Mohamed Zakariya
1942– · Ventura, California
Mohamed Zakariya was born in Ventura, California, in 1942. Two visits to Morocco in the early 1960s drew him to Islam; on the second he met the Egyptian calligrapher Abdussalam Ali-Nour, who became his first teacher. In London he studied early manuscripts in the British Museum. Back in California he worked as a machinist and made sundials, astrolabes and other instruments, and in 1972 he settled in the Washington, D.C. area, where he took up calligraphy as his profession. In 1984 he began studying in Istanbul with Hasan Çelebi through IRCICA, and on 23 May 1988 Çelebi gave him an icazet, the first awarded to an American; in 1997 Ali Alparslan gave him a second icazet, in ta'liq. He designed the US Postal Service's 'Eid Greetings' stamp, issued in 2001. He works in the Ottoman tradition and prepares his own ink, paper and reed pens.
Achievements
- Received an icazet from Hasan Çelebi on 23 May 1988 at Yıldız Palace, Istanbul, the first American to do so.
- Received a second icazet, in ta'liq, from Ali Alparslan in 1997.
- Designed the US Postal Service's 'Eid Greetings' stamp, first issued on 1 September 2001.
- Made a calligraphy commissioned by President Barack Obama in 2009 as a gift to the king of Saudi Arabia.
- Received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2012.
- His work has been shown at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Walters, Baltimore.
Taught by: Abdussalam Ali-Nour, Hasan Çelebi, Ali Alparslan
Taught: Nuria Garcia Masip, Josh Berer
His work
The works of a living calligrapher are theirs: we show them only with their permission.
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
- Saudi Aramco World, Jan/Feb 1992, 'The World of Mohamed Zakariya': Morocco trips, Abdussalam Ali-Nour, British Museum, machinist, move to Washington 1972, icazet from Çelebi 23 May 1988 at Yıldız Palace, first American archive.aramcoworld.com
- Saudi Aramco World, Sep/Oct 2001: Eid stamp design, released 1 Sep 2001 at Des Plaines, Illinois archive.aramcoworld.com
- US Department of State, Art in Embassies biography: born Ventura 1942; Ali Nour in Tangier and London 1964; IRCICA 1984; icazets 1988 (sülüs/nesih, Çelebi) and 1997 (ta'liq, Alparslan); exhibitions and collections art.state.gov
- VCU School of the Arts in Qatar page: settled in the Washington area in 1972; designed the Eid Greetings stamp; first Westerner to receive icazets islamicart.qatar.vcu.edu
- English Wikipedia: 2009 Obama commission, VCU honorary doctorate 2012, students, collections en.wikipedia.org
- Arabic Wikipedia: Arabic name; study with Çelebi from 1984, icazet 1988 ar.wikipedia.org
- Wikidata item 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).