Scripts and Calligraphy - A Timeless Journey, Hardcover Book, By: Abdeljaouad, Lotfi

In 2020, the "Year of Arabic Calligraphy" initiative was launched in Saudi Arabia to highlight one of the main components of Arabic culture and develop its practice in institutions and among Saudi citizens. Arabic calligraphy is the purest art form of Islam and has been used for fifteen centuries to transmit the Quran and glorify the Arabic language from the Arabian Peninsula to Andalusia in the West and to China in the East. Developed in the 1st century of Hegira (7th century CE), calligraphy quickly became an autonomous visual art as well as the main ornamentation of mosques, palaces, madrasas and fountains. Arabic calligraphy has been applied to thousands of manuscripts, bowls, lamps or textile pieces, and master calligraphers continue to pass their craft on to their students from generation to generation. The Scripts and Calligraphy: A Timeless Journey exhibition and accompanying publication showcase the origins of Arabic script and the development of the art of calligraphy. It pays homage to Saudi and international master calligraphers, contemporary artists and designers. It highlights in particular the artistic relationship between calligraphy and artificial intelligence, demonstrating both the topicality and the timelessness of Arabic calligraphy. ), Eric Delpont (specialist in Islamic art and director of the Museum of the Institute of the Arab World, Paris).