One of the most exciting experiences of an orientalist is the discovery of mutual relations between various aspects of Islamic culture. The study of the visual arts in Islam excellently complements that of poetry, and poetry can often help to elucidate particular aspects of miniature painting and, even more, of calligraphy. For Islam, the first religion to distinguish between those who were blessed by a Divine Scripture and those who were not, has always largely dwelt upon the importance of the written word. A contemporary historian of medieval philosophy at Harvard has even coined the term “inliberation” God, God’s becoming manifest through a book for Islam, denote the theological concept corresponding to the Christian “incarnation”, God being manifest in a human being.

It is therefore small wonder that the imagery of letters and writing plays such an immense role in the history of Islamic poetry. Beginning with the early Sufis of the 8th and 9th centuries who realized in the letter “alif” the perfect symbol of God’s unity and unicity, there is barely a poet in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian not to mention those writing in Urdu, Sindhi, Punjabi, and Pushto, and even in the vernaculars of Islamic Africa, who has not dwelt upon the imagery of letters, for here he could be sure that his allusions were under-stood by everyone in the Islamic world, including the illiterate at the least sensed the deep meaning of letters, and knew of their mysterious powers

Calligraphy by Sadequain “Kalma-e-Tayeba”

Powerful Nakshi and wing like Nastaliq were perfected in every new variants, and when the calligraphers felt themselves as links in the golden chain that went back to their alleged first master, Ali ibn Abi Talib, then the poets and prose writers knew enough of the artistic tradition to play skillfully with the names of Ibn Muqla or Yaqut, the two early masters of Arabic calligraphy. Were not their red tears a veritable “ibn muqla,” son of the eyeball”, writing red lines on their parchment-like cheeks? And the friend’s emerald-colored fresh down, written in minute “ghubar” (dust) script by the pen of destiny on the page of the face was comparable only to the ruby script of Yaqut, and so were the “mim of the tiny mouth, the “sad” of the eyes, and the “hun” of the eyebrows. How many poets have sung, in the course of time, of the pen of destiny which had written the letters of their fate in black ink! Or else, they might compare their heart to a book on which verses of longing and love were written from pre-eternity and the sinners had to wash off with their tears the ink of their sins which had blackened books of their actions: for ink was solvable in water.

It was probably not a mere accident that the Shakista style, the most complicated broken genre derived from Nastaliq was invented in the late 17th century, exactly at a time when in Indo-Persian poetry the term “shikast” “broken”, was used as a kind of key word. Whosoever has read Bedil’s poetry knows how often he speaks of the state of “being broken” or of the necessity of breaking down: the political and social breakdown of the Mughal Empire during his time is reflected in his imagery as such as the sufi teachings of breaking the lower self. Shikasta remained the favorite style for Persian calligraphers during the 18th and 19th centuries, so much that many a page resembles more a modern painting than a piece of intelligible writing.

Thus Ghalib’s famous first line in his Urdu Diwan condenses a century old tradition. Every human being is a letter, written by the hand of the master calligrapher, God, but wearing the paper shirt, since letters become visible only on paper; a paper shirt, however was in medieval Islamic lore the dress of the complainant at court. Hence, Ghalib’s initial verse sums up the complaint of every created being against the creator-calligrapher who has put letters together in strange ways, or has written some of them on brittle paper, or coarse card-board, and some on beautifully illuminated vellum. We should remember that a contemporary author on Turkish calligraphy Ismayil Hakki Baltacioglu, has once compared the letters of the Arabic alphabet to human beings who have sympathies and antipathies, so that some of them cannot be put side by side in a truly elegant piece of calligraphy.

It is but natural that a modern artist should have been inspired by Ghalib’s verses, Sadequain is one of the few calligraphers and painters who are aware not only of the brilliant beautiful side of the letters, but also of the weird and even scaring possibilities they contain. Those artists in Middle Islamic Ages who invented dragons and animal heads from letter engraved on copper and silver belong to his ancestors in art, and so are those poets who, in the Hurufi tradition, sensed the innate power of the letters as bears of the evelation not only in the Quran but also in human faces and bodies. It seems typical that Sadequain started out from Ghalib and developed his calligraphical work proper out of the mediation of the poetical tradition until he reached the stage where to turn to the fountainhead of inspiration, BOOK in itself the QURAN.

The same holds true for the calligraphers. The calligraphies representing religious formulas by a young Iraqi lady, Wasma Chorbachi, recall once more the high days of Persian ceramic inscriptions in the late 9th century, and the squared Kufic plates composed by her compatriot, Issam as-Said, show the almost infinite possibilities of repeating the profession of faith or the name of God and His messenger in ever new combinations, or of rejuvenating inherited patterns of squared Kufic for Quranic verses by applying the most delicate techniques of color etching. One may also think of an amateur calligrapher of Iran, Hosyn Ziai, whose pictures consist exclusively of intricately woven repetitions of the formula, La ilaha illa howa, sometimes interspersed with a Ya Ali. Calligraphers and painters in Egypt, the Sudan, and Morocco try similar approaches. Developed out of Quranic verses are both textual interpretation and painting, and reflect the meaning of the respective verse by their very shape. The use of material other than smooth paper adds to the strength of his calligraphy; for it takes the observer back to the time when the words of the revelation were noted down on scraps, pieces of hide, stones, and whatever material was at hand.

The most haunting calligraphy and the one which, to my personal feeling, reveals the spirit if Islam, as I a foreigner understand, at its best, is Sadequain’s interpretation of the “kun fayakun,” “Be, and it becomes.” The letters of the words form a spiral nebula, the form out of which new galaxies and suns could slowly develop. The two ends of the two letters “nun” lead us into the unfathomable abysses of Divine creativity, pointing to both the unique act of creation and the continuous flow of energy into
the world.

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