A CALLIGRAPHIC COMPOSITION OF SURAT AL-QALAM IN THE FORM OF A MIHRAB, INDIA, PROBABLY DECCAN, CIRCA 1800

Text: Surat Al-Qalam (lxviii), vv.51-52
Ink on paper

Indian Drawings and Painted Sketches 16th through 19th Century, The Asia House Gallery, New York; the Fogg Art Museum; Harvard University, Cambridge; the Asian Art Museum, Avery Brundage Collection, San Francisco, 1976
The Art of the Deccani Sultans, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1996

Welch 1976, no.38, pp.17, 79

This highly inventive calligraphic composition uses an archaic style of square Kufic script arranged in the form of a mihrab in a very distinctive manner. Only two other examples of this design are known (see  Welch A. 1979, no.88, pp.198-9, and James 1988, no.56, pp.174-5). The text is the final two verses of Surat al-Qalam (The Pen, Sura LXVIII), and Cary Welch, Anthony Welch and David James suggest that the composition was designed in a talismanic context. The use of a mihrab form, which acts as the architectural focus of prayer, is an appropriate form for a Qur'anic calligraphic compositon, although Anthony Welch notes that the composition may represent a stylized arrow (Welch A.1979, p.198). Cary Welch suggests that it was produced in the Deccan around 1800, with Hyderabad being the most likely place of origin.