Nastaʿlīq script

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Chalipa panel, Mir Emad.

Nastaʿlīq (also anglicized as Nastaleeq; نستعليق nastaʿlīq) is one of the main genres and traditionally the predominant style in Persian calligraphy[1] It was developed in Iran in the 14th and 15th centuries. Although it is sometimes used to write Arabic text (where it is known as Taʿliq or Farsi and is mainly used for titles and headings), it has always been more popular in the Persian, Turkic, and South Asian spheres of influence. Nastaʿlīq has extensively been (and still is) practiced in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan as a form of art. A less elaborate version of Nastaʿlīq serves as the preferred style for writing Persian, Kashmiri, and Urdu, and it is often used alongside Naskh for Pashto. Nastaʿlīq was historically used for writing Ottoman Turkish, where it is known as tâlik (not to be confused with a totally different Persian style, also called taʿliq).

Nastaliq is the core script of the Persian writing tradition, and equally important in the areas under its cultural influence. Notably the languages of Afghanistan (Dari, Baluchi, Uzbek, Turkmen, etc.), Pakistan (Punjabi, Urdu, Saraiki, etc.), India (Urdu, Rekhta, Kashmiri), and the Turkic Uyghur language of the Chinese province of Xinjiang, rely on Nastaliq. Under the name Taʿliq has also been beloved by Ottoman calligraphers who developed the Diwani and Ruqah styles from it.

Nastaʿlīq is amongst the most fluid calligraphy styles for the Arabic alphabet. It has short verticals with no serifs, and long horizontal strokes. It is written using a piece of trimmed reed with a tip of 5–10 mm, called "qalam" ("pen," in Arabic and Persian "قلم"), and carbon ink, named "davat." The nib of a qalam is usually split in the middle to facilitate ink absorption.

Two important forms of Nastaʿlīq panels are Chalipa and Siah-Masq. A Chalipa ("cross," in Persian) panel usually consists of four diagonal hemistiches (half-lines) of poetry, clearly signifying a moral, ethical or poetic concept. Siah-Masq ("inked drill") panels however communicate via composition and form, rather than content. In Siah-Masq, repeating a few (sometimes even one) letters or words virtually inks the whole panel. The content is thus of less significance and not clearly accessible.

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[edit] History

Example showing Nastaʿlīq's proportion rules.[2]

After the Islamic conquest of Persia, Iranians adopted the Perso-Arabic script and the art of Arabic calligraphy flourished in Iran alongside other Islamic countries. Apparently, Mir Ali Tabrizi (14th century) developed Nastaʿlīq by combining two existing scripts of Nasḫ and Taʿlīq. Hence, it was originally called Nasḫ-Taʿlīq.

Nastaʿlīq thrived gradually, and many prominent calligraphists contributed to its splendor and beauty. It is believed that{{by whom?}} Nastaʿlīq reached its highest elegance in Mir Emad's works. The current practice of Nastaʿlīq is, however, heavily based on Mirza Reza Kalhor's manner. Kalhor modified and adapted Nastaʿlīq to be easily used with printing machines, which in turn helped wide dissemination of his transcripts. He also devised methods for teaching Nastaʿlīq and specified clear proportional rules for it, which many could follow.

The Mughal Empire used Persian as the court language during their rule over the South Asia. During this time, Nastaʿlīq came into widespread use in South Asia, including Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. The influence remains to this day. In Pakistan, almost everything in Urdu is written in the script, concentrating the greater part of Nasta’līq usage in the world. In Hyderābād, Lucknow, and other cities in India with large Urdu-speaking populations, many street signs and such are written in Nastaʿlīq. Also, The education system in India recognises Urdu as a language of preference to students who wish to opt it as their first language and the quality of the training is of high standards. The situation of Nastaʿlīq in Bangladesh used to be the same as in Pakistan until 1971, when Urdu ceased to remain an official language of the country. Today, only a few neighborhoods (mostly inhabited by Bihāris) in Dhaka and Chittagong retain the influence of the Persian and Nastaʿlīq.

Nastaʿlīq is a descendant of Nasḫ and Taʿlīq. Shekasteh Nasta`liq (literarily "broken Nastaʿlīq") style is a development of Nastaʿlīq.

[edit] Notable Nasta`liq calligraphists

And others: Mirza Jafar Tabrizi, Abdul Rashid Deilami, Sultan Ali Mashadi, Mir Ali Heravi, Emad Ul-Kottab, Gholam Reza Esfehani and Mirza Reza Kalhor.

And among contemporary artists: Hassan Mirkhani, Hossein Mirkhani, Abbas Akhavein and Qolam-Hossein Amirkhani.

