著者

本田 孝一

出版者

日本中東学会

雑誌

日本中東学会年報 (ISSN:09137858)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.8, pp.127-167, 1993-03-31 (Released:2018-03-30)

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As a calligrapher of Arabic, I have been trying to discover the elements of beauty which would lie in each of the major styles of Arabic calligraphy; Naskhi style, Ruqua style, Diwani style, Jali Diwani style, Thulth style, Naas-Taariq style and so on. Because every time I was engaged in producing Arabic calligraphic works I felt it necessary to clarify the elements of beauty which remain vague and mysterious without being studied theoretically, so that I could recognize them and manage to put them under control in writing certain style of Arabic calligraphy. As an initial step to grasp the elements of beauty I made a three- demensional analysis of the shapes of alphabets for each style of Arabic calligraphy. The result of the analysis was published in the 6th AJAMES 1991. The analysis showed that the shape of each alphabet is a silhouette of a narrow tape whose shape was made according to the shape of the equivalent alphabet. At the same time the analysis made clear that shapes of some alphabets of highly artistic style like Thulth style are composed by combination of two parts of different silhouettes made by throwing lights from two directions. It is needless to say that shapes of the alphabets are only small parts of the elements which constitute beauty of the styles of the Arabic calligraphy. For the alphabets are connected one another to form a word, then words are connected into a phrase or a sentence. Through these processes of connections, the shapes are totally changed to become a new linear mass-object which comes to bear a new beauty. The calligrapher has to write words after words pursuing the elements of beauty consciously It is interesting to note that I could find through my experiences in the field of Arabic calligraphy, several important elements which would constitute beauty of the Arabic calligraphy. These are, for example, (1) shapes of the alphabets, (2) composition of the spaces where the calligraphic lines are written. (the harmony between the spaces which are full of lines and those spaces where lines are rare.) (3) The whole regular movements of the lines (visible trend of the lines/ invisible trend of the lines), and (4) role of the symbols for pronuntiation and decoration. According to the styles of Arabic calligraphy, a minute study was made this time to find out which of the above-mentioned elements would be included and emphasized in each of the styles. The results of the study are shown in a table in this thesis. It should be specially noted that I could discover through the study that each style has an invisible trend lines which would be hiden behind the visible movements of lines of words to cotrol them. Grasping these trend lines which differ according to the styles would help us in connecting lines smoothly in writing calligaphic works. At the same time in the light of the elements of beauty varoius comparisons were made among the styles in order to know the charecteristics of each of them. I would believe that this tentative study was fairly fruitful for me because I could be aware of various differences among the styles of Arabic calligraphy clearly.

著者

本田 孝一

出版者

日本中東学会

雑誌

日本中東学会年報 (ISSN:09137858)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.9, pp.241-271, 1994-03-31 (Released:2018-03-30)

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As a calligrapher of Arabic, I have been trying to discover the elements of beauty which would lie in each of the major styles of Arabic calligraphy; Naskhi style, Ruqua style, Diwani style, Jali Diwani style, Thulth style, Naas-Taariq style and so on. Because every time I was engaged in producing Arabic calligraphic works I felt it necessary to

著者

本田 孝一

出版者

日本中東学会

雑誌

日本中東学会年報 (ISSN:09137858)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.6, pp.197-265, 1991-03-31 (Released:2018-03-30)

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No one will dispute the fact that the Arabic calligraphy has so long history which dates back to the 10th century that it could create various kinds of traditional writing styles according to the difference in the countries and the periods in which it prevailed. These writing styles are, for example, Naskhy, Thulthy, Diwany, Jali-Diwany, Farisy, Ruq'i, Ijazy and so on. Each of these styles has its own alphabets, whose shapes are clearly different from those of other styles. There is no doubt that the shapes are so refined and beautiful that even foreigners who cannot understand Arabic or Persian, could appreciate their artistic values. As for me, I have been interested in this art since I began to study Arabic. As my interest in this calligraphy increased, I began to consider where the secrets of its beauty lie. As the first step to find out the secrets, my consideration was directed to the shapes of the alphabets themselves in the abovementioned styles. When I looked into them, I found that some lines of the alphabets look three-dimensional objects though they are written on the two-dimensional paper. So I came to guess that these shapes of the alphabets could be said to be silhouettes of certain three-dimensional objects which are made of long narrow pieces of solid paper. Based on this supposition, I tried to make the shapes of the alphabets by using tapes (about 2cm in breadth) of solid paper,which were mounted on even cardboard, according to their traditional shapes. Then an investigation was made to analize the direction from which the objects are seen to appear just like the original shapes of the equivalent alphabets. This investigation was done for each styles of Arabic calligraphy. It is worth mentioning that the results of the invetsigation were very interesting and new to us: The investigations showed us that the directions from which the tape-made objects are seen, are slightly different according to the writing styles (Naskhy, Thulthy, Diwany, Farisy and Ruq'i). It should be specially noted that the analyses also made it clear that some of the writing styles have several alphabets whose lines are not partially equal to the reflected images of the equivalent tape-made objects. Most of these exceptional parts were found at the ends of the lines. We could say that they might be regarded as artificial ones joined to the other natural lines. Detailed explanations for the components of the lines of each of the alphabets were made in the following main text.

著者

本田 孝一

出版者

日本中東学会

雑誌

日本中東学会年報 (ISSN:09137858)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.4, no.2, pp.265-285, 1989-03-31 (Released:2018-03-30)

著者

本田 孝一

出版者

日本中東学会

雑誌

日本中東学会年報 (ISSN:09137858)

巻号頁・発行日

no.4, pp.265-285, 1989-03-31