Origin of Arabic Script
Arabic script has a genetic relationship with the Latin alphabet, since both are historically traceable back to a script current on the Levant coast around 1000 B.C. and used for the notation of the language which we call Old Phoenician. The Old Phoenician script had a repertory of 22 symbols, all written individually. The values of the symbols were exclusively consonantal, showing no means of noting a vowel at all.
In the 8th century B.C., the Old Phoenician script was employed for the rendering of Old Aramaic, but with one seminal development, namely the use of a few of the symbols as vowel notation. These "vowel" symbols preserved their consonantal value, though, and were henceforth ambiguous. A century or so later, the Greeks borrowed the script, but abandoned the consonantal value of the letters. Thus, the Greek alphabet is classifiable into mutually exclusive groups of consonants and vowels. The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of modern European script.
About the same time also, a form of script was introduced into South Arabia which had affinities with the Old Phoenician script, but which expanded the range of the alphabet into 29 symbols with distinctive shapes, in order to cope with the phonemic consonantal repertory of the South Arabian language. Script forms closely analogous to this became widely prevalent throughout the south and center of the Arabian peninsula, where they remained in normal use down to the 5th century A.D., but thereafter fell into disuse.
Aramaic script evolved through many centuries without taking the step which the Greeks had, so that its facilities for vowel notation remained restricted. By the early centuries A.D., it developed into Syriac script, used for the dialect of near eastern Christians, and into varieties used by the pagan kingdoms of Palmyra and Nabatene. Syriac, Palmyrene and Nabataean are all characterized by the fact that the custom had developed of linking many of the letters together with the boundaries of a single word by "ligatures", as in modern European handwriting forms. This has two results. First, certain letters, came to have different shapes when occurring at the end of a word from those appearing elsewhere. Second, certain letters tended to lose their distinctive linear shapes and become ambiguous. In Syriac, for example, the letter d and r became linearly indistinguishable, and where differentiated by the device of placing a dot under or over the letter. In Palmyrene, and Nabataean, the ambiguity brought by the use of ligatures was even more marked, but no attempts was made to obviate the confusion by the use of dots. As a result, these scripts are extremely difficult to interpret.
The earliest manifestation of a script form which can be identified as Arabic is on a tombstone at Nemara in the Syrian desert, dated A.D. 328 and one or two similar inscriptions from the 5th - 6th century. The script of the Nemara inscription is essentially a Nabataean one. It shows no notation at all for an open-quality vowel nor for any short vowel. Long u and i are marked by ambiguous letters serving also for the consonantal values w and y. The length of consonants in Nabataean script is not marked at all, and it is still limited to the repertory of the Aramaic script, which is inadequate for the consonant phonemes of Arabic.
Today, it is widely believed that Arabic script is a descendent of the Nabataean script. Apart from the Nemara and a few other inscriptions, the earliest surviving document of written Arabic is the Quran, Islam's sacred book revealed to the Prophet Mohammed in the early 7th century A.D. Early Arabic script employed to record the Quran shares several characteristics with the Nemara script such as the use of symbols which hold resemblance in their shapes to denote distinct letters, as in the case of the letters b, t, and th. With the development of the Arabic writing system, more subtleties and refinements were added. During the first year in the Islamic calendar, dots above or below letters were systematically used to differentiate between letters which were identical without the dots. Thus the letters b, t, and th were marked with one dot below (b), two dots above(t), and three dots above (th). And it was not until the early 8th century A.D. that the use of diacritical marks was introduced to secure the correct reading of the Quran. The diacritical system (probably borrowed from the Syriac script) employed short vowels, marked by symbols placed above or below the consonant which they follow in speech. Other symbols placed above the letter marked the absence of a following vowel (sukun), and others, the endings in the inflection of nouns and the moods of verbs. But these marks never came into general use, and to the present day, the system is used mainly in text of the Quran and for teaching purposes.Source: Alfred Beeston, The Arabic Language Today
The Art of Arabic Calligraphy
Arabic is written from right to left, like other Semitic scripts, and consists of 17 characters, which, with the addition of dots placed above or below certain of them, provide the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet. Short vowels are not included in the alphabet, being indicated by signs placed above or below the consonant or long vowel that they follow. Certain characters may be joined to their neighbors, others to the preceding one only, and others to the succeeding one only. The written letters undergo a slight external change according to their position within a word. When they stand alone or occur at the end of a word, they ordinarily terminate in a bold stroke; when they appear in the middle of a word, they are ordinarily joined to the letter following by a small, upward curved stroke. With the exception of six letters, which can be joined only to the preceding ones, the initial and medial letters are much abbreviated, while the final form consists of the initial form with a triumphant flourish. The essential part of the characters, however, remains unchanged.
