A Handbook Of Persian Calligraphy And Related Arts

This volume puts together a first-of-a-kind handbook, and contains the most important termini technici, expressions, and techniques connected to the traditional art of Persian calligraphy, calligraphy as well as related arts, like illumination, historiated painting, book binding, etc. The content is based on thirty prominent classical Persian treatises, composed between twelfth and twentieth centuries.

Hamid Ghelichkhani, a calligrapher and scholar, has collected terms and expressions specific to Persian calligraphy in the first book of its kind. Descriptions and images are based on the 1000-year history of this art in Iran.

This book is an exploratory adventure to defamiliarize calligraphy, especially Persian Nastaliq calligraphic letterforms, and to look beyond the tradition that has always considered calligraphy as pursuant to and subordinate to linguistic practices. Calligraphy can be considered a visual communicative system with different means of meaning-making or as a medium through which meaning is made and expression is conveyed via a complex grammar. This study looks at calligraphy as a systematic means in the field of visual communication, rather than as a one-dimensional and ad hoc means of providing visual beauty and aesthetic enjoyment. Revolving around different insights of multimodal social semiotics, the volume relies on the findings of a corpus study of Persian Nastaliq calligraphy. The research emphasizes the way in which letterforms, regardless of conventions in language, are applied as graphically meaningful forms that convey individual distinct meanings. This volume on Persian Nastaliq calligraphy will be inspirational to visual artists, designers, calligraphers, writers, linguists, and visual communicators. With an introduction to social semiotics, this work will be of interest to students and scholars interested in visual arts, media and communication, and semiotics.

"The display offers a rich gateway to a variety of calligraphic styles, including Naskh & Riqqa', Ta'liq and Nasta'liq, Shikasteh and Siyah Mashq. It also highlights the contributions of such prominent and renowned calligraphers as Mir Imad (d.1615) and Dervish Abdul Majid Taliqani (d.1771). The exhibition further introduces calligraphy as a verbal expression with measured cadences, Sufi rhythms and musical scores that transcend time"--Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia.

In Exercising Authority and Representing Rule, András Barati examines twenty-two hitherto unpublished Persian royal decrees issued by various rulers of eighteenth-century Iran and Afghanistan kept at the Āstān-i Quds-i Rażawī in Mashhad. Considering the paucity of primary sources from this period due to relatively frequent political turmoils, he aims to improve this situation by offering the transcription and translation of these original documents as well as a commentary concerning the textual elements, external aspects, and content of the decrees. Making use of previously published documents, András Barati presents the first substantial study on post-Safavid eighteenth-century diplomatics and addresses several issues related to the political, economic, and administrative history of the region in the early modern period.

Comprehensive teaching instruction for Persian calligraphy. This book contains 200 step-by-step lessons providing instructions for the entire Persian alphabet and instructions to combine letters. Even those who do not have Persian language knowledge can learn Farsi and calligraphy from this book.

Shows and describes examples of Persian calligraphy, glass, tile, pottery, lacquer, books, paintings, jewelry, textiles, sculpture, and architecture

The studies collected in this volume, some of them rather difficult of access, date mostly from the last fifteen years and focus primarily on Persian book painting of the 14th to the early 16th centuries. In this period Iran dominated the art of book painting in the Islamic world. The articles reprinted here examine various aspects of this, the golden age of Persian painting. They range from the period of Mongol rule, when the impact of Far Eastern themes and modes radically transformed the heritage bequeathed to Iran by Arab painting - a textbook case of the clash of civilisations - to the dawn of the modern era and the swansong of the classical style of Persian painting under the early Safavids. Yet other articles focus on the roots of book painting in the themes and styles developed in painted ceramics, on medieval Qur'anic calligraphy, on bookbinding and on the remarkably original variations played on the hitherto hackneyed theme of the figural frontispiece by Arab painters. Two major leitmotifs are explored in this selection of essays. One is provided by the constantly varying interpretations of the Shahnama (The Book of Kings), the Persian national epic, and especially the tendency of painters to interpret this familiar text in terms of contemporary politics. The other is the interplay of text and image, which highlights the tendency of painters to strike out on their own and to leave the literal text progressively further behind while they develop plots and sub-plots of their own. These enquiries are set within the context of a concerted effort to explore in detail how Persian painters achieved their most spectacular visual effects. In its combination of general surveys and closely focused analyses of individual manuscripts, this collection of articles will be of interest to specialists in book painting and in Islamic art as a whole.