Geometry of Islamic Calligraphy: History, Sources, and Meaning

FAIN: FT-264875-19

Esra Akin-Kivanc
University of South Florida (Tampa, FL 33620-9951)

Research leading to two articles on the geometrical foundations of pre-modern Islamic calligraphy.

In the pre-modern Islamic world, calligraphy was commonly considered to be the most revered branch of art. Despite the art form’s centuries-old history, distinctive idiom, and its popularity from China to Spain, there exists no scholarship that explores the structural principles of Islamic calligraphic compositions. I am requesting a grant to continue research on two articles that I am preparing on a corpus of hitherto unstudied inscriptions designed according to the principles of symmetry identified in geometry, specifically, friezes and medallions. My initial analyses of these textual compositions led me to believe that pre-modern calligraphers were knowledgeable of, and incorporated into their art, contemporary discourses and practices in mathematics. This significant finding, in turn, points to an intersection between art and science, a nuanced understanding of which is essential for a study of the history and meaning of Islamic ornament and its reiterations in non-Islamic art. [Edited by staff]

Associated Products

In the Mirror of the Other: Imprints of Muslim-Christian Encounters in the Late Antique and Early Medieval Mediterranean (Article)
Title: In the Mirror of the Other: Imprints of Muslim-Christian Encounters in the Late Antique and Early Medieval Mediterranean
Author: Esra Akin-KIvanc
Abstract: This article investigates a hitherto overlooked calligraphic form known in Islamic art as muthanna, mirror writing. Previous scholarship has maintained that mirror compositions originated in Iran around the thirteenth century. Establishing muthanna’s relationship with reversed, repeated, and symmetrically arranged unidirectional inscriptions from pre- and non-Islamic contexts, the study traces the art form’s history to late Antiquity—at least five centuries earlier than previously believed, when Byzantine and Arab forces were fervently negotiating territories, as well as political, religious, and visual identities. An examination of a corpus of textiles attributed to workshops in Palestine-Syria and Egypt reveals the multi-cultural, multi-religious, and multi-linguistic anatomy of mirror compositions. A silk fragment featuring the monogram of Heraclius helps place mirror compositions to the seventh century C.E. with greater certainty, affirming the author’s proposition that mirror writing was practiced by non-Muslim artists before the principles of Islamic calligraphy were firmly established. This new evidence reinforces the importance of celebrating muthanna not as an isolated Islamic art form, as has been the common approach, but rather as a hybrid product of centuries-old experiments with writing directionalities even prior to the advent of Islam. Furthermore, texts featured in inscriptions that were disseminated from Abbasid Baghdad and Fatimid Egypt between the tenth and twelfth centuries suggest that Muslims’ appropriation of this late Antique art form was not a mere result of uncalculated acculturation. Rather, muthanna’s adoption in Islamic art was a deliberate religiopolitical intervention at a time when an expanding, if politically divided, Muslim empire was striving to formulate a simultaneously familiar and distinct aesthetic idiom fit for its imperial vision.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780884024835
Primary URL Description: Publisher's website
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Dumbarton Oaks Papers, vol. 75 (2021)
Publisher: Harvard University Press, Dumbarton Oaks Papers

Muthanna / Mirror Writing in Islamic Calligraphy: History, Theory, and Aesthetics (Book)
Title: Muthanna / Mirror Writing in Islamic Calligraphy: History, Theory, and Aesthetics
Author: Esra Akin-Kivanc
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=253049202
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry (253049202)
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 253049202

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