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Turkish Ottoman Calligraphy

What is this art about

Turkish Ottoman calligraphy refers to scripts produced and used in the Ottoman Empire period such as Riqa, Diwani, Naskh and Thuluth.

‘Thuluth’ comes from the Arabic word meaning ‘one-third’ and derived its meaning from the one-third slope of the letters. It is most challenging to write, and it is one of the types of creative Arabic calligraphy that needs skill in writing. This type of calligraphy needs to be mastered according to the rules and commitment while writing it because it needs much control.

Naskh is a smaller, round script of Islamic calligraphy. Naskh is one of the first scripts of Islamic calligraphy to develop, commonly used in writing administrative documents and for transcribing books, including the Qur’an, because of its easy legibility.

Riqa is one of the six scripts of Arabic calligraphy. Riqa was used for private correspondence on small papers or nonreligious books and texts.