These features, as well as the fact that there are no capital forms of letters, give the Arabic script its particular character. A line of Arabic suggests an urgent progress of the characters from right to left. The nice balance between the vertical shafts above and the open curves below the middle register induces a sense of harmony. The peculiarity that certain letters cannot be joined to their neighbors provides articulation. For writing, the Arabic calligrapher employs a reed pen (qalam) with the working point cut on an angle. This feature produces a thick downstroke and a thin upstroke with an infinity of gradation in between. The line traced by a skilled calligrapher is a true marvel of fluidity and sensitive inflection, communicating the very action of the master's hand.
Arabic calligraphy, thus, is the art of beautiful or elegant handwriting as exhibited by the correct formation of characters, the ordering of the various parts, and harmony of proportions.
In the Islamic world, calligraphy has traditionally been held in high regard. The high esteem accorded to the copying of the Quran, and the aesthetic energy that was devoted to it, raised Arabic calligraphy to the status of an art. Arabic calligraphy, unlike that of most cultures, influenced the style of monumental inscription. It is revered as highly as painting.
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
Development of Arabic Script
Broadly speaking, there were two distinct scripts in the early centuries of Islam: cursive script and Kufic script. For everyday purposes a cursive script was employed: typical examples are to be seen in the Arabic papyri from Egypt. Rapidly executed, the script does not appear to have been subject to formal and rigorous rules, and not all the surviving examples are the work of professional scribes. Kufic script, however, seems to have been developed for religious and official purposes. The term Kufic means "the script of Kufah," an Islamic city founded in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) in AD 638, but the actual connection between the city and the script is not clear. Kufic is a more or less square and angular script characterized by its heavy, bold, and lapidary style. Its letters are generally thick, squat, and unslanted, and it was particularly suitable for writing on stone or metal, for painting or carving inscriptions on the walls of mosques, and for lettering on coins. Professional copyists employed a particular form of Kufic for reproducing the earliest copies of the Quran that have survived. These are written on parchment and date from the 8th to the 10th century. They are mostly of an oblong as opposed to codex format. The writing is frequently large, especially in the early examples, so that there may be as few as three lines to a single page. The script can hardly be described as stiff and angular; rather, the pace is majestic and measured. With the high development of Arabic calligraphy, Kufic writing became an exceptionally beautiful script. From it, there were derived a number of other styles, chiefly medieval, in North and Central Africa, Spain, and northern Arabia.
Kufic went out of general use about the 11th century, although it continued to be used as a decorative element contrasting with those scripts that superseded it. About AD 1000 a new script was established and came to be used for copying the Quran. This is the so-called naskhi script, which has remained perhaps the most popular script in the Arab world. It is a cursive script based on certain laws governing the proportions between the letters. The two names associated with its development are Ibn Muqlah and Ibn al-Bawwab, both of whom lived and worked in Mesopotamia. Naskhi was always employed chiefly for writing on papyrus. In time, it evolved into innumerable styles and varieties, including the ta'liq, the riqa', the diwani, and the thuluth, and became the parent of the modern Arabic writing.
Distinctive scripts were developed in particular regions. In Spain the maghribi ("western") script was evolved and became the standard script for Qurans in North Africa. Derived ultimately from Kufic, it is characterized by the exaggerated extension of horizontal elements and of the final open curves below the middle register.
Both Persia and Turkey made important contributions to calligraphy. In these countries the Arabic script was adopted for the vernacular. The Persian scribes invented the ta'liq script in the 13th century. The term ta'liq means "suspension" and aptly describes the tendency of each word to drop down from its preceding one. At the close of the same century, a famous calligrapher, Mir 'Ali of Tabriz, evolved nasta'liq, which, according to its name, is a combination of naskhi and ta'liq. Like ta'liq, this is a fluid and elegant script, and both were popularly used for copying Persian literary works.
