The Hilya — a portrait made of words

Islam's reluctance toward figurative portraits of the Prophet produced one of calligraphy's most moving inventions: the hilya, a 'portrait' composed purely of words describing him. Hâfiz Osman fixed its layout in seventeenth-century Istanbul — a crown of bismillah, a round centre of description like a face, flanking medallions with the four caliphs' names, a verse across the waist, and a base of prayer. Families hung hilyas where other cultures hung portraits. It is the ultimate proof of the Arabic premise: the word does not describe the image. The word is the image.

Hilye means ornament, and by extension the outward form and qualities of a person. In Ottoman use it named a description of the Prophet Muhammad's appearance and character, in prose or in verse, and later the calligraphic panel that carries it.

The core text is a report from 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, preserved in al-Tirmidhi's Shama'il, the collection on the Prophet's qualities. It describes his height, his hair, his complexion, the way he walked and the seal of prophethood between his shoulders. Other books add further reports: al-Bayhaqi's Dala'il al-nubuwwa, works by Abu Nu'aym and Ibn al-Jawzi, and Qadi 'Iyad's al-Shifa.

A hadith in which the Prophet asks that his appearance be written down is sometimes quoted for the hilye; English Wikipedia notes that it is probably apocryphal. The practice grew from the Shama'il text itself, read and copied in books long before it went into a frame.

Before calligraphers fixed the panel, poets made the hilye a genre of Ottoman Turkish literature. Şerifi wrote one before 1562. Hakani Mehmed Bey's Hilye-i Şerif of 1007/1598–99, in 712 verses, became the model, and Süleyman Nahifi's Hilyetü'l-envar followed in 1099/1688.

The calligraphic panel is credited to Hafız Osman (1642–1698), the Istanbul master of naskh. He took the text out of the book and laid it on one sheet that could be framed and hung. Some writers suggest that Ahmed Karahisari made a hilye panel about a century earlier; the claim is disputed. A pocket hilye by Hafız Osman is dated 1668.

His hilye of 1103/1691–92 in the Chester Beatty Library shows the plan complete. Calligraphers copied it with little change for the next two centuries and more, so a hilye of 1690 and one of 1850 are read in the same way.

From the top: the başmakam, the head, holds the basmala, usually in thuluth or muhaqqaq. Below it the göbek, the belly, a circle or oval of fine naskh, carries the description. A gilded hilal, a crescent, may frame the circle. In the four corners, the köşeler, stand the names of the four caliphs: Abu Bakr, 'Umar, 'Uthman and 'Ali.

Across the middle runs the kuşak, the belt, with a verse, most often al-Anbiya' 21:107: 'We have sent you only as a mercy to the worlds.' Below it the etek, the skirt, ends the description and adds a prayer and the calligrapher's signature. On either side of the skirt the koltuklar, the empty spaces, are usually filled with ornament, and inner and outer borders frame the whole. Some hilyes add six names to the four caliphs to make the ten Companions promised Paradise.

The scripts follow the distance of the reader: large scripts for the words seen from across a room, naskh for the text read up close. Mehmed Şefik's hilye of 1853–54 keeps this order exactly.

Most of the great Ottoman calligraphers wrote hilyes. Mustafa Rakım's of 1791 joins muhaqqaq, thuluth and naskh. The woman calligrapher Esma İbret Hanım wrote hers in 1794–95. Yesarizade Mustafa İzzet wrote hilyes in ta'liq. Kazasker Mustafa İzzet (d. 1293/1876) began the very large hilyes, and Mehmed Şevki and Hasan Rıza carried the form toward the twentieth century.

The plan also allowed change. A hilye of 1130/1718 in the Library of Congress, written and illuminated by Sulaym al-Fahim at the Galata Palace in Istanbul, opens like a triptych: its two side panels hold the ninety-nine names of God. Other hilyes describe the four caliphs, the Prophet's grandsons Hasan and Husayn, or saints such as Rumi; Cevri İbrahim Çelebi wrote a verse hilye of the four caliphs in 1630.

Families hung a hilye in the main room, and smaller ones were folded and carried; English Wikipedia records a hilye of 1712 made to be folded and kept on the person. It was believed that a house with a hilye would be spared want and misfortune, and some hoped that keeping one would bring a dream of the Prophet.

Some hilyes gathered other devotions around the text. One in the Khalili Collections, from nineteenth-century Turkey, sets the description in a central oval and surrounds it with drawings of the Prophet's belongings, his banners, sword, cloak, sandals and ewer, each filled with prayers and verses in thuluth, naskh and ghubar.

In the nineteenth century the hilye also reached print. Hakani's poem was first printed in Istanbul in 1264/1848, and Ahmed Cevdet Pasha gathered the different reports into one text, put it into Turkish and saw it printed twice as a panel. Printed hilyes could hang in homes that could not commission a calligrapher.

Read it in its own order: basmala, description, caliphs, verse, ending and signature. Then watch how the long text is fitted into the circle: the naskh lines keep an even rhythm, the last lines close the circle, and nothing is crowded.

A hilye of about 1725 at the Sadberk Hanım Museum uses naskh, thuluth, Kufic, muhaqqaq and ghubar on one sheet. It is a good page for learning to tell the scripts apart.

For a student the göbek is the place to begin. The text is short enough to copy many times, it trains even naskh inside a fixed space, and Hafız Osman's hilyes give a model you can check every line against.