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Non-Descender and All-Cap Arabic Writing

Non-Descender and All-Cap Arabic Writing Contrary to the common belief of Arabic language users that the Arabic writing system has descenders as an inherent quality, some historical examples demonstrate that there were some artistic attempts to create non-descender, all-cap calligraphic systems, but they have never been studied as a phenomenon. This article draws attention to the existence of these examples, and analyses and classifies them according to their form.The article begins with an analysis of the current Arabic writing system in terms of descenders, differentiating between artistic and functional writing, defining the need for harmonious balance in artistic writing, and demonstrating that descenders do disrupt the balance in Arabic writing, which could be considered as an ascender-system.Then, historical examples of the non-descender system are introduced, categorised into four visual stages, and the descender handling for each stage is described; all-capital letter examples are then introduced.Finally, some historical texts describing the beauty of calligraphy in this specific system of writing are analysed.Abbreviations: MET: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org; LACMA: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, www.lacma.org; No. : Accession Number http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Al-Masaq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean Taylor & Francis

Non-Descender and All-Cap Arabic Writing

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Non-Descender and All-Cap Arabic Writing

Abstract

Contrary to the common belief of Arabic language users that the Arabic writing system has descenders as an inherent quality, some historical examples demonstrate that there were some artistic attempts to create non-descender, all-cap calligraphic systems, but they have never been studied as a phenomenon. This article draws attention to the existence of these examples, and analyses and classifies them according to their form.The article begins with an analysis of the current Arabic writing...
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2018 Society for the Medieval Mediterranean
ISSN
1473-348X
eISSN
0950-3110
DOI
10.1080/09503110.2018.1479361
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Contrary to the common belief of Arabic language users that the Arabic writing system has descenders as an inherent quality, some historical examples demonstrate that there were some artistic attempts to create non-descender, all-cap calligraphic systems, but they have never been studied as a phenomenon. This article draws attention to the existence of these examples, and analyses and classifies them according to their form.The article begins with an analysis of the current Arabic writing system in terms of descenders, differentiating between artistic and functional writing, defining the need for harmonious balance in artistic writing, and demonstrating that descenders do disrupt the balance in Arabic writing, which could be considered as an ascender-system.Then, historical examples of the non-descender system are introduced, categorised into four visual stages, and the descender handling for each stage is described; all-capital letter examples are then introduced.Finally, some historical texts describing the beauty of calligraphy in this specific system of writing are analysed.Abbreviations: MET: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org; LACMA: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, www.lacma.org; No. : Accession Number

Journal

Al-Masaq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean – Taylor & Francis

Published: May 4, 2018

Keywords: All-cap Arabic; Arabic calligraphy; Non-descender Arabic; Islamic art

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