Book review

ART OF ISLAMIC CALLIGRAPHY

The book „Art of Islamic calligraphy” represents a unique scientific and publishing project in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the last hundred years, only a few books with Islamic arts theme were published in Bosnia.

The reason for this is minimazing of such kind of creative expression by cultural politics, first by the Kingdom of Yugoslavia up to 1940, and then by the “communist” Yugoslavia in the second half of 20th century. It has been forgotten, that Islamic arts was the cultural constancy of Bosnian people for more then 450 years. In Bosnian recent history the idea of retaining Islamic arts was reduced to only a few names, artists and historians.

For all the above captioned, the book „Art of Islamic calligraphy” was welcomed with great attention in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The book contains all that is important and what we need to know about Islamic calligraphy. From the beginning, the author takes us through history of Arabic letter and explains the earliest styles of calligraphy, and he gives special place to the reformers of this art up to the appearance of Ottomans, Ibn Mugle, Ibn al-Bawab and Jakut Musta’sim. Professor Hadzimejlic very consistently describes the Ottoman calligraphy devoting to it most of the space in the book.

The rest of the article you can read in the magazine.