Naskh — the script that learned to serve

Naskh takes its name from copying (naskh), and that is its strength: quick enough for copyists, clear and handsome enough for the Qur'an. It grew from the round book hands of the first centuries, gained its rules after Ibn Muqla, and slowly took the place of Kufic in Qur'ans. For centuries it shared them with muhaqqaq and rayhani; from the 16th century Ottoman Qur'ans were written in naskh alone. Its letters are round, open and even, with clear space between words. Printers chose it from the start, and most Arabic typefaces, in books and on screens, still follow it.

Round, quick hands were in use from the first Islamic century, beside the angular script of the Qur'an. They served letters, accounts and books. Under the Umayyads and Abbasids this round writing was first 'weighed' (mawzun), then 'proportioned' (mansub). Because the book trade used it, it was called warraqi, the stationers' hand, and naskhi, the copyists' hand.

Some explain the name as the script that 'abrogated' Kufic in the Qur'an. Uğur Derman, in TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, notes that the dates do not allow this. Western scholars long called every non-Kufic hand naskhi, which blurs the picture. Encyclopaedia Iranica places naskh's real rise after Ibn Muqla, when it gained rules and slowly grew fine enough for most Qur'ans and books.

For a time the two scripts shared a page. In an Iranian Qur'an copied in the 11th century and given as an endowment in the 12th by a woman named Khurasan bint Abi al-Qasim, the text runs in early naskh with a Persian translation under each word, while the chapter headings stay in Kufic.

Ibn al-Bawwab's Qur'an of 391 (1000–1001), in the Chester Beatty, is the earliest dated Qur'an in a round script on paper. Catalogues usually call its script naskh; Derman calls it rayhani and says that no naskh by Ibn al-Bawwab survives. The Topkapı Palace keeps a naskh Qur'an by Muhammad ibn Altuntaş dated 582 (1186), and Yaqut left Qur'ans in both naskh and rayhani.

Until the 16th century naskh shared the Qur'an with other pens. Large copies were often in muhaqqaq, small ones in rayhani, and many pages mixed two or three scripts. In Mamluk Cairo copyists also used an open, larger naskh (naskh al-wazzah), a fine one for margins (hawashi), written in slanting lines, and ghubari, 'dust script', the smallest of all.

Naskh is written with a reed whose nib is about 1 mm wide. Iranica describes it as roughly half straight and half round, with similar letters kept the same size wherever they appear. It always stays on the line: unlike thuluth it is not stacked into compositions, which is why it suits long texts. TDV adds that it leans slightly to the left, by about one dot.

Copyists kept their lines straight with the mistar, a card with silk threads stretched across it and pressed into the paper. To bring movement into a line they stretch an open kaf, or let a bowl letter hold the next few letters inside it. Vowels and reading signs sit close above and below; with them, Iranica says, the reading is unmistakable.

In Istanbul Şeyh Hamdullah (d. 926/1520), encouraged by his pupil Sultan Bayezid II, reworked Yaqut's models into a new Ottoman style. From his time Ottoman Qur'ans were written in naskh alone; the biographer Müstakimzade called naskh the servant of the Noble Book. Some copyists wrote hundreds of Qur'ans: Ramazan ibn Ismail is credited with 400, Çemşir Hafız with 454.

Hafız Osman (d. 1110/1698) refined the style again. The perfection Mehmed Şevki (d. 1887) gave its letters is counted, Derman writes, as their final point. Two copyists of the 19th century, Kayışzade Hafız Osman and Hacı Hasan Rıza, are best remembered for the Qur'ans printed from their hands. A saying quoted in TDV's article on calligraphy sums up Istanbul's place: the Qur'an was revealed in the Hijaz, recited in Egypt and written in Istanbul.

In Iran calligraphers kept closer to Yaqut, then went their own way. Ahmad Neyrizi, active in the early 18th century, shaped the Persian naskh that is still current there.

Printers chose naskh from the start. In the Ottoman lands the first printed books used it most, and from 1866 type cut after the hand of Kazasker Mustafa İzzet Efendi was cast in several sizes and used until the change of alphabet in 1928. In Cairo the Bulaq press opened in 1821 and printed its first book, an Arabic–Italian dictionary, in 1822.

Iranica notes that modern naskh was adapted for type and typewriters, and that Qur'ans, books and newspapers in Iran, Afghanistan and the Arab countries are printed in it. In the 17th century the Dutch Arabist Thomas van Erpe (Erpenius) already ranked naskhi above the other Arabic hands. Digital faces follow the same models; Amiri, used in this studio, is inspired by the Bulaq type.

Ottoman teachers often taught naskh together with thuluth on a sheet of four lines: thuluth on the first and last, two shorter lines of naskh between. Work in the same order as those sheets. Begin with single letters, then letter pairs, then words, and check each alif against five dots. Teachers' counts differ; five is the measure this studio uses, since no historical source fixes one number.

Write on a ruled line and give each letter its seat. Keep the pen at one angle; naskh shows every change. Add the vowel marks last, small and close to their letters. Copy a line from a master such as Hafız Osman slowly, many times; speed comes after the shapes are right.