Nas-Taliq

also: Nastaʿlīq · Nastaleeq · talik

style technique 14th century-present Iran South Asia

Nastaliq - from naskh-e ta'liq, 'hanging naskh' - is the dominant calligraphic hand for Persian writing and the languages written in it, above all Urdu. It emerged gradually in Iran between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries: Safavid tradition credits Mir Ali Tabrizi with perfecting the script, while modern scholarship traces its rise among the scribes of Shiraz and Tabriz. Built for poetry, its letters slope down from right to left and pile naturally against the ruling between verse columns; only later was it adopted for prose. Timurid and then Mughal courts carried it to India, where it became the favourite script of Persianate poetry and eventually of Urdu; the Ottomans took it up as talik. After a twentieth-century decline, calligraphers in Iran and Pakistan revived it, and today it lives on in manuscripts, inscriptions, and digital type.

Folio from an illustrated manuscript; Codices
Folio from an illustrated manuscript; CodicesCC0 (credit: Attar of Nishapur) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Downward-sloping baseline: words hang from right to left across the page
  • Strong contrast of thick and thin strokes cut by the angled qalam (reed pen)
  • Rounded, teardrop letterforms contrasted with long pulled horizontal strokes (kashida)
  • Words composed as compact masses, stacked and balanced - the practice of word heaping
  • Generous white space and ruled columns, tuned for the two hemistichs of a poetry verse
  • Elongated, graceful proportions in later Safavid and Qajar specimens

Key figures

  • Mir Ali Tabrizi (fl. c. 1400) — Master credited by Safavid tradition with perfecting the script
  • Sultan Ali Mashhadi (d. 1520) — Herat master who gave nastaliq its classical form under Sultan Husayn Bayqara
  • Mir Emad Hassani (c. 1554-1615) — Safavid master whose writing brought nastaliq to its apogee and became the model for later centuries
  • Mehmed Yasari (d. 1798) — Greatest nastaliq master of the 18th-century Ottoman world, closely following Mir Emad

Example works

  • Nizami's Khosrow and Shirin, opening page — Mir Ali Tabrizi (c. 1410)
  • Attar's Mantiq al-Tayr, manuscript page — Sultan Ali Mashhadi (1487)
  • Amir Khusrau's Khamsa, manuscript page — Muhammad Husayn Kashmiri (1597)

Sources

← Back to the catalog