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[Colloque CallFront] 15 janvier 2026 – Projection du film d’Antoine Brendlen “CallFront – Récit de voyages”

Dans le cadre du colloque CallFront, le film documentaire d’Antoine Brendlen, CallFront – Récit de voyages sera projeté le jeudi 15 janvier 2026 à 18h à l’Auditorium Jacqueline Lichtenstein de l’INHA.

Cette projection publique propose un documentaire réalisé dans le cadre du projet CallFront. Tourné lors de missions de terrain au Maroc, en Chine et en Afrique de l’Ouest, ce film plonge le spectateur au cœur du travail de maîtres calligraphes rencontrés sur place. À travers leurs gestes et leurs récits, il révèle la richesse des traditions calligraphiques ainsi que les enjeux liés à leur transmission. L’événement invite à découvrir la diversité des pratiques et la vitalité contemporaine de la calligraphie en caractères arabes.

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[Colloque CallFront] : 15-17 janvier 2026 – Calligraphies aux frontières du monde islamique : pratiques, circulations et appropriations

Programme Colloque CallFront 2026
Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA)
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[Video] Parole aux calligraphes – Cheikh Hamou (version longue)

Epigraphic Practices in Sultanate India: A View from Chanderi

Figure 1. Map of Chanderi, Madhya Pradesh, India, Credits : Saarthak Singh

 

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 (iqāʾ) 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.

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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)

Fig. 1: Introduction to the panel discussion by Maxime Durocher © Camille Grandpierre
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[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.

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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.

Fig.1 : View of the Fez medina – Photo : Adeline Laclau
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