Nasta'liq script
Nasta'liq (نستعلیق
nasta'līq) is a calligraphy style for mainly
Persio-Arabic. It was developed in
Iran in the 14th and 15th centuries. It has rarely been used to write Arabic but has been more popular in the Persian and Turkic spheres of influence. Nasta'līq has extensively been (and still is) practiced in
Iran as a form of art. A less elaborate version of Nasta'līq serves as the preferred style for writing
Pashto,
Persian,
Urdū/
Hindustānī and
Uyghur. The Nasta'līq script was also used for writing
Ottoman Turkish.
Nasta'līq is amongst the most fluid calligraphy styles for 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 carbon ink, named
"davat." The nib of a
qalam is usually split in the middle to facilitate
ink absorption.
Two important forms of Nasta'līq panels are
Chalipa and
Siah-Masq. A
Chalipa ("cross," in Persian) panel usually consists of four diagonal hemistiches, 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.
After the
Islamic conquest of Persia, Iranians adopted the
Arabic alphabet and the art of
Arabic calligraphy flourished in Iran alongside other Islamic countries. Apparently,
Mir Ali Tabrizi (14th century) developed Nasta'līq by combining two existing scripts of
Naskh and
Ta'liq. Hence, it was originally called Naskh-Ta'liq.
Nasta'līq thrived gradually and many prominent calligraphists contributed to its splendor and beauty. It is believed that Nasta'līq reached its highest elegance in
Mir Emad's works. The current practice of Nasta'līq is however heavily based on
Mirza Reza Kalhor's manner. Kalhor modified and adapted Nasta'līq to be easily used with printing machines, which in return helped wide dissemination of his transcripts. He also devised methods for teaching Nasta'līq 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
Indian subcontinent. During this time, Nasta'līq became in widespread use in
South Asia, including
Pakistan,
India, and
Bangladesh. The influence remains to this day. In Pākistān, almost everything in Urdu is written in the script, and you see more Nasta'līq in this country than anywhere else in the world. In
Hyderābād,
Lakʰnau, and other cities in India with large Urdu-speaking populations, many street signs and such are written in Nasta'līq. The situation of Nasta'līq in
Bangladesh used to be the same as in Pākistān until
1971, when Urdū ceased to remain an official language of the country. Today, only a few neighborhoods (mostly inhabited by
Bihāris) in
Ḍʰākā and
Chiṭṭagong retain the influence of the Persian and Nasta'līq of the Mughals.Nasta'līq is a descendant of
Naskh and
Ta'liq.
Shekasteh Nasta'liq (literarily "broken Nasta'līq") style is a successor of Nasta'līq.
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Mir Ali Tabrizi*
Mir Emad*
Mirza Buzurg-i-Nuri*
Mishkín-QalamAnd 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.
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 Nasta'līq disciple was supposed to qualify him/herself spiritually for being a calligrapher, besides learning how to prepare
qalam, ink, paper and more importantly master Nasta'līq. For instance see
Adab al-Masq, a manual of penmanship, attributed to
Mir Emad.
Producing high quality Nasta'līq in print is a demanding process. For example,
Monotype's attempt to implement Nasta'līq for photo composer typesetting resulted in a repertoire of 20,000 different
glyphs.
Nastaleeq Typography first started with the attempts to develop a metallic type for the script but all such efforts failed. Fort William Collage developed a Nastaleeq Type but that was not close to Nastaleeq and hence never used other then the collage 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 type, thousands of pieces are required.
Later on Monotype also worked on Nastaleeq Typography. Monotype attempt was in conjunction with a Pakistani industrialist Mr. Ahmad Jameel Mriza who himself is a calligrapher. Mr. Mirza wrote more then 20,000 frequently used ligatures or words for Urdu to form that database of glyphs. This system was named Noori Nastaleeq. Noori Nastaleeq was implemented by Monotype on there LaserComp Machine in early eighties costing 10 million Pakistani Rupee per unit at that time. This system was purchased by an Urdu daily newspaper daily Jang. But later on, as the IBM PC came into market, this database of glyphs was stolen and its PC Interfaces were developed by various companies and individuals. Examples of such interfaces are InPage, Surkhaab, and Shahkaar etc.
Modern Nastaleeq Typography begins with Pak Data Management Services Nafees Raqim and Jauher Nastaleeq. Nafees Raqim was basically an ASCII mapped font following the Lahori Style of Nastaleeq which worked in its own environment, an ActiveX control and was a pure commercial effort. It's still in use but is not open for the masses to use. Jauher Nastaleeq is another effort by PDMS which resembles Noori Nastaleeq and hence follows the Dehelvi Ravish of the script. But key difference between Nafees Raqim and Jauher Nastaleeq is that Jauher is Unicode based OpenType font. It means that you can use it in Windows 2000/Windows XP and Microsoft Office and any other application as well. Jauher Nastaleeq is also not available to the masses as it's a pure commercial effort. However, for a sample, go to
UrduNews which embeds Jauher through Microsoft's WEFT Technology. For a sample of Nafees Raqim, please visit
Dewaan-e-Ghaalib but you'll have to download an ActiveX control in order to view this site.
First publicly available attempt at developing Unicode based OpenType Nastaleeq font was Nafees Nastaleeq. This font was developed by FAST University in Pakistan by a team of four people led by Dr. Sarmad Hussain, other including Aamir Wali, Aatif Gulzar and the 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 some American Grant but later on team decided not to disclose its internals and as a result font is still free to use but sources are not available to the public. Due to massive joining and mark placement rules, this font has serious performance issues and is nowhere used. Its use is only limited to few lines because on larger amounts of text, Nafees Nastaleeq makes the Rendering Process quite slow.
Later on, Dr. Attash Durrani of Center of Excellence for Urdu Informatics initiated a project to develop a standard Unicode based OpenType Nastaleeq font named Pak Nastaleeq funded by Government of Pakistan. Mr. Mohsin Shafeeque Hijazee was the one responsible for the implementation and contextual analysis of Nastaleeq as they were not publicly available at that time. Using some mathematical modeling, he reduced the joining rules first from 100 to 25 and then from 25 to only 2 joining rules. This font is yet in its Beta ages and resembles Noori Nastaleeq following Dehelvi Script. Only 200 shapes, 2 joining rules, 5 mark placement rules, 1 Cursive Attachment rule and 0 ligatures, this font is highly efficient to use and targeted for both, the Desktop Publishing and the World Wide Web.
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Arabic calligraphy*
Hindustānī*
Urdū* Iranian Calligraphers Association [
1]
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Short introduction to Persian calligraphy (in french)*
Free Open Type Unicode compliant fonts covering both Nasta'liq and Naskh*
Free True Type font covering basic Nasta'liq*
Free Nasta'liq Writer from SIL (Macintosh only)
