Islamic Calligraphy - Calligrams

Calligrams

Calligraphy, the most Islamic of arts in the Muslim world, also has its figurative sides. By interweaving written words, made from an "Allah", a "Muhammad", a "Bismillah", etc., or using micrography, calligraphers produced anthropomorphic figures ('Ali, the Ideal Human of mystics, a praying man, a face), zoomorphisms (symbolic creatures, most from the Shi'a iconography, like the lion (Ali "the Lion of God") horse ('Ali's Duldul), fish, stork or other bird (the qur'anic Hudhud)) and inanimate representations (a sword (Dhu al-Fiqar), a mosque, a ship (made from the letter waw, a symbol of mystical union, literally meaning "and," in Arabic)). Calligrams are related to Muslim mysticism and popular with many leading calligraphers in Turkey, Persia and India from the 17th century onward.

Although striking in appearance, calligrams have never been regarded as appropriate or a decent expression of the art by the master calligraphers. Many calligrams therefore were produced by either folk calligraphers or for the interest of uncultivated people. These calligrams were not exhibited in mosques or sufi convents in the Ottoman state, for example.

An element in this perspective is the rejection of the interpretation by the heretic Hurufiyyah sufi order which sees letters as true manifestations of the fate, events and creation in themselves.

In the teachings of calligraphy, figurative imagery is used to help visualize the shape of letters to trace, for example, the letter ha' looks in nasta'liq similar to two eyes, as its Persian name implies: "he' two eyes" he' do cheshm). In literature and poetry seeing in letters a reflection of the natural world goes back to the Abbasid times.

One of the contemporary masters of the calligram genre is Hassan Massoudy and Wissam Shawkat

Good commercial examples are the logos of Al Jazeera, an international news station based at Qatar, and the Edinburgh Middle East Report, a Scottish academic journal on the Middle East, and also the work of the calligrapher and designer Wissam Shawkat in Dubai.