[edit] Etiquette

Islamic calligraphy was originally used to adorn Islamic religious texts, specifically the Qur'ān, as pictorial ornaments were prohibited in Islam. Therefore, a sense of sacredness always hovered in the background of calligraphy.

A Nastaʿlīq disciple was supposed to qualify himself spiritually for being a calligrapher, besides learning how to prepare qalam, ink, paper and more importantly master Nastaʿlīq. For instance see Adab al-Masq, a manual of penmanship, attributed to Mir Emad.

[edit] Nasta`liq typesetting

An example of the Nastaʿlīq script used for writing Urdu

Nastaleeq Typography first started with the attempts to develop a metallic type for the script, but all such efforts failed. Fort William College developed a Nastaleeq Type, which was not close enough to Nastaleeq and hence never used other than by the college library to publish its own books. State of Hyderabad Dakan (now in India) also attempted to develop a Nastaleeq Typewriter but this attempt miserably failed and the file was closed with the phrase “Preparation of Nastaleeq on commercial basis is impossible”. Basically, in order to develop such a metal type, thousands of pieces would be required.

Modern Nastaleeq typography began with the invention of Noori Nastaleeq which was first created as a digital font in 1981 through the collaboration of Mirza Ahmad Jamil TI (as Calligrapher) and Monotype Imaging (formerly Monotype Corp & Monotype Typography). Although this was a ground-breaking solution employing over 20,000 ligatures (individually designed character combinations) which provided the most beautiful results, and allowed newspapers such as Pakistan's Daily Jang to use digital typesetting instead of an army of calligraphers, it suffered from two problems in the 1990s: a) its non-availability on standard platforms such as Windows or Mac OS X, and b) the non-WYSIWYG nature of text entry, whereby the document had to be created by commands in Monotype's proprietary page description language.

[edit] Nasta`liq electronic Publishing and DTP

In 1994, InPage Urdu which is a fully functional page layout software for Windows akin to Quark XPress was developed for Pakistan's newspaper industry. This was done by a software development team- Concept Software Pvt Ltd- led by Rarendra Singh and Vijay Gupta, with the input and help of a UK company called Multilingual Solutions (Limited) led by Kamran Rouhi. They licensed and improved the Noori Nastaliq font from Monotype at that time. This font with its vast ligature base of over 20,000 is still used in current versions of the software for Windows. As of 2009 InPage has become Unicode based, supporting more languages, and Faiz Lahori Nastaliq font with Kasheeda has been added to it along with compatibility with OpenType Unicode fonts.

InPage has been widely marketed and sold in the UK, India and elsewhere since 1994, and is utilized in the majority of UK schools and local authorities where Urdu is a main language of pupils and constituents. InPage is also reported to be in use on millions of PCs in India, Pakistan and other country of the world.


[edit] Making of Faiz Lahori Nastaliq

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The Urdu publishing and computing world has long been looking for a new font. A font that is not only aesthetically fine but technically supportive. By developing Faiz Nastaliq, the latest of the three generations of Nastaliq script, we, at Axis SoftMedia Pvt. Ltd., has given the Urdu world a REAL Asian Nastaliq, which is astonishingly close to Persian Nastaliq, unlike the previous Dehalvi and Noori Nastaliq. It is especially designed for quality publishing. Some of the early published samples show its impact and clarity on paper. Wall posters and designs look majestic and extremely presentable in Faiz Nastaliq.

Developing Urdu fonts and software with all the technical nuances has always been very tough and challenging. When Axis decided to develop a unique ligature based Urdu font, it faced with many hurdles. After we managed to zero in on Nastaliq, we decided to create a new Nastaliq font. Because there were many Dehalvi-type Nastaliq not only available in the market but it was ruling the publishing industry to a major extent. But… it has its shortcomings. It never looked as impressive as it was expected. So, we decided to create Lahori Nastaliq. It is an attractive new addition to the already existing fonts which promises to be, arguably, the best of them all.

Because we had decided that this new font would be ligature based, the first task was to find unique ligatures in Urdu language; as well as in Persian and Arabic. In the first phase of rigorous search, 12,000 unique ligatures were found which finally increased to approximately 30,000, with repetitions. 3500 unique Quranic ligatures were found to be included in it, which was never been done while creating earlier fonts. Typing these unique ligatures was equally tough. Many books, old and new dictionaries, Holy Quran, were typed. Though the number of unique ligatures looks amazingly huge, it was not easy, first to find it and then to sort out the unique ones. The whole process took almost half a year, 180 days of sheer hard work, day and most of the nights.

