العربية

Ruq'ah practice sheets

Learn Ruq'ah step by step: the 40-lesson path →

Ruq'ah is the hand most Arabic readers write in every day. It took its settled form in the Ottoman offices of the nineteenth century as a fast, economical script, and it still shows it: the letters are short, they sit on the line, bowls are shallow and the dots of two or three often merge into a single stroke. Below is the whole alphabet in Ruq'ah, each letter in the four shapes it takes — alone, opening a word, inside a word and closing it — set in Aref Ruqaa, an open-licence face drawn after the classical Ruq'ah hand. Because it is written quickly and stays low, Ruq'ah is a good second script after Naskh and a natural one for anyone who wants their own handwriting to improve. Trace opens each letter in Ruq'ah with a reed nib cut to the script's own pen angle: trace over it and the studio measures how much of the letter you covered; the printable sheet sets the Ruq'ah model at the top of an A4 page with rows to trace over by hand.

Sentences from the master pieces

Once the letters hold, write whole sentences. These are the complete lines of our calligrapher's Thuluth master pieces, shortest first, set here in the Aref Ruqaa typeface.

Trace opens each letter in Ruq'ah with a reed nib cut to its pen angle, measured from the letters themselves: thick and thin come from the direction you pull, with a mouse, a finger or an Apple Pencil. There are no numbered strokes; the studio measures how much of the true letter you covered. · Ruq'ah phrases to try · the history of Ruq'ah · for teachers

Practice sheets in the other scripts: Naskh · Thuluth · Diwani · Farsi (Nastaliq)

Ruq'ah calligraphy art for sale