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Below are few Al-Zahawi works from my col­lec­tion, click on the image to enlarge

Again another cow­ard attempt from the US-Zionists to wipe out our cul­ture and her­itage, mas­ter cal­lig­ra­pher Khalil Al-Zahawi was killed yes­ter­day.

It is said that any­one in Iraq who wanted to be con­sid­ered pro­fi­cient in Ara­bic cal­lig­ra­phy had to have his seal of approval.

In his last inter­view on Fonon Al-Zahawi said:

Its lack of beauty, com­puter fonts are destroy­ing Ara­bic cal­lig­ra­phy, lines are far from the rules.


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13 Comments

  1. LB thank you for the al jazeera video of the “great” merkava, ROFLMAO.
    It’s as “great” as the col­o­nizer human­ity. I just absolutely love the way you write and how you put things to your readers.

  2. Sorry LB, my last post was meant to be under the al jazeera video. oops. :)

  3. O'Briain

    Why blame ‘US-Zionist’s when the truth is that Khalil al-Zahawi on only the lat­est Iraqi artist to be killed by the Iraqis them­selves? Milita, Sunni or Shia, or mind­less thug– all they value is greed and hate. They destroy even their com­mu­ni­ties by loot­ing power cables and threat­en­ing rebuild­ing works. All they have achieved since the war is adapt­ing to destruc­tion, not rebuild­ing or cre­at­ing. And by killing Khalil al-Zahawi they show that even cul­ture, and art is val­ue­less to them.

  4. O’Briain

    Why don’t start with read­ing this

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7199.htm

  5. Heller Asagiri

    Good God. I’m Amer­i­can, Protes­tant and I’m far more fond of Israel and her peo­ple than any­thing else within 1500 miles in any given direction.

    I don’t have much sense for the aes­thetic; I can’t read Ara­bic, I’ve no eye for art. I only went look­ing for exam­ples of his work for my friend, who loved it and, through it, came to respect him a great deal. News of his death ham­mered her; truth told, I’d like to hurt the peo­ple who did this myself.

    You mar his work by set­ting it down with such hate in your heart and mind.

  6. sadly , world his­tory is chock full of angry, hate­ful peo­ple wip­ing out art and beauty and cul­ture in their sense­less ram­page to destroy. this is a sad exam­ple. i don’t know that it’s Bush’s fault (Iraq has a unique his­tory of vio­lence and hor­rors) but he’s an easy tar­get for the frus­tra­tion, that’s for sure.

  7. I came across this web­page look­ing for good Islamic cal­lig­ra­phy. I adore Ara­bic cal­lig­ra­phy and archi­tec­ture , and when I lived in Jerusalem I went a lot to the old city look­ing for good Ara­bic cal­lig­ra­phy in mosques and just around the streets. look­ing at the exter­nal walls of the golden-dome mosque felt to me like God is talk­ing in typo­graphic shapes, no less. I am a Jewish-Israeli-Zionist typog­ra­pher who finds inspi­ra­tion in other cul­tures in the middle-east, and respects them a lot. I am sad to hear about Al-Zahawi’s death, but even more sad to read that you relate it to a zion­ist plot against your cul­ture. my great­est wish is that jews and Mus­lims finally real­ize how sim­i­lar our tra­di­tions are and how much Hebrew and Ara­bic lan­guages and scripts are alike. my the­sis for the art acad­emy I stud­ied in was just about that, please check out my web­site, you’ll see it. Jews and Mus­lims inspired one another for cen­turies, from Moor­ish Spain (until the reconcista, 1492) to the grand and pros­per­ous Bagh­dad com­mu­nity (until the early 1950’s) I believe that art and typog­ra­phy can bridge over hate, but this post almost changed my mind.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Iconic Books says:

    in Iraq is tak­ing its toll on all aspects of Iraqi cul­ture, includ­ing the art of clas­si­cal Ara­bic cal­lig­ra­phy. The BBC reported that Khalil al-Zahawiwas ambushed and killed on May 26th. For pic­tures of him at work and a few sam­ples of his work, see Sad day for Ara­bic calligraphers.

  2. […] man­aged to destroy the myth behind Israeli Merkava (Ara­bic: Mark­aba) tank. Google Video insid­eLinkSad day for Ara­bic cal­lig­ra­pher­sRoads to Iraq2007-05–28 06:40:57Below are few Al-Zahawi works from my col­lec­tion, click on the image […]

  3. […] More here. Pic­ture of al-Zahawi work­ing here. […]

  4. […] What a sad story this is. It reminds me of the anni­hi­la­tion of the Pol­ish intel­li­gen­cia under Stalin’s orders. .….….….….….….….……Bagh­dad art scene reels after slaying.Published May 28, 2007.BAGHDAD — In what was left of Baghdad’s art com­mu­nity, the mur­der felt like a price­less parch­ment ripped apart. Khalil al-Zahawi, the Iraqi artist who was one of the Arab world’s most promi­nent cal­lig­ra­phers, had been shot to death on the steps of his home..Among Iraqis, Sunday’s news of al-Zahawi’s death last week was another cruel bench­mark of loss. The grand­fa­therly cal­lig­ra­pher had influ­enced a gen­er­a­tion of Mid­dle East­ern artists from Egypt to Pak­istan. His ded­i­ca­tion to beauty had been an ele­gant coun­ter­point to the dev­as­ta­tion of war..“It is a big sad­ness,” said a quiet Haidar Rabia, pro­fes­sor of Ara­bic cal­lig­ra­phy at the Fine Arts Acad­emy at the Uni­ver­sity of Bagh­dad. “Just as a father in a house brings bless­ings and takes care of his chil­dren, we cal­lig­ra­phers lost our father.”.Al-Zahawi’s most famous cal­lig­ra­phy was in the ta’liq method, the for­mal Ara­bic script of Iran, Pak­istan and India and an art else­where. Iraq’s cal­lig­ra­phers say it was a style al-Zahawi mas­tered and per­haps surpassed..In ta’liq, which means “hang­ing” in Ara­bic, let­ters appear to float above the page, anchored by their ends.The method is hun­dreds of years old, but after mas­ter­ing it, al-Zahawi sought to alter the clas­sic style. He length­ened the script until the let­ters seemed like words. He filled back­grounds with more writ­ing, cre­at­ing land­scapes of flow­ing script. Other con­tem­po­rary artists seized on the notion, and the ancient writ­ing took a quan­tum leap into the realm of painting..http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationw…2&cset=truehttp://www.roadstoiraq.com/2007/05/28/sad-…-calligraphers/ […]

  5. […] Reac­tion to his death on the “Road to Iraq” blog which is where the exam­ple of his work (at right) is from. Click the link for more, and larger versions. […]

Sad day for Arabic calligraphers

This article was written May 28th, 2007, with the mathematical number of 13 contributions.