Umberto Bongianino – CallFront

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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On November 7^th, 2023 we had the pleasure of welcoming Umberto Bongianino, Departmental Lecturer in Islamic Art and Architecture at the Khalili Research Centre, University of Oxford, for a session on praxis. These sessions are meant to be exploratory collaborations between researchers and calligraphers, in order to experiment and try out new hypotheses, following an established protocol developed by the CallFront Project. In this case, this was a preliminary session ahead of our work with the Moroccan master calligrapher Hamidi Bel’aid, who will be collaborating with us in the upcoming future.

We structured this session around a series of questions posed by Umberto Bongianino concerning the instruments used to write the Maghribī mabsūṭ (“monumental”) style, as well as the techniques used for Maghribī thuluth chrysography. The final part of the session broached questions regarding letter forms in epigraphic Maghribī thuluth, as well as the possible methods used for the transposition of models.

Fig. 1. Printed model from the Marrakesh Quran ca. 1220, the experiment sheet and different types of *qalams*.

For the experiments on Maghribī mabsūṭ, we used three specimens printed to scale: two Qurʾāns possibly from Marrakesh, dating from ca. 1220[1] and ca. 1230 (the “Pink Qurʾān”),[2] and a Qurʾān probably from Fes, dated 705 H./1306.[3] Our main objective was to recreate the calamus which would have been used for these calligraphic styles, a monumental variant of Maghribī round scripts used especially, but not exclusively, in Quranic manuscripts. In order to do this, we first selected thick 160 gr drawing paper, with no sizing but polished, resembling the weight and texture of the Pink Qurʾān. For the ink, although the corrosive effects on the pages of the original specimens indicate the employment of metallo-gallic inks (ḥibr), we used a black soot ink (midād), easier to procure and which behaved similarly to ḥibr in terms of consistency.

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Étiquette : Umberto Bongianino

Experimenting with Maghribī Scripts: Meeting with the Moroccan Calligrapher Belaïd Hamidi

Experimenting with Maghribī scripts: tools and techniques