Large 4to. 339 pp., English & Arabic text, profusely illustrated in colour & b/w illustration, cloth in d/w, biblio, copy in mint condition, new, privately printed, Doha, first edition, 2015.

Synopsis

“ Within few decades of the evolution of Islam, writing became widespread after having confined to a few people. The spread of Arabic calligraphy was a corollary of the spread of the Arabic language. with the Islamic conquests of Persia, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Africa and the countries of Wadi Rum, the Arabic language spread in all these regions. Arabic calligraphy inherited the scripts of the Himyarite languages in Yemen, and the Nabataen, Safavid, Thamudic and Allihanih script in the north, replacing all of them with Arabic calligraphy. When Islam reached Egypt, Arabic calligraphy the Coptic calligraphy and the Barbaric calligraphy in Morocco.
Without writing copies of the Qur’an, Arabic calligraphy would not have reached its full elegance and creativity as calligraphers competed to produce the most beautiful presentation of Arabic script on the pages of the Holy Qur’an”. [The author].