December 10, 1999 - March 06, 2000
Qalam: The Art of Calligraphy
Qalam illustrated the decorated alphabet on a range of materials: stone, wooden architectural elements, metal ceramics, miniature painting, sculpture, textiles, and paper. The exhibition focussed on historical Quranic manuscripts rendered in kufic, naqshi, thuluth and nastaliq scripts that spanned ten centuries, most especially a corpus of work by Yaqut ul Mustasim (d. 1258 CE), court calligrapher to the last Abbasid Caliph, Mustasim Billah.
Also on display were illuminated manuscripts and decorated albums from the compendia of Firdausi, Saadi and Jami, treatises on astrology, the natural sciences and medicine, leading up to contemporary renditions by Sadequain, Gulgee, Jamil Naqsh, Askari Mian Irani, Aftab Zafar, Chitra Pritam, Amin Gulgee and Usman Ghauri.
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