Origin Developed from the Nabataean form of the Aramaic script by around the fourth century CE, reaching its classical form by the seventh century.
The script of the Quran, written from right to left and descended from the Nabataean form of Aramaic. Its twenty-eight letters record consonants, with dots distinguishing letters of shared shape and optional vowel marks added, in tradition, to protect exact Quranic recitation. Because the revelation itself is held to be in Arabic, the script acquired unmatched religious prestige, and calligraphy became the central sacred art of the Islamic world, from the monumental Kufic of early Qurans to the flowing Naskh and Thuluth of later manuscripts and mosque inscriptions.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodDeveloped from the Nabataean form of the Aramaic script by around the fourth century CE, reaching its classical form by the seventh century. 1 Place of OriginThe Arabian Peninsula and the Nabataean influenced regions of the northern Hejaz and southern Syria. 1 Learn More
From Nabataean Hands to the Script of Revelation
The Arabic script grew from the cursive Aramaic writing of the Nabataeans, the trading people of Petra, whose late inscriptions shade by degrees into recognisably Arabic letterforms in the centuries just before Islam. At the Prophet Muhammad's lifetime it was still a bare consonantal skeleton, short of letters for all the sounds of Arabic and without the dots that now distinguish letters of identical shape. The needs of the Quran drove its completion. As the revelation was gathered into a fixed written text, scribes and grammarians of the first Islamic centuries added the i'jam, the pointing that separates otherwise identical letters, and the harakat, the small vowel signs, so that the sacred text could not be misread.
Tradition associates the earliest vowel notation with the grammarians of Basra, and the system reached its mature form in the hands of the early masters of Quranic orthography. The result is an abjad of twenty-eight letters, written right to left, whose full vocalisation is reserved in practice for the Quran itself, the one book in which no ambiguity of reading is tolerable. From Spain to Southeast Asia the script travelled with the faith, and was adapted to Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Urdu, Malay and many other languages.
Calligraphy as Sacred Art
Because the Quran is held to be the literal speech of God in Arabic, the writing of Arabic became a devotional act, and calligraphy grew into the central sacred art of the Islamic world. Early Qurans were written in the monumental angular scripts loosely called Kufic, laid out in gold and brown on parchment. The tenth-century vizier Ibn Muqla is remembered for the proportioned script, a geometric discipline in which every letter is measured in rhombic dots against the height of the alif, and the later masters Ibn al-Bawwab and Yaqut al-Musta'simi refined the rounded hands, Naskh, Thuluth, Muhaqqaq and their kin, that became the classical Quranic scripts.
Persian culture added the hanging Nastaliq, and the Ottoman calligraphers brought the art to a final polish. Since figural imagery is generally avoided in mosque decoration, the written word fills the space where other traditions put icons: the name of God, the shahada and whole surahs run in bands around domes and mihrabs. A calligrapher traditionally trains for years under a master before receiving an ijaza, a licence to sign work, and the practice is understood as spiritual discipline, the beautification of the word of God being itself a form of worship.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Contains
Kufic is a style of the Arabic script rather than a separate alphabet.
Script Of
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