriting styles of Europe largely disappeared. It might be noted that the replacement of the Arabic script with Roman or Cyrillic characters has led to a parallel decline in the importance of artistic calligraphy in the countries affected.

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