Muhammad-Tahir Hashemi
1915–1991 · Dowlatabad & Kermanshah
Sayyid Muhammad-Tahir Hashemi, known as Sayyidzadeh and writing verse as Tahir, was a Kurdish scholar, poet and calligrapher of the Barzinji sayyid family. He was born in 1915 in Dowlatabad, in Ravansar near Kermanshah, where his great-grandfather had founded a religious school and Sufi lodge. He studied religious and literary subjects with local teachers and with his father, and after his father's death in 1944 he took charge of the school and the lodge. He sent poems and articles to the Kurdish magazine Galawezh and wrote and presented Kurdish and Persian literary and historical programmes for Radio Kermanshah. Persian Wikipedia describes him as an authority on illumination and calligraphy who specialised in naskh in the Ottoman style; he copied the Qur'an, the Sahifa Sajjadiyya, Dala'il al-khayrat and other texts in naskh and nastaliq. He also left more than fifteen thousand lines of Kurdish and Persian verse, and books on Sufism and history. He died in Kermanshah on 22 June 1991 and was buried in his birthplace.
Achievements
- Specialised in naskh in the Ottoman manner.
- Copied the Qur'an, the Sahifa Sajjadiyya and Dala'il al-khayrat in naskh and nastaliq.
- Ran the religious school and Sufi lodge of Dowlatabad after his father's death in 1944.
- Wrote more than fifteen thousand lines of verse in Kurdish and Persian under the pen name Tahir.
His work
His calligraphy is still under copyright (he died after 1975), so no works are shown. No freely licensed photograph of him is on Commons; the portrait on Persian Wikipedia is a local file.
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 Naskh piece the store makes: Naskh collection.
Sources
- Persian Wikipedia: life, Ottoman-style naskh, manuscripts copied, dates (1293 SH / 2 Tir 1370 SH) fa.wikipedia.org
- Arabic Wikipedia: same facts, birth 1915, death 22 June 1991 ar.wikipedia.org
- Haje news (Kurdish): Seyid Tahir Hashimi among the writers of Radio Kurdi Kermanshah 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).