An Introduction to Arabic Calligraphy

Great images and examples for my calligraphy practicing

This book is more of a birds-eye, theoretical introduction to Arabic calligraphy, as opposed to a tutorial to someone who wants to learn to write it. With that said, it does have some practical information, and it is a decent resource for anyone interested in the subject.

Great beginning text.

This book was originally written in French and later translated into English, but the translator was sloppy and not all of the text was edited properly. In the first picture I uploaded, you can see that one of the captions was simply not translated into English at all. In the second picture, the caption states “Links for Sin (and Chin)”. “Chin” is based on the French pronunciation, this should have been written as “Shin” (ش) in this English version. “Chin” in English is a different sound, written as (چ) in Urdu, Farsi, and other languages, doesn’t even exist in the Arabic alphabet. The third photo reflects more of a personal opinion than pointing out mistakes- identifying that letter as “jim” (ج) might be confusing to a learner, when you’re presenting the letter WITHOUT a dot, so it’s technically “Ha” (ح). Beautiful illustrations and photos, and great explanations. It’s a shame that the editing was done so poorly.

Brilliant

Beautifully printed, wonderful photos etc., but could really use more pages with instruction on starting. I mainly use YouTube and there's some solid, free videos on the different khat forms. This book is still a wonderful way to practice the alphabet in different forms.

A gift for my wife, who is learning written Arabic. Helpful in showing stroke order and varied techniques.

The book is nice and I'll be giving it to my friend as a gift. However I don't understand why it was shipped in such a large box (refer to photo). Felt extremely wasteful

A beautiful book. I am truly enjoying the learning process.

gives meaning of some of the script shown and how to master it.

Excelente Calidad y contenido.

While it does give a nice overview of the material, some history and presentation of different styles, the instructions remind me of the meme "How to draw an owl". It could have been made clearer for a beginner. Someone already pointed some mistakes but I'd like to point what I consider a big one if you want to go further. When presenting the رقعة script, it is said to be "riqa" and not to be confused with "ruq'ah", said to derive from thuluth. But it's the reverse: رقعة is ruq'ah and the thuluth derivative is riqa'. I could take a glance at the original version and the mistake is only in the translation.

A decent intro but not a good instructional.