A comprehensive textbook of the early Arabic Kufic script, written as a complete reference book for calligraphers, designers, and students of art history and the history of Arabic language and scripts. This beautiful and powerful script was derived from the earlier Hijazi Mashq style of Mecca and Medina, which was invented by early Muslim scribes to record the Quran. Today, the many historical manuscripts displayed in numerous museums around the world can attest to development and evolution of this remarkable and versatile script. Authored by master calligrapher, Mousavi Jazayeri, this book is the only book written in English that is solely dedicated to the study, learning and revival of the fascinating script behind the first mature Arabic calligraphic style, which was the official script of the Islamic Near East for centuries, before being replaced by the modern Naskh style. In this handbook, Mousavi Jazayeri who had discovered the lost art of cutting the qalam (pen) for early Kufic more than twenty years ago, explains with detailed, clear illustrations how to write early Kufic using a calligraphic pen and even a regular pen. He guides students patiently through the process involved in creating amazing, modern monograms. With clear, ample examples taken from the old Quranic manuscripts, art history students, font designers, and scholars of the history of the Arabic language and scripts can use this reference book to learn the key aspects of the early Kufic script as a writing system. Mr. Mousavi Jazayeri is joined by two co-authors, Perette E. Michelli, a multi-disciplinary historian of medieval and later art, and Saad D. Abulhab, a known Arabic type designer and independent scholar of the history of Arabic language and scripts. The two co-authors are members of the first international group dedicated to the study and revival of the early Kufic script, Kuficpedia, which was formed a few years ago around the historical achievements of Mr. Mousavi.

Part 30 of the Quran, Juzu' 'Amma, written in the early Arabic Kufic calligraphy style, by Iranian master calligrapher Mousavi Jazayeri

In this beautifully produced, limited print book, Iranian calligraphy master Seyed Mohammad Vahid Mousavi Jazayeri shares his relentless journey to bring alive a magnificent, but largely forgotten, calligraphy art: the early Arabic Kufic calligraphy. In his new generous calligraphy masterpiece that is made available openly in this limited edition print book he does not present the usual "few sentences" seen in most modern calligraphy works, but a complete manuscript. After all, the true challenge of script calligraphy is not only its visual and aesthetic quality and consistency but its utility as a reading and documenting medium. Mousavi Jazayeri's chosen manuscript for his new endeavor is the Glorious Quran, the book that early Kufic was conceived for originally. Early Kufic was the triggering spark for the art of calligraphy's magnificent journey through the Islamic era, a journey which has lasted for more than 14 centuries. In this work, as in all his previous pioneer research and art work, Mousavi Jazayeri digs fearlessly deep into the roots of Arabic calligraphy and script, choosing its original and natural incubating medium: the Quran. In the many pages of this astonishing resurrected Quranic manuscript, Mousavi Jazayeri not only invites its readers to absorb the magnificent spiritual teachings of Surat al- Mulk, but he dares them to become living witnesses of a great, long-gone Islamic age. This limited edition book is envisaged as the first of a series of books that will eventually reproduce, surah by surah, a full modern-day copy of the Quran in its earliest script: the Arabic Kufic script.

This reference book studies the script, art, and culture of the early Arabic Kufic calligraphy. It presents around hundred historical stone inscriptions, coins, and manuscripts from early-Islamic Persia. In their book, the primary author and famed Iranian early Kufic expert and calligrapher, S.M.V. Mousavi Jazayeri, and his fellow co-authors read and analyze with meticulous detail the calligraphy, script, and art work of thirty-seven Kufic gravestone inscriptions, mainly from the Yazd providence of Iran. The carefully-selected inscriptional sample in this book illustrates the remarkable power and versatility of this early script, and the extent of the global role played by it in shaping societies and cultures of a vast area extending from China to Spain.

No civilization has revered the Word more deeply than Islam, and in none has calligraphy become so major and universal an art form. This superbly illustrated book, which includes examples of the work of many of the most famous calligraphers of all time, is the first to allow the reader to follow calligraphy from its origins in pre-Islamic times, through its reform with the invention of the strict rules which make it so disciplined an art and which led to its periods of greatest flowering, right up tot he innovations of the present century. But writing is not confined to the pen, inscriptions appear virtually everywhere--on furniture and textiles, on metalware and ceramics, and most strikingly of all, on buildings. The breadth of approach of text and illustrations makes this a book of equal interest to the Westerner and the Muslim, the traveller and the museum visitor, the student and the artist. -- Back cover