Calligraphy, or beautiful writing, has long been the most esteemed of the Islamic visual arts. The varied works of calligraphy on display—from practice alphabets to elaborately finished manuscripts—serve as traces of individuals, belief systems, and cultures. The costly and exotic materials lavished on writing instruments also document the international trade of the period, from 1600 to 1900, and create a rich material legacy that fuses aesthetics and piety.

Beyond the years of training and practice required to master the varied Arabic scripts, calligraphers devoted long hours to producing the pens, inks, and colorants required for their art, and to modifying these materials for specific purposes and effects. The tools, supplies, and equipment that calligraphers did not produce themselves were made by artisans working in myriad crafts and industries, such as metalwork, paper making, tanning, ceramics, and inlay.

In its most basic form, the calligrapher’s tool kit contained a penknife; a makta, a small flat slab on which the reed pen would be positioned for cutting; and paper scissors.

The artistic elaboration and precious substances lavished on many of the tools clearly exceed functional requirements and testify to the prestige of calligraphy in Islamic lands. Yet, more than commercial interests linked the calligraphers to the many artisans who produced their supplies, tools, and furnishings. By participating in the culture of calligraphy, both calligraphers and artisans were consciously engaged in a moral universe—a universe, according to early Muslim scholars, that was brought into existence by God’s creation of the pen.

Next Section: Training and Practice

Beyond talent, training to become a calligrapher required years of practice, perseverance, and discipline. Over the centuries, Islamic calligraphers formalized various mechanisms for transmitting the knowledge of their art and technical lore. The most immediate mode of instruction was direct training by a master, who imparted advice to students by example in all aspects of writing, from the shaping of letters and their composition on the page to the preparation of tools and the production of materials and their use.

Another mode of training was the visual study of works of calligraphy. Visual immersion was essential. It provided another source of instruction about letter

shapes, ligatures (joined letters), and script combinations; and it also developed the student’s eye for formal values, such as combinations of materials, qualities of ink and paper, and contrasts of hue and value. Contemplating and sometimes reproducing the works of past masters was a constant practice of even master calligraphers. They refreshed their skills through exercises in duplication and imitation, and applied what they had learned to the making of new works.

Next Section: Contexts for Calligraphy

Following the advice of ‘Ali b. Abi Talib (died 661)—son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, fourth orthodox caliph, and first Shi‘ite imam—a wide range of individuals took up the pen, whether artists of high merit, professional scribes, talented amateurs, or collectors and connoisseurs. The deep value that Muslims invested in writing by hand inhibited the adoption of mechanical means for reproducing texts. Long after the printing press had made scriptoria obsolete in European countries, the vast literature of the Muslim world was still perpetuated mainly through hand-copying. The thousands upon thousands of official documents generated by governments across the Islamic lands were produced by cadres of very busy scribes.

Proficiency in production and a legible hand were essential traits for a professional scribe, whether employed by a royal scriptorium or a bureaucratic institution, or working to meet the demands of the market. The most capable secretaries and scribes in government service mastered the conventions and standardized protocols of official correspondence. Special scripts were also used for official texts, including ta‘liq, nasta‘liq, divani, shikasta, and tughra’i. While easier to write quickly, these scripts were difficult to read for those not trained in their usage.

Next Section: Writing the Word of God

As a conceptual category, the trace has bearings on ideas of an animating presence left behind. It is related to the relic, from the Latin reliquiae, the remains of a martyr or deceased person, and the verb relinquere, to leave behind or relinquish. The trace takes its primary authority from its indexical relation to what it reproduces and continues to make present. In reference to Islamic calligraphy, Mary McWilliams and David J. Roxburgh, guest curators of “Traces of the Calligrapher,” discuss the valuation of writing in Islamic societies in terms of a trace (athar) or “impressed presence” that signified the moral fiber of its maker (McWilliams and Roxburgh 2007). Calligraphy was perceived as capturing the spirit of the calligrapher through the contiguous relation of his hand with the reed pen and paper. In this way, the calligrapher partakes in the sacredness of the Qur’an, for it is through his body that the text is copied and made evident.

The concept of the trace is equally vital in articulating the enduring spirit of the Prophet Muhammad. A specific type of trace, the footprint (qadam) was highly valued in eighteenth-century north Indian society, and numerous reliquary shrines housed footprints of the Prophet (qadam-i-rasuls). Textual sources consistently cite either Mecca or Medina, where Muhammad received the revelations of the Qur’an, as the footprints’ places of origin. They were valued in their causal and existential relation to Muhammad, and to the land and events of his historical life.

One of the largest reliquaries is the Dargah Athar-Sharif at the Jami‘ Masjid (Delhi). The relics include Muhammad’s hair, sandal, and footprint, as well as calligraphies of the Qur’an attributed to the fourth caliph and first Shi‘ite imam ‘Ali and the second Shi‘ite imam Hasan ibn ‘Ali. According to tradition, these relics were acquired by Timur (Tamerlane ruled 1370–1405) upon the defeat of the Ottoman sultan Bayezid Yildirim. They were passed on to the Mughal emperors who traced their lineage to Timur.

It was customary for embattled rulers across Islamic territories to appropriate relics through the custom of gift exchange, which also involved inheritance. Possession of relics served to support claims of ancestry to Muhammad, which was integral to the identities of Sayyids Sufis, and Shi‘as, as well as confer legitimacy on rulers. The reliquary at the Dargah Athar-Sharif came into the Mughal emperor Shah-Jahan’s (ruled 1627–58) possession upon accession to the throne and served to sanctify his newly built mosque at Shahjahanabad.

The valuation of relics by Mughal rulers—particularly at a site steeped in symbolism of imperial piety and political power—was not lost on the eighteenth-century Nawabs (Mughal state governors) that made popular this precedent. Freestanding, monumental footprint shrines became a convention that marked royal cities of Bengal and Awadh.

In recognition of the enduring sanctity of the relics, limited visitation rites (ziyara) are imposed today. Similar to the pious act of writing the Qur’an, tactile contact is a primary rite at shrines. Through the act of touch, the blessings (baraka) imbued in the footprints are passed on to visitors.

The problematic notion of presence in the relic was realized in traditions by its miracle-producing properties. These miracles included the manifestation of a footprint trace in hard stone and accounts of qadams miraculously perspiring. Muslim reformist literature of the nineteenth century posited distinctions between elite and popular forms of religion, as well as discrete religions, which served to promote communal ideology during a time marked by the ascendancy of British powers.

“I do not know of any other form of writing in which the letters undergo so much beautifying and refining as they do in Arabic writing.”
Al-Kindi (died ca. 873)

Muslims believe that the Qur’an is the written record of a series of divinely inspired revelations, the actual word of God. These revelations were mediated through the angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad, and occurred in Mecca and Medina between 610 and Muhammad’s death in 632. In 610, at the age of forty, Muhammad went to a mountain cave called Hira’, on the Jabal al-Nur outside Mecca, for devotional purposes. It was there that he received his first revelation, which would become the first five verses of chapter (sura) 96 of the Qur’an.

The fact that the revelations had come to the Prophet Muhammad in Arabic, along with the high status accorded to the writing in the Qur’an, created a new prestige for the Arabic language, its written form, and visual expression. Although no other book matched the Qur’an in holiness—as God’s eternal word—the Qur’an elevated the status of all books and the art of writing. The examples in this exhibition highlight some of the chief developments that took place in the art and practice of copying Islam’s sacred text from the seventh to the fifteenth century.