De tinta i de lletres

De tinta i de lletres

L'encre ne se montre que dans la forme des lettres [...]. Les lettres ne seraient rien sans l'encre, mais l'encre n'y devient pas une autre encre; de même, l'être en ses épiphanies ne fait que se multiplier par lui même (1 x 1). Chaque fois c'est l'encre qui, en étant, est telle ou telle lettre. Tout est individuel, et pourtant tout est Un. C'est cela l'unicité transcendante de l'Être (wahdat al-wujûd).

Henry Corbin, En Islam Iranien, Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, IV. Gallimard, Paris, 1972. Pàg. 195.

La lletra 'nûn'

Els secrets de la lletra nûn

Nuria García Masip

Surah Al Qalam (The Pen). Quran 68:1. The letter ´nun´ symbolizes the arch that floats on the waters, and the point in its interior represents the seed it contains. It is a symbol of resurrection, and of the transition to a new state. The letter `nun` symbolizes also the whale and it is connected in this sense with the Prophet Jonah (Yunus),who is reborn spiritually after his sojourn in the whale´s belly.

Text i cal·ligrafia : Nuria García Masip. https://nuriaart.com/gallery/nun-by-the-pen/

L'àdab del cal·lígraf (2)

L’àdab del cal·lígraf (2)

Pablo Khalid Casado

The Water and the Ink

[…] Something similar happens with the water we use to mix the ink. During the Ottoman Empire, calligraphers would only use rain water to make their own inks. As they say, rain is “Rahmatullah”, which means “mercy from God”. This is why, the calligraphers considered it the purest water they could use.

Nowadays, as well as rain water, we use rose water or distilled water, in an effort to avoid using tap water. This is because we are not sure if the pipes this water is passing through are completely clean; we don’t want to write something which has a sacred meaning for us with something which might be dirty or not pure enough.

The ink we use is made by soot, Arabic gum and water. In the past, calligraphers used to collect the soot from the oil lamp that illuminate the mosques and use that to make their own inks. The famous ottoman architect Mimar Sinan, also known as Sinan the Architect, for example, ordered his disciples to build a small room atop the Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul during the construction phase. All the soot from the lamps were diverted to this room, where, once a year, calligraphers used to go and scratch the soot pasted at the walls and the roof; they would use tis soot in preparing their ink.

The calligraphers would use this ink to write the copies of Qur’an. They would later give these copies to the mosque as a charity. In other words, what originated in the mosque in a soot form, came back later to the same place in a beautiful handwritten Qur’an form and would stay there for a long time.

Pablo Khalid Casado, The art of Islamic Calligraphy: Rituals and Traditional Art. themaydan.com January 8, 2018.

Cal·ligrafia: Núria García Masip. https://nuriaart.com/. In this piece by Nuria García, we see a composition where this big letter "ha" stands out. This letter is used by Sufis during their sessions of meditation to reach the "hal", which is a sate of consciousness that is supposed to be in a higher level than the ordinary state and that brings you closer to your being, your essence, and therefore, your Lord.     

L'àdab del cal·lígraf

De l’àdab del cal·lígraf (1)

Pablo Khalid Casado

The Qalam and its Shavings

The qalam we use to write calligraphy might seem like a simple piece of bamboo, but for Muslim calligraphers it has a very special significance and a number of rituals are closely connected to the qalam [pen].

In Muslim literature, we find that the first thing God created was the qalam, and its duty was to record every event that happens in one’s life. Similarly, we find that in the Qur’an a whole chapter, Surat al-Qalam, the sixty-eight chapter, takes its name from the qalam.

We should also keep in mind that the calligrapher spends a great amount of time every day, and during his whole life, with the qalam in his hand, such that the  qalam becomes a prolongation of the calligapher’s hand. A prolongation which is used to express some ideas and feelings on the paper. The qalam therefore, is the most sacred tool for a calligrapher.

As such, a ritual respected by students of calligraphy is to keep all the shavings you get every single time you cut and sharpen your qalam. Most of what calligraphers write, not everything but most of it, is directly related to Qur’anic verses of Hadiths (teachings from the prophet Muhammad). And this is one of the reasons why we keep the shavings of the qalam; we don’t want to throw a part of the tool we use to write sacred texts to the trash and mixt them with garbage.

Therefore, the tradition says that the calligrapher has to keep all his shavings since the day he starts learning calligraphy until the day that he dies, and when death falls upon a calligrapher, his family collects the shavings and puts them to fire in boiling the water they will use, to wash the body of the calligrapher (in Muslim tradition, the family is still in charge of the deceased’s body). In other words, when the calligrapher disappears from this world in its material form, the shaving of his qalam also disappears.

Khalid Pablo Casado, The art of Islamic Calligraphy: Rituals and Traditional Art. themaydan.com January 8, 2018.

Fotografia: http://www.sacred-lines.com/