Nastaliq

Nastaliq (ˌnæstəˈliːk,_ˈnæstəliːk; , næsˈthæʔliːq; nəsˈt̪ɑːliːq), also romanized as Nastaʿlīq or Nastaleeq, is one of the main calligraphic hands used to write the Perso-Arabic script, and it is used for some Indo-Iranian languages, predominantly Classical Persian, Urdu, Kashmiri, Saraiki and Punjabi (Shahmukhi). It is often used also for Ottoman Turkish poetry, but rarely for Arabic. Nastaliq developed in Iran from naskh beginning in the 13th century and remains very widely used in Iran, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan and other countries for written poetry and as a form of art. The name nastaliq "is a contraction of the Persian naskh-i ta'liq (), meaning a hanging or suspended naskh". Virtually all Safavid authors (like Dust Muhammad or Qadi Ahmad) attributed the invention of nastaliq to Mir Ali Tabrizi, who lived at the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century. That tradition was questioned by Elaine Wright, who traced evolution of nastaliq in 14th century Iran and showed how it developed gradually among scribes in Shiraz. Moreover, according to her studies nastaliq has its origin not in combining naskh and taliq, as was commonly thought, but from naskh alone. In addition to study of the practice of calligraphy Elaine Wright also found a document written by Jafar Tabrizi 1430, according to whom: It must be known that nastaʿliq is derived from naskh. Some Shirazi [scribes] modified it [naskh] by taking out the flattened [letter] kaf and straight bottom part of [the letters] sin, lam and nun. From other scripts they then brought in a curved sin and stretched forms and introduced variations in the thickness of the line. So a new script was created, to be named nastaʿliq. After a while Tabrizi [scribes] modified what Shirazi [scribes] had created by gradually rendering it thinner and defining its canons, until the time when Khwaja Mir ʿAli Tabrizi brought this script to perfection. Thus "our earliest written source also credits Shirazi scribes with the development of nastaʿliq and Mir ʿAli Tabrizi with its canonization".