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Lot Essay
This elegant calligraphic panel, written in a monumental muhaqqaq, is by the celebrated Jordanian calligrapher Nassar Mansour (b.1967). Considered one of the most accomplished contemporary Arab calligraphers, he has been exhibited numerous times in institutions across the world including the British Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Islamic Art in Malaysia and the Contemporary Museum of Calligraphy in Moscow. In April 2018, Nassar was awarded The Artistic Creativity Award for his academic and artistic efforts in reviving Muhaqqaq script by the Arab Thought Foundation (ATF).
Mansour is also an academic in the field Islamic calligraphy. He is the author a recent book Sacred Script. Muhaqqaq in Islamic Calligraphy (London, 2011) and recently published Amshaq al-Khatt al-Muhaqqaq the first Muhaqqaq copybook of its kind in the history of Islamic calligraphy (Amman, 2017).
Muhaqqaq is one of the ‘six scripts’ of classical Islamic calligraphy and was popular in Cairo under the Mamluks and in the Eastern Islamic world for copying Qur’an manuscripts until around the 16th century, when the smaller naskh script became more frequently employed. In his Kitab al-Fihrist written in 987 AD, Ibn al-Nadim write ‘the prettiest amongst the scripts is the delicate muhaqqaq’.
This calligraphy shows the muhaqqaq script at its best. Mansour uses alternating lines of gold and sepia ink, inspired by the Ilkhanid Qur’an copied for the Sultan Uljaytu by the calligrapher Ahmad al-Suhrawardi in the 14th century. The illumination is inspired by the work of the Mamluk artist Muhammad ibn Mubadir who was commissioned for Sultan Baybars’s famous Qur’an (preserved at the British Library) in the late 14th century.
Mansour is also an academic in the field Islamic calligraphy. He is the author a recent book Sacred Script. Muhaqqaq in Islamic Calligraphy (London, 2011) and recently published Amshaq al-Khatt al-Muhaqqaq the first Muhaqqaq copybook of its kind in the history of Islamic calligraphy (Amman, 2017).
Muhaqqaq is one of the ‘six scripts’ of classical Islamic calligraphy and was popular in Cairo under the Mamluks and in the Eastern Islamic world for copying Qur’an manuscripts until around the 16th century, when the smaller naskh script became more frequently employed. In his Kitab al-Fihrist written in 987 AD, Ibn al-Nadim write ‘the prettiest amongst the scripts is the delicate muhaqqaq’.
This calligraphy shows the muhaqqaq script at its best. Mansour uses alternating lines of gold and sepia ink, inspired by the Ilkhanid Qur’an copied for the Sultan Uljaytu by the calligrapher Ahmad al-Suhrawardi in the 14th century. The illumination is inspired by the work of the Mamluk artist Muhammad ibn Mubadir who was commissioned for Sultan Baybars’s famous Qur’an (preserved at the British Library) in the late 14th century.