Talk:Arabic calligraphy

[Animation]

I find the animation a bit annoying. Can we not just used the final, coloured, image? dab 14:18, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I disagree, I think the animation helps get the message across. ike9898 22:06, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Arabic writing on seal of C. M. J. Frähn

Seal of Christian Martin Frähn.

On the Seal of Christian Martin Frähn - Professor of Orientalistic and Theology, 1826 in St. Petersburg – something is wirtten in Arabic. I took a picture of the seal in Tartu (Estonia). Maybe somone could transcribe and translate the text? The beginning looks sort of like this:

اشّ ع ا

But then? Best regards, Saippuakauppias ⇄ 19:45, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

To not merge on grounds of independent notability. Klbrain (talk) 20:30, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

---

I propose to merge Islamic calligraphy into Arabic calligraphy. Much of content in the Islamic calligraphy article is redundant. Yes, not all Arabic calligraphy is Islamic, and yes, not all Islamic calligraphy is done by Arabs, but almost all Islamic calligraphy is done with Arabic script. For this reason, the Islamic calligraphy article should be merged into Arabic calligraphy. Note that the title is Arabic calligraphy and not Arab calligraphy. إيان (talk) 14:22, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

I ardently disagree, as recent scholarship favors a more inclusive and ethnographic portrayal, and employs nuanced terms such as "Perso-Arabic script" etc, not just the over-simplistic "Arabic Script". The reason is that the entire family is, properly speaking, "Arabic-derived" for non-Arabic languages that are clearly not actually Arabic(!) They contain many letters and conventions that are never used in Arabic handwriting, ever (though some have been adapted, like the letter is used چ in Egypt for foreign sounds, though it is not the same sound as in Persian and Urdu at all). To imply that a Persian calligrapher writing poems of Hafiz in, say, nasta‘liq or shikasta is somehow writing "Arabic calligraphy" is a blatant mischaracterization. For supporting academic sources, please refer to recent works by esteemed Islamic Art historians — whom do not employ "Arabic Calligraphy" as a descriptive alone — such Prof. Sheila Blair's excellent overview in her book Islamic Calligraphy(University of Edinburgh Press, 2006) and Harvard Prof. David Roxburgh's excellent article "'The Eye is Favored for Seeing the Writing's Form': On the Sensual and the Sensuous in Islamic Calligraphy.” Muqarnas, 25. (Leiden: Brill, 2008): 275-98.Jemiljan (talk) 22:51, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

I also disagree, as Islamic calligraphy is clearly the more general notion, encompassing at least three different calligraphic traditions (Arabic, Persion and Ottoman, if not Indian, too). Also, creations by Arab artists who are not expressing Islamic notions in their calligraphy should be treated separately from religiously inspired works. And finally, the article of Islamic calligraphy is already very long, and, in my opinion, we should try to keep wp articles succcinct. Munfarid1 (talk) 21:42, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

I also disagree, and not because of some abstract desire to keep article succinct. Both the linguistic frame (Arabic) and the Islamic frame are vast subjects. They may be largely conjoined by historical particulars (from which there are many exceptions, as noted above) but this only serves to confuse and conflate rather than to illuminate. Wikipedia is not in the business of sensitive treatment of cultural circumstance, but of being an encyclopedia, which necessarily means adopting a strong bias toward an analytic rather than a synthetic posture. Coming from a fairly strong grounding in linguistics, and a shockingly thin grounding in religious tradition—as only a PK (preacher's kid) can manage to pull off—I find it more than challenging enough to cope with Arabic first, Islam second. Arabic and Chinese are known to be languages of antiquity with literary traditions to rival English (broadly including its Latin, Greek, French, and Germanic tributaries). Arabic probably doesn't even need these tributaries to stand equal (though I'm guessing that the Persian and Sanskrit influences are non-trivial). As for Islam, it's an object of vast Talmudic dimension all by itself—without even counting Arabic, which is only one of its many linguistic traditions. It's a common complaint since 9/11 that Islamophobes collapse the Arabic/Islam world down to a caricature. In some ways the Arabic/Islamic world prefers to encourage this muddle in some dimensions, in much the same way that women sometimes exult in their feminine mystique. (Know me as I am, but don't cut me apart to get there.) Yet that is not the prevailing ethos on Wikipedia. Here we treat the anatomical and behavioural aspects of human reproduction on separate pages for good reason. Both subjects are vast and intricately overlapping; the vast intricacy and depth of this overlap is more of a bug than a feature in the encyclopedia context. — MaxEnt 15:18, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

