SIGNED YA'QUT AL-NURI, ZENGID MOSUL, DATED 14 DHU'L-QADA AH 601/3 JULY 1205 AD

The eleventh and twelfth centuries brought changes to Qur’anic scripts, which would see the use of kufic and its derived ‘New Style’ become ever more limited. They were replaced by the so-called ‘six pens’, rounded scripts elevated to remarkable levels of aesthetic brilliance and geometric perfection. This is a development which in the past has been attributed to the skills of a number of almost-mythical calligraphers, credited with single-handedly reforming scripts. Recent scholarship, however, has moved towards a more gradualist model, which emphasises the role played by lesser-known scribes who consolidated, disseminated, and developed scripts which they had learnt from these luminaries. Following the publication of an article by Nassar M. Mansour on the manuscript offered here, it is possible to confidently attribute it to the work of one of these scribes who played a vital role into the codification of the Arabic script as it is written today (Nassar M. Mansour, 'A unique Arabic manuscript copied by Ya'qut al-Nouri al-Mouselli (d. 618 H/1221 CE): Analytical study of the artistic features of Ya'qut al-Mouselli's style in calligraphy', al-Majalla al-Urduniyya lil-tarikh w al-athar, 2009, pp.1-31).

Ya’qut al-Nuri is mentioned in important medieval treatises and biographical dictionaries, such as that of Ibn Khallikan (1211-1282 AD) whose Lives of Eminent Men was important in ensuring the reputation of many other calligraphers and men of knowledge in his day. His laqab al-Nuri is thought to be a reference to his years of service for Nur al-Din Arsalan Shah, the Zengid amir of Mosul (d. 1211). He also became known as al-Mawsili, in reference to the city where he spent much of his life. As for the rest of his name, it suggests that he was not himself of Arabic origin. The name Ya’qut as well as the highly generic kunya ‘ibn ‘Abd Allah’ – son of the servant of God – was a name widely used when slaves converted to Islam and were given new names. The later calligrapher Ya’qut al-Musta’simi was also known as ibn ‘Abd Allah, since he had been born in Amasya, then part of the Byzantine Empire, and lived in Baghdad as a slave of the caliph al-Musta’sim billah (David James, “The Problem of Ya’qut al-Musastimi”, in The Master Scribes, London, 1992, p.58). The exact date when our scribe came to Mosul is not known: he is reported to have studied the diwan of al-Mutanabi and the maqamat of al-Hariri under Ibn al-Dahhan al-Nahwi, who died in AH 569/1173 AD, suggesting that Ya’qut probably arrived in Mosul before that. The date and place of birth of our Ya’qut is not known, though Ibn Khallikan reports that at the time of his death in AH 618/1221 AD he was an old man and had lived a long life (Nassar M. Mansour, op.cit., p.4).

Ya’qut al-Nuri learnt the art of calligraphy from a female teacher, Sheikha Shahada bint al-Abri (d. AH 574/1178 AD) who instructed him in the style of ibn al-Bawwab. When he gained mastery of the script, he became a teacher, and is reported to have attracted students from across the area to Mosul. A poem survives written about him by Najib al-Din Husain al-Wasiti, praising his skill as a calligrapher. As a teacher, he ensured the consolidation of the style of Ibn al-Bawwab not only in Mosul, but across the wider Islamic world. One of his students was Abu’l-Hasan Ali ibn Zengi, also known as al-Wali al-Ajami, is remembered as one of the scribes who brought Ibn al-Bawwab’s style to Egypt, where it continued to flourish even into the 16^th century. Al-Tayyibi, one of the last great Mamluk calligraphers, wrote a manual which dwelt at great length on the impact of Ibn al-Bawwab, but had little to say of later Abbasid calligraphers (Doris Behrens-Abouseif, The Book in Mamluk Egypt and Syria, Leiden, 2019, p.104).

Of these late Abbasid calligraphers, it is Ya’qut al-Musta’simi who has enjoyed the most fame, having been secretary of the last ‘Abbasid caliph and then the protégé of Juvayni following the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258. Like ibn al-Bawwab, however, surviving material in his name is scarce: Rashid al-Din was only able to find ten books by him for the Mongol royal library only a few years after al-Musta’simi’s death. The demand for works by him, however, led to the production of fakes and facsimiles in large numbers as well as mis-attributions like that which we see on the present manuscript. Here, an opening page has been added with a suggestion that ‘al-Nuri’ was a name taken by al-Musta’simi after the fall of Baghdad. The style of the illumination, which has also been laid down on the original frontispiece, suggests that these alterations were made in Iran in the sixteenth century. The alterations, however, did not go so far as scrubbing the date in the colophon at the back of the manuscript, which still reads AH 601/1205 AD, when Ya’qut al-Musta’simi could have been no more than a child, had he even been born at all. Seeing past this later attribution and looking to the original signature, however, reveals this manuscript to be the work of another who, though less well known, was also a pioneer in the development of Arabic round scripts in the first half of the thirteenth century.