SIGNED MUHAMMAD 'ABD AL-'AZIZ AL-RIFA'I, OTTOMAN TURKEY, 19TH CENTURY

Muhammad 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Rifa'i (Mehmed Abdülaziz Rifai), was born in Maçka near Trabzon in 1871. His family later moved to Istanbul where his father was the Imam in the Akpinar and then the Kagithane mosques. He studied there with the master Filibeli Arif Effendi and quickly gained a reputation as a master calligrapher in a number of hands and styles. In 1895 he was employed a secretary in the government department for the administration of the property of orphans and in 1903 was transferred to the bureau of the Shaykh al-Islam. In 1922 he was invited to Egypt where he copied a Qur'an for King Fuad, and at the latter's instigation, founded two royal schools for the teaching of calligraphy in Cairo. In 1933, apparently oppressed by the Egyptian climate, he asked for permission to return to Istanbul, where he died the following year (M. Ugur Derman, Eternal Letters. From the Abdul Rahman al Owais Collection of Islamic Calligraphy, Sharjah, exhibition catalogue, Sharjah, 2009, pp.252-255).