•  Comment: The most important unifying feature of the different calligraphic traditions comprised in these two articles (Arabic calligraphy and Islamic calligraphy) is the script itself—Arabic script—in its many contemporary and historic variations: Maghrebi script, Ottoman script, Persian script, Urdu script, Sino-Arabic script, etc. In fact, the variations are quite negligible and when a typeface is released for Arabic, it is also typically augmented with the necessary glyphs to be used for the aforementioned variants as well.

Writing in these scripts is not always strictly Islamic, but it is by nature written in Arabic script (or a local variant). The phrasing "Islamic calligraphy" divorces the subject from its aspects that are not strictly Islamic: the Christian use of the script, the historical Jewish use of the script, secular uses of the script for literature, journalism, art, etc. The Islamic calligraphy article, for example, discusses the Hurufiyya movement—a modern art movement that is far, far removed from religious contexts—at length.

If the Islamic calligraphy article is to remain, it should deal with calligraphy in how it relates explicitly to the religion of Islam, while other topics, such as the history and evolution of the script, should go in the more general Arabic calligraphy article. (And topics that are explicitly Persian, for example, can be discussed in further detail at Persian calligraphy, and so on. إيان (talk) 16:36, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Lead Section

Does the lead include a brief description of the article's major sections? I find that the lead section does not mention many of the major sections discussed in the article such as the different pens or list of calligraphers. Justinhong15 (talk) 12:51, 5 October 2021 (UTC)Justinhong15

Wiki Education assignment: MIT 398 Intercultural International Communication

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 August 2023 and 5 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Fajerwiki2023 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Fajerwiki2023 (talk) 14:50, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Graphic Design History

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2023 and 15 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): HAHA2424, Xoxomira (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Ktrachsel01 (talk) 01:07, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Explaining why I reverted two edits here. (I note that another edit was also reverted before this, [1].) In short: the content is aiming for discussion of appropriate subtopics, but there are fundamental problems with the content itself, such as lack of sources and writing style, which need more than superficial fixes:

• In this edit, the cited source barely speaks of calligraphy. The included quote, for example (though the first quotation mark is missing by the way), discusses Arab art in general and doesn't refer explicitly to calligraphy. And while I think it's obvious that Arabic calligraphy remains an art form today and there should be plenty to say about it, there's nothing specific here that seems to be supported by the source. The sentence "There is also a huge influence on the use of arabic words in tattoos, which seems to be a controversial topic." seems to be an editor's own opinion or analysis, which is not appropriate for Wikipedia (see WP:OR), unless it can be revised to reflect what reliable sources say directly about it.
• In this edit, there is no source cited, and to be honest there's nothing here that's substantial. The statements are both too vague and not entirely accurate. (In the meantime, this topic is also covered at Islamic calligraphy.)

More sources and more specific information would probably help to make these additions more useful. Cited sources should also support content directly and clearly, without requiring editors/readers to fill in the blanks themselves or to make their own interpretations to understand the connection.

From a quick search, some examples of high-quality scholarly sources that present or future editors could use include Islamic Calligraphy by Sheila Blair (2006; see last chapter for contemporary art, but also relevant for most of the article's topic) or A History of Arab Graphic Design by Shehab & Nawar (2020; it discusses calligraphy throughout), among others. The Calligraffiti article also seems to contain some relevant information and sources when it comes to street art. R Prazeres (talk) 23:14, 15 December 2023 (UTC)