Blackwell Reference Online

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Also known as ‘Mecca-Medina script’, this is one of the earliest Arabic book hands and is more cursive than the angular kūfīc script which originated in Mesopotamia. It is thought to have been developed by Abū ‘Alī Muḥammad Ibn Muqlah (died 940), a famous calligrapher who introduced it at the court of Baghdad. Because of its elegance and legibility, the naskhī script as of the eleventh century gradually superseded kūfīc as the principal script for copying the Qur'ān ( figure 1 ). For the same reason it has been widely used for languages other than Arabic, such as Persian, Turkish, Malay, Kiswahili, Hausa and Serbo-Croatian. From the naskhī script several other calligraphic styles developed, notably the rīqā’, dīwānī and thuluth . Figure 1 An illustrated page from the Qur'ān, Samarkand school, later fifteenth century, in naskh'ī script (National Museum, New Delhi) See also arabic written language ; calligraphy . Reading Schimmel 1984. ... log in or subscribe to read full text