Afif Abd al-Fattah Tabbarah
1923–2022 · Beirut
Afif Abd al-Fattah Tabbarah was born in Beirut in 1923 (1341 AH) and grew up in the al-Tariq al-Jadida district. He boarded for four years at the Sharia College in Beirut, where he was taught by local scholars and by teachers sent from al-Azhar. Family needs kept him from going on to Cairo. His gift for writing showed early: he trained it with the Beirut calligrapher Kamil al-Baba, and Shaykh Sa'di Yasin then sent him with a letter of recommendation to the Damascus master Badawi al-Dirani, with whom he stayed until he had mastered the scripts. After six years teaching at a Maqasid school he worked as a calligrapher at the survey department, until the Mufti Muhammad Tawfiq Khalid asked him to teach religious subjects and calligraphy at the Sharia College; he regarded calligraphy as the head of the Islamic arts. A former student remembered him asking each class who was 'prince of the pen' that day. He later served as a religious judge and wrote many books, the best known Ruh al-din al-Islami. He died in Beirut on 30 August 2022.
Achievements
- Learned calligraphy from Kamil al-Baba in Beirut and from Badawi al-Dirani in Damascus.
- Worked as a calligrapher at the Lebanese survey department.
- Taught religious sciences and calligraphy at the Sharia College in Beirut at the request of the Mufti Muhammad Tawfiq Khalid.
- Author of Ruh al-din al-Islami and other widely reprinted books.
- Honoured at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Beirut on 15 December 2009.
Taught by: Kamil al-Baba, Muhammad Badawi al-Dirani
His work
He died in 2022, so his calligraphy is still under copyright and no works can be shown. The photographs of him on Arabic Wikipedia are local non-free files and cannot be reused.
Write in the tradition this hand shaped.
Open Mashq Studio →Living calligraphers you can buy from — signed originals on paper, from AED 550: Anwar Alhulwani (Thuluth) · Ahmed Alhawary (Jali Thuluth, Naskh) · Rasha Kasim (Kufi).
Sources
- Arabic Wikipedia: life, calligraphy training, teaching, books, death 30 Aug 2022 ar.wikipedia.org
- al-Bassair obituary: born Beirut 1923, learned calligraphy from Kamil al-Baba and Badawi al-Dirani, taught it web.archive.org
- Asas Media (cited by Arabic Wikipedia) web.archive.org
Written by the MASHQ studio · last updated 2026-10-05. Further reading, the standard references in English: Sheila S. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy (Edinburgh University Press, 2006) · Annemarie Schimmel, Calligraphy and Islamic Culture (New York University Press, 1984) · Yasin Hamid Safadi, Islamic Calligraphy (Thames and Hudson, 1978).