Ottoman Calligraphy: Music for the eyes

Graphis, Nov/Dec 2001 by Shulman, Ken

Ottoman Calligraphy: Music for the Eyes As the most important aesthetic expression in the Islamic world for centuries, Ottoman calligraphy nearly vanished in modern Turkey. But a Turkish collector's interest has revitalized this exquisite art form. By Ken Shulman The craft nearly died in 1928, when the newly established Turkish Republic replaced the arabic alphabet with a modified Latin alphabet. "We tend to look at handwriting as something unimportant.

Most of us don't even pick up a pencil. For the Islamic world, it was a marker of the kind of person you were."

If there ever was an earthly paradise for scribes, it was in the Ottoman Empire. There, from the beginning of the 16th century until the early 20th century, legions of scribes found gainful employment copying manuscripts and writing the official documents that sustained the far-flung Empire. Like artists in Renaissance Italy, Ottoman calligraphers were the subjects of biographies. According to legend, Sultan Bayezid II (1481-1512) afforded his calligrapher Seyh Hamdullah a place of honor during theological and political discussions at his palace. The sultan often set a cushion beneath the small of Seyh Hamdullah's back as Hamdullah worked. He even, at times, held Hamdullah's inkwell.

"In the traditional Islamic world, there was a feeling that the beauty of your handwriting reflected the beauty of your soul," says Mary McWilliams, an Islamic specialist at the Harvard University Art Museums. "We tend to look at handwriting as something unimportant. Most of us don't even pick up a pencil. For the Islamic world, it was a marker of the kind of person you were."

In Islam, calligraphy was born in the seventh century, shortly after the Hijra-the Prophet Muhammad's flight from Mecca to Medina in 622. Early Islamic scribes transformed the rudimentary characters of Arabic script into letters noble enough to ferry the words of the Prophet. The work was laborious and the training intense; students underwent apprenticeships lasting from five to eight years before earning a diploma from their masters. The trade's tools were rigidly prescribed and assiduously prepared; Islamic scribes wrote-and still write-with reed pens that are buried for four years under horse manure for seasoning, with inks painstakingly ground from minerals and lamp black and mixed with gum arabic.

For nearly eight centuries, Baghdad served as Islam's calligraphic center, with another school developing in Persia. In 1453, with the Turkish conquest of Constantinople, the matrix of calligraphy moved to that Ottoman capital. Beginning with Seyh Hamdullah, who breathed new life into an art that had calcified under the Caliphs, Ottoman calligraphers devised new script and design solutions for Qur'ans, mosque decorations, and religious and civil documents. Their writing was balanced and rhythmic; characters flowed from one to another, exploring the space of the line, as well relationships with other characters. The complex, intricate illuminations used by the Persians along the borders of the page were replaced by subdued decorations that almost seem precursors to color field painting.

"There was a great desire for simplicity in the Ottoman Empire," says Mohammed Zakariya, an American born calligrapher who studied extensively in Istanbul. "And the calligraphers there came up with an elegant expression of motion and time. There is a wonderful legibility to the Ottoman work. Each piece is a visual concerto. If you look at their pages, there is no focal point. Each part of the composition is complete unto itself."

The Ottoman calligraphers maintained their predominance through the first decades of the 20th century-outlasting their empire, which lost its effective power at least a century earlier. The craft nearly died in 1928 when the newly established Turkish Republic replaced the arabic alphabet with a modified Latin alphabet. Internationally, scholars and collectors gradually turned away from Ottoman calligraphy, placing greater value and emphasis on Persian and early Islamic work. Within Turkey, the new nation's understandable ambivalence about the excesses and abuses of the late Ottoman Empire caused many to break with all reminders of their Ottoman past, including the splendid calligraphy.

When Sakip Sabanci started collecting Ottoman calligraphy in the late 1970s, quality pieces could be purchased for as little as $10. His last purchase, one year ago, cost him $25,000. As head of one of Turkey's largest holding companies-the Sabanci Group currently employs over 30,000 people, and shoulders more than 5% of Turkey's tax burden-Sabanci has put together what is probably the finest and most comprehensive collection of Ottoman calligraphy in the world. "I am a Turkish man," says Sabanci, who recently donated his nearly 500 piece collection of calligraphy to the newly established Sabanci University in Istanbul. "And this is our real art, the art of our fathers and grandfathers. This art was disappearing, almost lost."