Professional copyists employed a particular form of Kufic for reproducing the earliest surviving copies of the Qur'an, which were written on parchment and date from the 8th to 10th centuries. Until about the 11th century it was the main script used to copy the Qur'an. Around the 8th century, it was the most important of several variants of Arabic scripts with its austere and fairly low vertical profile and a horizontal emphasis. Kufic was prevalent in manuscripts from the 7th to 10th centuries.
This coalesced into what is now known as Primary Kufic script. The Qur'an was first written in a plain, slanted, and uniform script but, when its content was formalized, a script that denoted authority emerged.
Leaf from the Blue Qur'an (second half 9th-mid-10th century) manuscript copied in Medieval Tunisia, possibly Qairawan, or in Islamic Iberia during the mid-9th century. In fact, "the rules that were defined at the outset of the Kufic tradition essentially remained the same throughout its lifespan" says Alain George. The rule set for this writing was about the angular, linear shapes of the characters. In fact, "it is the first style of Islamic period writings in which the manifestation of art, delicacy and beauty are explicitly evident" says Salwa Ibraheem Tawfeeq Al-Amin. Blair suggests that "the name Kufic was introduced to Western scholarship by Jacob George Christian Adler (1756–1834)." Furthermore, the Kufic script plays an important role in the development of Islamic calligraphy. Kufic is defined as a highly angular form of the Arabic alphabet originally used in early copies of the Qur’an. The name of the script derives from Kufa, a city in southern Iraq which was considered as an intellectual center within the early Islamic period. Kufic is the oldest calligraphic form of the various Arabic scripts. Calligraphers came out with the new style of writing called Kufic. Arabic calligraphy became one of the most important branches of Islamic Art. History Origin of the Kufic script Ĭalligraphers in the early Islamic period used a variety of methods to transcribe Qur’an manuscripts.
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