CallFront Project

During the medieval and modern periods, calligraphy in Arabic script spread to all languages transcribed in the Arabic alphabet and its variants, giving rise to a multitude of styles on extremely varied supports.

In the regions far from the historical cradle of Islamic civilisation, where the rules of so-called classical Arabic calligraphy were established, calligraphic developments differ from the canon and seem to follow different rules. These regions are referred to as the “frontiers” of the Islamicate world, to emphasize their geographical distance from the historical centre as well as their intense relationship with other cultural and linguistic communities and writing systems.

In order to document and understand the making and use of calligraphy in Arabic script throughout these regions in the longue durée, the project Calligraphies in Arabic Script on the Frontiers of the Islamicate World (CallFront) brings together specialists from different disciplines (history, art history, codicology, anthropology, palaeography, epigraphy, and archaeology) whose work focuses on these calligraphic traditions.

CallFront will be supported by a digital corpus shared by all the members of the consortium. This online database will be made available to the public in 2025. Developed with the open-source content management system Omeka-S, this corpus is hosted by the TGIR Huma-Num. It is based on the results of the exploratory phase of the project (2020-2022), which established description protocols based on a shared ontology of calligraphy in Arabic script.

CallFront also proposes an in-depth study of praxis, conducted in collaboration with a team of professional calligraphers, coordinated by calligrapher Nuria Garcia Masip. The aim is to reconstruct the modus operandi of calligraphic styles, the practice of which has mostly disappeared.

The project encourages the participation of doctoral students and has been granted a doctoral grant by the Observatoire des Patrimoines Sorbonne Université (2020-2023).

CallFront is structured around three research axes:

Gathering and describing isolated corpora

Calligraphic styles which so far have been studied in isolation and not systematically analysed will be gathered into one digital corpus. This digital database will allow for the comparison and the possible identification of links across corpora, based on shared description protocols adapted to a wide variety of calligraphic styles.

Documenting frontier calligraphic styles

To compensate for the scarcity of information in the calligraphy literature regarding frontier styles, this part of the project is devoted to the collection of two types of documents: conventional sources mentioning, directly or indirectly, the existence of non-canonical calligraphy (biographies, hagiographies, historical chronicles), and lesser-known sources circulating in calligraphers’ circles (manuals, teachers’ models, and corrections).

Analysing calligraphic practices

The learning and transmission practices that prevailed in the creative process are not known. Due to the absence of documentation on this subject, it is essential to resort to new methods of analysis. Inspired by processes developed in other fields of art history, CallFront relies on a close collaboration between researchers and professional calligraphers.