Kufic — geometry becomes scripture

Kufic is named after Kufa in Iraq, though the name came later than the script. It followed the first Hijazi hands, and from the 8th to the 10th century it was the main script for copying the Qur'an. Its logic is architectural: letters sit on a firm horizontal line, tall strokes rise like columns, and the space between letters counts as much as the letters. Most copies used brown-black ink on parchment, with red dots for the vowels; gold, as in the Blue Qur'an, was rare. Later came foliated Kufic sprouting leaves, plaited Kufic tied in knots, and square Kufic: the geometric script of tiled walls in Iran and Central Asia, and of the MASHQ logo itself.

The name came later than the script. In the 10th century Ibn al-Nadim already lists a Kufi hand after the Makki and Madani, but TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi notes that only sources from the 11th century on call the whole style 'Kufic'; the Mamluk scholar al-Qalqashandi still wrote of the script 'now known as Kufic'. TDV links the style to al-Hira, where its angular form took shape, and to Kufa, where it grew. In Europe the name was spread by Jacob Georg Christian Adler (1756–1834).

Modern specialists find the word too broad. After studying hundreds of leaves, François Déroche (1983, 1992) called the Qur'an hands of the 8th to 10th centuries Early Abbasid, in six groups, and named a later family the New Style. The Metropolitan Museum dates the spread of this New Style, also called broken cursive, to the second half of the 10th century.

Here Kufic keeps its common meaning: the angular Qur'an hands on parchment, the monumental inscriptions in stone and mosaic, and the ornamental forms that grew from them.

Most Kufic Qur'ans are on parchment in a wide, horizontal format, with few lines to a page; the Amajur Qur'an has three. The letters are low and broad, the horizontal strokes long, the tall letters straight. Encyclopaedia Iranica notes that only one-eighth to one-sixth of the strokes in manuscript Kufic are curved, and that the foot of the alif usually turns back.

The pages were not ruled, yet the lines run parallel and evenly spaced, as Alain George has shown. Words may break between lines. The ink is brown-black; red dots mark the vowels, and painted markers count the verses.

Of all Kufic Qur'ans the Blue Qur'an is the best known: gold letters on parchment coloured deep blue with indigo. Where and when it was made is still argued: proposals run from Abbasid Iraq or Iran to Aghlabid or Fatimid North Africa and Umayyad Spain, between the 8th and 10th centuries. Its leaves are scattered; the largest group, 67, is in the Raqqada museum near Kairouan in Tunisia, where most of the book was long kept. Déroche took up its history again in 2024.

The Met keeps a bifolium of the Nurse's Qur'an (Mushaf al-Hadina), dated about 410 AH (1019–1020). By then the eastern lands had moved on. On paper, in Iran and Iraq, copyists used the tall New Style, and in Baghdad Ibn al-Bawwab copied a Qur'an in a round script in 391 (1000–1001). Kufic lasted longest in chapter headings, and in North Africa, where it grew rounder and became Maghribi.

Kufic was also the public voice of the state. Under al-Walid (705–715) the calligrapher Khalid ibn Abi al-Hayyaj wrote the Qur'an from Sura al-Shams to its end in gold mosaic on the qibla wall of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina.

On stone the letters grew small triangular heads, a form TDV calls murawwas Kufic and traces to Abd al-Malik's time. Its finest example, the encyclopaedia says, is in the Great Mosque of Córdoba. There, around the mihrab built in 965 for Caliph al-Hakam II, whose mosaics were finished in 970–971, Qur'anic verses and a foundation text run in gold Kufic mosaic on a dark ground.

Kufic also marked graves and garments. In Egypt tombstones gave the name and death date of the dead in carved Kufic; one in Turin records a woman who died in 1093. Court workshops wove tiraz bands that named the caliph, the place and the year.

From the 10th century the letters began to carry ornament. In foliated Kufic the ends of the strokes sprout leaves and half-palmettes. TDV counts among the finest examples the stucco of the mosque of Nayin (349/960) and the inscriptions of al-Azhar in Cairo (431/1039–40). Potters of Nishapur painted such lines around their bowls.

In plaited Kufic the tall letters are knotted together. TDV follows it through Iraq and Seljuk Anatolia: the Badriyya madrasa in Mosul (615/1218), the Sırçalı (640/1242) and Karatay (649/1251–52) madrasas in Konya, and the hospital of Sultan Kaykavus I in Sivas (614/1217–18), whose window lunettes carry plaited Kufic in dark blue.

Square Kufic, called ma'qili or banna'i ('the builder's'), uses straight lines and right angles only, so that it can be laid in whole bricks and tiles. Dated examples include the Friday Mosque of Isfahan (515/1121) and the portal of the Friday Mosque of Natanz (726/1326). Iranica notes that its legibility depends on the design: some panels read at a glance, others are hard to read.

To read a Kufic page, find the baseline first and the tall letters standing on it. A long horizontal stroke is usually a stretched join, not a new letter. In a Qur'an, set the red vowel dots aside and read the skeleton. On buildings, begin with the words that come back again and again; in Iranian tilework these are often the names of God, Muhammad and Ali, repeated across a wall.

Kufic is not measured in dots, as naskh and thuluth are. Manuscript Kufic is written with a broad pen held at a steady angle; square Kufic is drawn on a grid, with an even gap between letters. That is why this studio builds its Kufi on a grid. A good first exercise: write one word, such as نور, on a baseline with a broad pen, then again on squared paper, using whole squares only.