TYPES OF SCRIPTS

1) KUFI

Kufi was the dominant priestly script in early times. It was created after the establishment of the two Muslim cities of Basrah and Kufah in the second decade of the Islamic era. The script has specific proportional measurements, along with pronounced angularity and squareness

2) FARSI

Farsi Script, also called Ta'liq or hanging script, is believed to have been developed by the Persians from an early and little known Arabic script called Firamuz. Farsi is an unpretentious, cursive script which was apparently in use until the early 9th century AD

3) REQ'AA

This script, also called Ruqah (small sheet), is rounded and densely structured with short horizontal stems. Req'aa has a close affinity with Thuluth. But Req'aa developed in a different direction from Thuluth -- Req'aa became simplified

Today, Req'aa is the preferred script for handwriting throughout the Arab world
4) NASKH

Naskh was one of the earliest scripts to evolve. It gained popularity only after being redesigned by Ibn Muqlah in the 10th century AD. Naskh later was reformed by Ibn al-Bawaab and others into an elegant script worthy of the Qur'an -- and more Qur'ans have been written in Naskh than in all the other scripts together. Naskh appealed particularly to the ordinary person because the script was relatively easy to read and write. It is usually written with short horizontal stems and with almost equal vertical depth above and below the medial line. The curves are full and deep, the uprights straight and vertical, and the words generally well spaced.

5) THULUTH

Thuluth Script was first formulated in the 7th century AD during the Umayyad caliphate, but it did not develop fully until the late 9th century AD. The name means 'a third' -- perhaps because of the proportion of straight lines to curves, or perhaps because the script was a third the size of another popular contemporary script. Though rarely used for writing the Holy Qur'an, Thuluth has enjoyed enormous popularity as an ornamental script for calligraphic inscriptions, titles, headings and colophons. It is still the most important of all the ornamental scripts.
6) DEEWANI

Deewani Script is an Ottoman development parallel to Shikasteh (broken style). The script was largely developed in the late 15th century AD from the Turkish/Persian Ta'liq by Ibrahim Munif. Deewani later was defined by the famous calligrapher Shaykh Hamdullah, primarily for use in chancelleries. The script is excessively cursive and highly structured with its letters undotted and unconventionally joined together. It uses no vowel marks. Deewani also developed an ornamental variety called Deewani Jali which also was known as Humayuni (Imperial).

ARABIC CALLIGRAPHY

While most faiths have made use of figural images to convey their core convictions, Islam's early theocracy chose words (letters) and their shapes and sizes. Because Islam saw in figural arts a possible implication of idolatry, Islam looked instead to the artistry of calligraphy for religious expression. Safadi, Yasin Hamid (1978) writes,
"The primacy of the word in Islam is reflected in the virtually universal application of calligraphy. Writing is given pride of place on all kinds of objects--objects of everyday use as well as entire wall surface, mosque furniture, the interiors and exteriors of mosques, tombs, and al-kaba, the most famous sanctuary of Islam.

Arabic belongs to the group of Semitic alphabetical scripts in which mainly the consonants are represented. Arabic script is derived from the Aramic Nabataean alphabet. It is a script of 28 letter and uses long but not short vowels. These letters are derived from only 17 distinct forms, distinguished one from one another by a dot or dots placed above or below the letter.

Short vowels are indicated by small diagonal strokes above or below letters. Written without dots and diacritical points, Arabic script looks flat and barren. But when the dots and diacritical points are added, the script come to life like a garden in spring

OTTOMAN ARCHITECTURE

As soon as the Ottoman sultans had conquered Constantinople from the Roman emperors in 1453 AD, they began to build themselves a great new palace, which is now called the Topkapi. Work on the Topkapi palace began in 1459 AD.
The sultan put his palace on land which had been an old olive orchard. Like a Roman villa, or like Domitian's palace in Rome, the palace had several open courtyards with rooms around them.

One part was the Tiled Pavilion, which was a smaller house where the Sultan could live when he wanted to get away from everyone at court. Inside, the house is shaped like a cross, with rooms in each arm of the cross and a small dome over the middle. The walls were covered with clay tiles. It has a big porch in front where the Sultan could sit and watch his sons play polo in the courtyard.

When the builders finished building the palace in 1465 AD, it was a magnificent palace, suitable for the sultan who ruled most of West Asia and Eastern Europe.

FATIMID ARCHITECTURE

As soon as the Fatimid dynasty took over ruling Egypt, in 908 AD, the new rulers of Egypt needed to show how important and strong they were. One way of showing that was to build impressive new buildings like the Al-Azhar Mosque in their new capital, Cairo. The Fatimid rulers named it Al-Azhar Mosque after Fatima Al-Azhar, the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed, the woman the Fatimid dynasty is named after.
Al-Azhar mosque, like the mosques at Kairouan and Samarra, had a large open courtyard surrounded by rows of columns and a covered prayer hall with five more rows of columns in it.

After that, the Caliphs al-Aziz and his son al-Hakim built a mosque (990-1013 AD). This mosque follows generally the same pattern as the earlier mosque, with a big courtyard and a prayer hall with pointed arches. Three small domes emphasize which side the prayer hall is on. On the opposite side, there's a big entrance gate. It may be entrance gates like this that gave European architects the idea for Romanesque doorways like that of the Abbaye aux Dames in Caen (1050 AD). Like the Romanesque and later Gothic doorways, the door of Al-Hakim Mosque is in three parts, although here only the middle part actually has a door in it.

The Fatimids also built a great wall around Cairo, with several impressive stone gates in it. These towers and gates, built in 1087 AD, are very similar to the castles that William the Conqueror built in Caen (his home in Normandy) about 1050 AD and in London after he had conquered England in 1066 AD.

UMMAYAD ARCHITECTURE

People didn't build a lot of new buildings during the Umayyad period, mainly because they were busy getting organized after the Islamic conquests, and because the Umayyad dynasty didn't rule very long. One of the first buildings they did build, in the 600's AD, was the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, on the site where the Jewish tempe had been before the Romans destroyed it. Right away you can see that Islamic mosques are very different from Christian churches. Instead of being made like a Roman basilica, long and narrow, the Dome of the Rock is hexagonal (six-sided). The architect may have been thinking of Roman funeral chapels, which were sometimes polygonal (many-sided) like this, or he may have been thinking of early Christian baptistries, which also were polygonal.
Another early Umayyad building was the Great Mosque in the Umayyad capital of Damascus (in modern Syria), which was built about 710 AD. .This was built more like a Christian church but you'll notice there are no pictures of people on it - only plants and buildings.

A man not progressing is not standing still. He is stagnating

The candle is not there to illuminate itself

Let us not Forget Who We Really Are & What We Can Do

Instead Of Following Others We Can Set Our On Example

And Prove The Power Within Us

CalliGraPhY

No tale tells all.But the book The Quran Tells Us about everything

It will Reamin ForEver

Reflect on the work of art and you may attain to the artist

In the Islamic context, calligraphy refers to the artistic writing of the Arabic script, either in the Arabic language or in other languages transcribed with the Arabic script. Originally, Islamic calligraphy was an expedient to ensure legibility. It soon became the primary visual art