Iraqi calligraphers try to revive their art
Iraq's recently liberated Anbar province hosted an Islamic calligraphy festival to return the craft to the cultural and artistic forefront.
Iraq is known as the home of one of the oldest forms of Islamic calligraphy, the Kufic script, which was named after the city of Kufa. Copies of the Quran dating to the eighth century were written in the Kufic script. Despite efforts to save the calligraphic heritage, it is fast disappearing.
In a move to introduce Islamic calligraphy to the younger generation, the Iraqi Cultural Center for Calligraphy and Decorative Arts in Anbar organized a festival April 8 that was attended by dozens of Iraqi artists.
This art form was chosen as the subject of the festival because it was a less daring choice in the post-Islamic State era. Even among conservatives, calligraphy, which was used in mosques and palaces to decorate them with Quranic verses, is seen as an art that is closely linked to the history of Arabs and Islam, and therefore more permissible than other art forms such as music or painting.
But despite the respect accorded to this form of decorative writing, calligraphic art is much neglected in Iraq, according to Iraqi calligrapher Aqbas Hussein al-Okabi.
