| Weather that mid-autumn evening nine years ago, I vividly recall, had the usual wet, chilly feeling we expected that time of the year in Surrey, my hometown just beyond the southern edge of Vancouver, British Columbia. Yet the wind chimed unmistakably with delight, for our quiet little town, my own neighborhood was honored that day by a visit from a great spiritual master. His Holiness Mawlana Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a master of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Sufi Order, had accepted an invitation to Vancouver extended to him by his numerous disciples in the Pacific Northwest, and now sat before us exuding the grace and serenity that is the hallmark of Sufi saints. |
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The topic of his suhbah, or spiritual conversation, was the beauty of God’s very act of creation. In what would turn out to be the defining moment of my budding calligraphic career, the venerable Shaykh pointed out a piece of Islamic calligraphy that, charitably speaking, was a work-in-progress. Of course, this was my first—giddily done—piece suggested by the Shaykh himself earlier in the day as my mother had given him account of my “incredible” artist’s hand. Not surprisingly, Shaykh Hisham spoke of a higher reality. “Look at this painting,” he said, “the artist has done such a great job; now, if you were to criticize the work of the artist you would be criticizing the artist herself. Similarly, if you criticize anything in creation you are actually criticizing the Creator!” Without exaggeration, those simple words became my guiding light, allaying greatly my fears as I began on a path both awesome and irresistible.
Practicing Islamic calligraphy to me is a special endeavor, for it generates a sense of fulfillment in ways not immediately associated with art itself, and that is due to the confluence I see everyday occurring on paper between the letters of religion that I form with inks and pens and the spiritual truths of those letters that rise up from the physical plane to define and refine me. Here is an activity that has become much more than the pursuit of a skillful craft.
I always knew deep down that this was a possibility. Shaykh Abdul Haqq Sazonoff An-Naqshbandi, a senior disciple of Mawlana Shaykh Hisham Kabbani, once said to me: “Never underestimate Allah’s generosity. You never know, He might raise you many degrees by one simple, sincere effort.” As I pen each Arabic letter hoping to improve my flow with the kalam, the anticipation of suddenly happening upon a treasure of meaning has turned my sometime hobby into an occupation that fortifies my faith and proves a reliable antidote to stress and sullenness.
Religious calligraphy, particularly of the Islamic variant, offers its practitioners a path of spiritual excellence as much as methods of mastering classical art. As such, it becomes critical that traditional learning—the methodologies together with the essential knowledge—be adhered to reverently. In Islam, the fount of creative beauty is the luminous Prophet Muhammad (sal-Allahu alayhi wa sallam): his wise words; his historic acts; his very persona. Success in the fullest Islamic context, therefore, comes from imitation, loving emulation, and inculcation of the Prophetic model, which learned Muslims all agree is nothing more than the highest manifestation of that state of being beloved to Allah Almighty; the state designated fitra by the Honored Emissary himself. In a manner of speaking, Islamic calligraphy is one of the excellent means by which one may learn the subtleties of Godliness.
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Islamic calligraphers have benefited tremendously, no doubt, from the meticulously recorded and preserved Qur’anic and Prophetic accounts of the first community of believers raised by the Prophet. The countless traditions brought forth from these oral and written accounts and filtered down the ages through Muslim cultural settings from Malay to Spain gave birth to artistic expressions whose diversity is stunning outwardly in its multiplicity and inwardly in its spiritual unity—the flora are many but the garden is one. To me, this very junction of outward difference and inward sameness is the proper place to lay the foundation of my own work, so that I may benefit from, and be a continuation of, the magnificent traditions while also giving expression to my unique perception of the Real. One can never be grateful enough for having reliable access to the same Qur’anic verses and Hadith which inspired the earliest calligraphers amongst the Companions and their students. My intention is to capture some amount, however minute; of that Muhammadan beauty which shines forth from divine words and which is the essence of the Islamic tradition, which in turn facilitates our relationship with God and His Prophet, which in its nature is an endless ocean of love.
In beginning to describe the more technical aspects of my work, I must make special mention of the science of Islamic numerology, termed “abjad” in Arabic. The intriguing (even beguiling) science of letters and numbers certainly forms an integral part of Islamic art, to where the tiles of the Taj Mahal or even the latticework of Alhambra owe their intricacies to this science as much as to geometry. I was inspired to use abjad by another of Mawlana Shaykh Hisham’s senior disciples, Shaykh Nurjan Mirahmedi, who is an expert not only of abjad but of a whole array of Islamic meditation sciences.
The aesthetic style figuring prominently in my work is somewhat of a synthesis of Indo-Persian, Turkish, and Western cultures, with the Turkish style in dominance. In a way, the synthesis itself is a reflection of my birth city of Quetta (in western Pakistan near the Afghan-Iran border): the eastern touch of the carved bamboo kalam and Persian motifs, tempered by the strong influence of Ottoman-style calligraphy and illumination (in my most recent works). As I have resided continuously in North America for the past 10 years, my style has been infused with a bold western flavor, most evident in the liberty I now take working in different media—acrylic paints, watercolor, and inks. My firm intention, though, is to adhere to tradition as much as possible, including use of a sharp knife for carving, use of bamboo pens, burnishing the calligraphy paper, and the use of natural dyes for paper and soot ink for writing. As for the all-important script, after years of practicing with different techniques and styles, I have come to the conclusion that no script is more powerful and magnificent to define the Arabic word than the Ottoman-developed scripts. To narrow my personal preference even further, Thuluth is the script of choice. Upon first witnessing this wonderful script it in breathtaking photographs of the architectural works of the legendary Sinan,I instantly fell in admiration of Thuluth, and have since made it the main script of my work. Vibrant, majestic, and replete with symmetry, Thuluth remains a great aesthetic accomplishment.
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