Syed Manzar Hasan Zaidi, Founder and Managing Director, Axis SoftMedia Pvt. Ltd., had finished the task single handedly, but burnt more than six months to sort out unique ligatures. Many months have gone without a glimpse of the destination. Keeping the faith of the team members was also challenging. Microsoft Excel has really been very helpful in sorting out unique ligatures.

After collecting unique ligatures, the task was to get the basic structure of the ligatures written.

Because there were not many calligraphers left in Urdu language, we were hit with another task to find a calligrapher who can copy Faiz Nastaliq with the very same curves and falls and re-create his magic. Many calligraphers were called for the task but none could match the requirement for this ambitious project. Three months passed by then.

While efforts to create a new Lahori Nastaliq through calligraphy reached to an insignificant naught, we decided to take existing calligraphic pieces of Lahori Nastaliq in old books and scripts. After a long discussion, the team liked Lahori Nastaliq created by Late Faiz Mujaddid, arguably one of the finest calligraphers of the century.

The task, in Faiz Saheb's absence, looked unachievable. Then we heard of one his only pupil, Mr. Aslam Kiratpuri, only disciple of Faiz Saheb in the city and a fine calligrapher in his own right. He agreed to re-create the calligraphic pieces but showed his inefficiency in handling it on computer. Although, he introduced Dr. Rehan Ansari, Aslam Kiratpuri's disciple, who learnt calligraphy in his school dayes by Aslam Kiratpuri The best thing about Dr. Rehan was his efficiency in computer; his dedication was an added advantage to the team which boosted the moral to a new high. The task looked achievable once again; we started working, day and night, in all seasons for almost many months.

The ligatures, which were sorted out by Aslam Kiratpuri for final output, were given to Dr. Rehan for designing. He traced those structures by “Muraqqa-e-Faiz”, the only book, and thus the only authentic source, of the Takhtis describing the laws of Lahori Calligrahy. In the meantime, Aslam Kiratpuri was supervising the structures carefully. No need to mention, Syed Manzar was omnipresent all this while. Then it passed on to the font developing team, headed by Syed Manzar and Ahmed Abbas who from there took it to its final conclusion.

A less widely used system, initially developed for the Mac in the 1990s was Pak Data Management Services' Nafees Raqim and Jauher Nastaleeq. Nafees Raqim was basically an ASCII-mapped font following the Lahori Style of Nastaleeq that worked in its own environment, an ActiveX control and was a purely commercial effort. It is still in use but is proprietary software. Jauher Nastaleeq is another effort by PDMS that resembles Noori Nastaleeq and hence follows the Dehelvi Ravish of the script. But a key difference between Nafees Raqim and Jauher Nastaleeq is that Jauher is a Unicode-based OpenType font. This means that you can use it under Windows 2000 or Windows XP, for applications such as Microsoft Office and any other application as well. Jauher Nastaleeq is also not available to the masses as it is proprietary. Some sites, such as UrduNews, embed the Jauher font through Microsoft's WEFT Technology. Alternatively, Nafees Raqim [3] requires downloading an ActiveX control in order to view.

The first publicly available attempt at developing a Unicode-based OpenType Nastaleeq font was Nafees Nastaleeq. This font was developed by FAST-NUCES in Pakistan by a team of four people led by Dr. Sarmad Hussain, others including Aamir Wali, Aatif Gulzar and calligrapher Mr. Jameel-ur-Rehmaan. This team spent 18 months to develop Nafees Nastaleeq following the Lahori Ravish of Nastaleeq. It has 900+ shapes, 103 joining rules, 77 mark placement rules, 15 kerning rules, 24 cursive attachments and 30+ ligatures. Nafees Nastaleeq was to be open source as it was funded by an American grant, but later on the team decided not to disclose its internals, and as a result the font is still free to use but sources are not available to the public. In 11/19/2007 version 1.01 beta was released under a free software license[4], and the source (in the form of VOLT project file) was released. Due to massive joining and mark placement rules, this font has serious performance issues.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Cambridge History of Islam, By P. M. Holt, et al. , Cambridge University Press, 1977, ISBN 0521291380, p. 723.
  2. ^ Esrafil Shirchi, Amozesh khat pouya, Roham Pub., Tehran, 1998. ISBN 964-91846-2-7ba.
  3. ^ "Deewan -e- Ghalib". http://www.pakdata.com/ghalib/. Retrieved 2008-02-14. 
  4. ^ Nafees Nastaleeq License

[edit] Further reading

  • Habib-ollah Feza'eli, Ta'lim-e Khatt, Tehran: Sorush, 1977 (in Persian)
  • Sheila Blair, Islamic Calligraphy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005.

[edit] External links

[edit] French

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