Page of calligraphy

From Islam’s early history in the 600s until today, calligraphy has held the highest status among the arts in Muslim culture. These lines of poetry were written by the famous and prolific Persian calligrapher Mir Ali Haravi, who signed his work in the lower left triangle. Mir Ali was a master of the nastaliq script, which developed in Iran around 1350 and became the choice artistic script throughout the Persian-speaking sphere, from Delhi to Istanbul. Nastaliq, like other Perso-Arabic scripts, is governed by an internal system of proportions and rules within which its sinuous lines, sense of rhythm, and relationship between words enables calligraphers to exploit the script’s aesthetic potential. By 1500, nastaliq had developed into the “large” and “small” variants, which appear here in the central composition and border text, respectively.

Calligraphers originally created works such as this example as exercise sheets. These were collected several decades later and gathered into albums, a format that become very popular in Iran, India, and Turkey onward from the 1500s. The calligraphy pages were often further embellished with elaborate borders and other decoration when compiled in an album and they typically alternated with paintings. Mir Ali’s work was highly prized by the Mughal emperors of India and is included in several imperial albums.