Mamoun Sakkal
1950– · Damascus
- Calligraphers
- Living
- Kufic
Mamoun Sakkal is a Syrian-American calligrapher, type designer and architect, born in Damascus in 1950 to a family from Aleppo, where he grew up. His father, Lutfi al-Sakkal, a teacher of Arabic and a writer, taught him calligraphy as a child; he also took some lessons from the calligrapher Ibrahim al-Rifa'i and studied drawing at the fine arts centre in Aleppo from the age of nine. He graduated in architecture from the University of Aleppo in 1974 and moved to the United States in 1978, where he earned a master's degree (1982) and, in 2010, a doctorate at the University of Washington with a thesis on square Kufic in modern art. Kufic is at the centre of his own calligraphy: he won first prize in Kufic at IRCICA's international competition in 1993. He is best known as a designer of Arabic typefaces, several of them made for Microsoft and shipped with Windows, and has won prizes from the Type Directors Club and the Art Directors Club in New York. He runs Sakkal Design near Seattle and has taught for many years at the University of Washington and elsewhere.
Achievements
- First prize in Kufic at IRCICA's Third International Calligraphy Competition, Istanbul, 1993.
- Designed Arabic typefaces for Microsoft, including Arabic Typesetting, Sakkal Majalla, Microsoft Uighur, Aldhabi and the Arabic of Calibri.
- Type Directors Club awards for Sakkal Seta and Arabic Typesetting (2003) and Microsoft Uighur (2004); ADC Bronze Cube for Sakkal Kitab (2018); first prize, Letter Arts Review international competition (2005).
- PhD from the University of Washington (2010) on square Kufic in modern art.
Taught by: Lutfi al-Sakkal, Ibrahim al-Rifa'i
His work
He is living, so his calligraphy is protected by copyright and no works are shown. No freely licensed photograph of him was found on Commons.
Write in the tradition this hand shaped.
Write in this tradition now →Living calligraphers you can buy from — signed originals on paper, from AED 550: Anwar Alhulwani (Thuluth) · Ahmed Alhawary (Jali Thuluth, Naskh) · Rasha Kasim (Kufi) — or every Kufic piece the store makes: Kufic collection.
Sources
- Sakkal Design CV: degrees, teaching posts, awards, typefaces sakkal.com
- Arabic Wikipedia: birth 1950 Damascus, father and al-Rifa'i as teachers, awards, fonts ar.wikipedia.org
- English Wikipedia: awards list en.wikipedia.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).