Exploring Sulawesi Qur’ans: Writing Techniques, Tools and Materials

In May 2023, the CallFront team had the pleasure of welcoming two specialists of Malay and Indonesian manuscripts: Annabel Teh Gallop, head of the Southeast Asia section of the British Library; and Ali Akbar, calligrapher and a researcher at the National Research and Innovation Agency in Indonesia (BRIN), former head of collection at the Bayt Al-Qur’an & Museum in Jakarta.

This time, our focus was drawn to a corpus of manuscripts, more precisely Qur’ans copied in Southeast Asia during the 17^th to the 19^th Centuries. These manuscripts were produced in the Malay Archipelago, covering the current nations of Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Indonesia, of which the major islands are Sumatra, Java, Borneo and Sulawesi (Celebes).

Thanks to the extensive research of Annabel Teh Gallop and Ali Akbar in this field,[1] we started our study with a selection of Sulawesi Qur’ans. This corpus allowed us to make observations about the local traditions of copying the Qur’an, as well as the calligraphy displayed in these manuscripts.

Incorporating praxis to this study is especially necessary as the calligraphies studied in this corpus are no longer practiced by professional calligraphers today. However, even in this region, the copy of the Quranic text was extremely codified.  Thus, the recreation of the writing process and techniques can potentially lead to interesting conclusions about its context of use. Furthermore, as one of the purposes of the project is to find connections between other calligraphies at the frontiers of the Islamicate world, these experiments can allow us to draw connections between corpora from different regions.

Consequently, we organized two work sessions aiming to understand and re-create the writing praxis of the Quranic tradition of Southeast Asia. This was possible thanks to the calligraphic skills and knowledge of Ali Akbar, in collaboration with Annabel Gallop, who had already engaged in documenting some of the traditional materials of the region such as the local dluwang paper, local reeds, and inks which he shared with the project. ^[2] The intention of this praxis session was not to recreate identically the original text, but rather to document the entire writing process: the choice of tools and materials (pen, paper and ink), the characteristic letter forms, and the writing techniques involved.

As a starting point, it is important to bear in mind that even if the canonical form of calligraphies in Arabic script (naskhi, muhaqqaq, thuluth, riqa’, rayhani and tawqi’) were known and respected in Southeast Asia, differences in their execution are nevertheless visible. While the art of calligraphy was widespread in the area, local variants were developed in each region, and we can distinguish local “schools” or artistic communities working on the calligraphy as well as in the illumination.

The first step in our praxis session was to gather information regarding the material characteristics of one of the manuscripts from the selected corpus: its dimensions, those of the text block, the type of paper, and the type of ink. A Qur’an from West Sulawesi was chosen, dated 1276 H (1859-1860)^[3]. As we didn’t have access to the original, we reproduced two folios to the exact scale.

This information is crucial for the praxis, for even though we don’t have access to the same material support and the same ink, we try to choose tools and materials with similar properties in order to be as faithful as possible to the original. Therefore, we chose a handam calamus from Aceh, probably similar to the local Sulawesi reeds, with a hard nib. For the paper, which in this case was a European rag paper, we used an uncoated factory-produced 80 gram uncoated white paper whose texture was the closest to the model. We also used a locally produced Indonesian ink, the Cianjur West Java ink, made from soot and sticky rice. ^[4] While Ali Akbar had documented the traditional use of banana stem fibers inside the inkwell, due to the absence of these fibers we used a regular silk fiber wad (liqa) to act as sponge.

Ali Akbar working on the reproductions of individual letter forms with the reed calamus and ink © CALLFRONT

The second step was preparing to write the main letterforms. To be accurate, we took into consideration the fact that the nuqta system, which lays at the basis of the codification of canonical calligraphies,[5] was probably not employed in Southeast Asia. The calligraphers seemed to have copied the script directly by imitation of their teacher’s hand and through regular training.  It is still unclear whether they followed specific rules to establish the margins, the distance between the lines, and the size of the calamus. In the Sulawesi Qur’an from the Nuryena collection, we have 15 lines a page, which is a very common mistar in this region, following the Ottoman model^[6].  Questioning the relationship between the size of the nib of the calamus, and the distance between the lines in different specimens, lead us to believe that the dimensions and number of lines are probably predetermined by the size of the paper used and not by the calligraphy itself.

Finally, calligraphers Ali Akbar and Nuria Garcia Masip proceeded to reproduce the isolated letters found in the model. The paper sheet was prepared by tracing invisible lines with a fingernail over a ruler. The main questions guiding this reproduction focused on the articulation and decomposition of letters, the direction of strokes, ink consistency, and pressure. The first evident fact pointed out by the calligraphers after this experiment was that the direction of strokes corresponds to the naskh script. However, the angle of the calam remains quite stable, with full contact of the nib on the page and with very few nuances in the stroke. They thus agreed on a continuous ductus with little contrast. Furthermore, when possible, the calamus shouldn’t be lifted from the page, but perform the strokes in one continuous motion. Therefore, if the ink allows it, this would mean that the calligrapher wrote relatively fast. Research on archival sources confirmed that the copy of one Qur’an could last about a year, sometimes even less, which would seem to match this observation.

The next steps in these experiments would ideally be to perform a reproduction of a full page following the same approach. This of course requires time and practice on the part of the calligrapher in order to acquire the necessary writing consistency and fluidity.  In the meantime, this praxis session was a unique opportunity to document local tools and materials which are gradually falling into disuse, as well as provide a window into the actual formation of local calligraphic variants. Perhaps shaped by local taste, by the transmission of masters to students, or by imitation of imported models, it is undeniable that the result is a unique local Sulawesi naskh.  We look forward to expanding these recreative practices to other scripts in the region, in the hope of documenting the unique richness of these local calligraphic practices.

Hévi Saado

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[1] Annabel Teh Gallop, “The Boné Qur’an from South Sulawesi,” in Treasures of the Aga Khan Museum: Arts of the Book and Calligraphy, ed. Margaret S. Graves and Benoît Junod (Istanbul: Aga Khan Trust for Culture and Sakip Sabanci University, 2010), 162–73; Ali Akbar, “Manuskrip Al-Qur’an dari Sulawesi Barat: Kajian Beberapa Aspek Kodikologi,” Suhuf, Jurnal Kajian Al-Qur’an 7, no. 1 (June 2014): 101-123.

^[2] For more details on the material support see Ann Kumar and John H. McGlynn (Editors), Illuminations: The Writing Traditions of Indonesia (Jakarta: The Lontar Foundation and New York: Weatherhill, 1996).

^[3] Qur’an from the private collection of Hajjah Nuryena Atjo.

^[4] For more details about the context of production of the Cianjur West Java ink see Rajabi Abdul Razak, Mandana Barkeshli, and Raihan Othman. “The Legacy of Traditional Indonesian Ink: Its Intensity and Durability.” In International Council of Museums Priprints, 15 (Melbourne: Eduardo Pulido, 2014).

[5] For the codification of curvilinear scripts see Alain George, The Rise of Islamic Calligraphy (London: Saqi, 2010), 115-146.

^[6] For more details about the mistar in Malay manuscripts see Jones Russell, “More Light on Malay Manuscripts.” In Archipel, volume 8 (1974): 45-58.

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