Ubaydah al-Banki
1964– · Deir ez-Zor
Ubaydah al-Banki was born in Deir ez-Zor, Syria, in 1964. He trained as an agricultural engineer and worked in that field while lettering signs and panels. In Damascus he learned the rules of the scripts from Ahmad al-Bari, who also taught him nastaliq, and he benefited from Muhammad al-Qadi. He then studied for about three years in Istanbul with Hasan Çelebi, who gave him his ijaza in 1999. He first followed the Iraqi manner of Hashim al-Baghdadi, then turned to the Ottoman line of Mehmed Şevki; today he works mainly in thuluth and naskh. In 2004 he moved to Doha to write the Qatar Mushaf, which he won in an international competition; the copy took about three and a half years and has been reprinted many times since 2009. He also lettered Qatar's 2020 banknotes and its 22-riyal World Cup note, and sits on juries at IRCICA, Dubai, Sharjah and elsewhere.
Achievements
- Received his ijaza from Hasan Çelebi in Istanbul in 1999, after about three years of study with him.
- Won the international competition to write the Qatar Mushaf; sources date the final result to January 2007 (his own prize list says 2006). The Qur'an took him about three and a half years and was first printed in 2009–2010.
- Wrote the lettering of Qatar's fifth banknote series (December 2020) in four scripts: thuluth, muhaqqaq, ijaza and naskh.
- Wrote the lettering of Qatar's 22-riyal commemorative note for the 2022 World Cup.
- Second prize in naskh at IRCICA's Yaqut al-Musta'simi competition (1989), several later IRCICA prizes, and later a member of IRCICA juries.
- Honoured by the Emir of Qatar at the launch of the Qatar Mushaf (2010) and by the Ruler of Sharjah (2016); granted Turkish citizenship in 2017.
Taught by: Ahmad al-Bari, Muhammad al-Qadi, Hasan Çelebi
Taught: Husam Ali al-Matar
His work
Living calligrapher: his calligraphy is still under copyright, so no works are shown.
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 Thuluth piece the store makes: Thuluth collection.
Sources
- Arabic Wikipedia: birth 20 Feb 1964 Deir ez-Zor, teachers, 1999 ijaza, Qatar Mushaf (result Jan 2007; prize list says 2006), banknotes 2020 and 22-riyal note, IRCICA prizes, juries, honours, student al-Matar ar.wikipedia.org
- Al Jazeera (2024): Qatar Mushaf calligrapher, career ajnet.me
- Al Raya (2020): four scripts used on the new Qatari banknotes raya.com
- IslamOnline profile: born Deir ez-Zor 1964, moved to Qatar 2004, Mushaf took 3.5 years, banknotes islamonline.net
- Wikidata: birth date and place wikidata.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).