A characteristic script developed in Ottoman Turkey was that used in the chancellery and known as divani. This script is highly mannered and rather difficult to read. Peculiar to Turkish calligraphy is the tugra (tughra), a kind of royal cipher based on the names and titles of the reigning sultan and worked into a very intricate and beautiful design. A distinctive tugra was created for each sultan and affixed to imperial decrees by a skilled calligrapher, the neshani.
There has always existed in the Islamic world a keen appreciation of fine handwriting, and, from the 16th century, it became a practice to assemble in albums specimens of penmanship. Many of these assembled in Turkey, Persia, and India are preserved in museums and libraries. Calligraphy, too, has given rise to quite a considerable literature such as manuals for professional scribes employed in chancelleries.
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
Arabic Script Types
The Kufic Script الخط الكوفي Kufic script, a heavy monumental Arabic script suited to stone carving, appears in the earliest surviving Koran manuscripts. In these, the diacritical marks over the letters are sometimes painted in red, and the gold decorations between suras contrast handsomely with the heavy black script. In the Seljuk period, a more cursive flowing script, Naskhi, developed. The two styles were often used for contrast in architecture and decorative contexts.
The Naskh Script خط النسخ
Naskh, which means "copying," was developed in the 10th century, and refined into a fine art form in Turkey in the 16th century. Since then it became generally accepted for writing the Quran. Naskh is legible and clear and was adapted as the preferred style for typesetting and printing. It is a small script whose lines are thin and letter shapes are round.
The Thuluth Script خط الثلث
Thuluth was the medieval Islamic style of handwritten alphabet. Thuluth (Arabic: "one-third") is written on the principle that one-third of each letter slopes. It is a large and elegant, cursive script, used in medieval times on mosque decorations. It took on some of the functions of the early Kufic script; it was used to write surah headings, religious inscriptions, and princely titles and epigraphs. It was also used for many of the large copies of the Koran produced from the 13th century.
The Ta'liq / Nasta'liq / Farsi Scripts خط الرقعة/ التعليق / الفارسي
Ta'liq is a cursive style of lettering developed in Iran in the 10th century. It is thought to have been the creation of Hasan ibn Husain Ali of Fars, but, because Khawaja Abdul Mali Buk made such vast improvements, the invention is often attributed to him. The rounded forms and exaggerated horizontal strokes that characterize the Ta'liq letters were derived primarily from the Riqa' script. The ornateness and sloping quality of the written line had roots in the Towqi script of Ibn Muqla (died 940). Designed specifically to meet the needs of the Persian language, Ta'liq was used widely for royal as well as daily correspondence until the 14th century, when it was replaced by Nasta'liq.
Nasta'liq was the predominant style of Persian calligraphy during the 15th and 16th centuries. The inventor was Mir 'Ali of Tabriz, the most famous calligrapher of the Timurid period (1402-1502). A cursive script, Nasta'liq was a combination of the Naskh and Ta'liq styles, featuring elongated horizontal strokes and exaggerated rounded forms. The diacritical marks were casually placed, and the lines were flowing rather than straight. Nasta'liq was frequently incorporated into the paintings of the early Safavid period (16th century) and is traditionally considered to be the most elegant of the Persian scripts.
The Riq'a Script
خط الرقعة
Riq'a, the simpler style of everyday writing is very economical and easy to write. It is popular for writing both Turkish and Arabic.
The Diwani Script الخط الديواني
The Diwani script is a cursive style of Arabic calligraphy developed during the reign of the early Ottoman Turks (16th-early 17th century). It was invented by Housam Roumi and reached its height of popularity under Süleyman I theMagnificent (1520-66). As decorative as it was communicative, Diwani was distinguished by the complexity of the line within the letter and the close juxtaposition of the letters within the word.
A variation of the Diwani, the Diwani Al Jali, is characterized by its abundance of diactical and ornamental marks.
Source: Kāmel al- Baba, Rouh Al-Khatt Al-'Arabī. Published in Lebanon by "Dār al-Ilm Lilmalayīn, 1996
