In April 2025, some of the CallFront team members, Eloïse Brac de la Perrière, Nuria Garcia Masip, Adeline Laclau, Nourane Ben Azzouna and I, traveled to the hometown of the Chinese calligrapher Haji Noor Deen, whose work has been central in defining and theorizing the ṣīnī script. (Fig. 1). The team was accompanied by Antoine Brendlen, the filmmaker associated with the CallFront project, whose role was to film the calligrapher in his studio. The very special architecture and decoration of some mosques in China were also recorded for scientific documentation of the project.
Continuer la lecture de « And Seek Knowledge even in China: Meeting with the Chinese Calligrapher Haji Noor Deen »Catégorie : Publications
[Video] Parole aux calligraphes – Haji Noor Deen
[Video] Parole aux calligraphes – Cheikh Hamou (version longue)
Epigraphic Practices in Sultanate India: A View from Chanderi
Strategically positioned within the forested hills of central India, the city of Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh offers an unparalleled view of epigraphic practices during the period of Sultanate rule (Fig. 1). Annexed from the Pratihāra kings, the city and hill fortress became the seat of a governorate (iqṭāʾ) under the Sultans of Delhi (1310–1398), and rapidly grew from a garrison town (qasba) into a capital city under the Sultans of Mandu (1401–1565). By the end of the 15th century, its urban topography comprised a citadel (qala‘), a castle (hiṣār), a walled town (shahr), and a walled suburb (bīrūn shahr) with numerous reservoirs, stepwells, mosques, caravanserais, and palatial garden estates. These urban foundations are documented by a voluminous corpus of inscriptions in Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, and Hindi languages, which provide one of the richest repositories for architectural calligraphy produced for a variety of patrons, places, and publics in the provinces of Hindustan.
Continuer la lecture de « Epigraphic Practices in Sultanate India: A View from Chanderi »
Calligraphy and Inscriptions at the Frontiers of the Islamic World, international workshop, 22-23 January 2025
As part of the CallFront project, a two-day workshop dedicated to epigraphic practices on the frontiers of the Islamic world was organized at INHA by Maxime Durocher (Sorbonne), Saarthak Singh (École française d’Extrême-Orient, Paris) and Vincent Thérouin (Sorbonne). The event was structured in two parts: a roundtable exploring writing and engraving techniques, followed by a conference bringing together an interdisciplinary panel of archaeologists, historians, and art historians. The conference focused on epigraphic practices across different geographic areas, including the Indo-Persian world, Anatolia, the Balkans, the Black Sea shores and the Iberian Peninsula[1].
Writing, Inscribing, Carving – From Calligraphy to Epigraphy (January 22nd)

[Video] Parole aux chercheurs – Mauro Nobili
[Video] Parole aux chercheurs – Andrea Brigaglia
[Publication] – Décrire la calligraphie en caractères arabes : enjeux et méthodologies pour la constitution d’une base de données pour le projet CallFront
L’équipe CallFront est heureuse d’avoir pu participer au dernier cahier de la Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée (Remmm) sur la thématique des études sur les mondes musulmans et les humanités numériques.
Continuer la lecture de « [Publication] – Décrire la calligraphie en caractères arabes : enjeux et méthodologies pour la constitution d’une base de données pour le projet CallFront »[Video] Parole aux chercheurs – Umberto Bongianino
Experimenting with Maghribī Scripts: Meeting with the Moroccan Calligrapher Belaïd Hamidi
In November 2023, CallFront welcomed Umberto Bongianino, Assistant Professor at the Khalili Research Center in Oxford, in Paris, for a session on praxis focused on the study of the instruments used to write Maghribī mabsūṭ, and the techniques employed in Maghribī thuluth chrysography, as well as issues related to letter forms in epigraphic Maghribī thuluth and potential methods of transposing models. A few months later, in June 2024, Umberto Bongianino, Eloïse Brac de la Perrière, Nuria Garcia Masip and I traveled to Morocco to meet M. Belaïd Hamidi, a Moroccan calligrapher and expert in Maghribī script. Antoine Brendlen, the filmmaker associated with the CallFront project, accompanied and filmed the team throughout this visit, thereby fully documenting this scientific investigation as well as the calligraphic demonstrations performed by the artist.
This meeting took place in Fez, the calligrapher’s hometown and former capital of the Marinid dynasty (1244-1465), and it aimed to continue the documentation of the history of calligraphy in Arabic script in the Maghrib and to further explore the themes raised during the session on praxis and the international workshop. Belaïd Hamidi shared his expertise on Maghribī scripts as well as his professional considerations as a calligrapher regarding some ancient manuscripts and calligraphic inscriptions adorning the city’s monuments.

