الشــــروح والتعليقـات والتمهيـد .. كتاب مصوّر الخط العربي .. ناجي زين الدين

Explanations, comments, and introduction... An illustrated book on Arabic calligraphy... Naji Zein Al-Din

Explanations and comments
Introduction

It is necessary in this chapter, which is closely related to the chapters of the story of humanity, that we begin by defining writing and history according to the custom of historians from the time when this humanity began recording its events.
It is not fair to call the previous stages of human knowledge of writing the prehistoric era.
There is no doubt that the knowledge of writing was a huge step taken by humanity as it felt where its feet were on the long path of life. It is an event that can be considered the beginning of history as a stage of human life, but it ignores many chapters of the human story that constitute long stages of history. It relied and derived its material from the bones of skulls, the ashes of stoves, and the heads of stone spears thousands of years old. In reality, writing is nothing but a new aspect of the history of human events. In the ages before writing, humanity may have had a history and events that were no less important than the written history of writing. It may even have known a type, or even types, of writings, or its symbols, inscriptions, images, and decorations were too difficult to read, and it was not resolved, and news of it vanished and disappeared. . All over the world, its documents have disappeared and have not reached our hands, as if they were nothing mentioned.

For this and others, scholars decided to clarify the difference between the meanings of the words - history and - history.

The first is the successive stages of life, while the other is a means of recording the events of those stages.
Writing is not the only method for this record since the Earth settled into its current form approximately 1832 million years ago, according to what geologists and anthropologists say.

Frank Hibben says in his book: The Ancient Civilization in the New World, published in 1960 in New York, translated by Dr. Mahmoud Al-Sayyad, and printed in 1962 in Egypt. . The religious ideas that were prevalent a century ago hindered the work of the pioneering European archaeologists. For example, the prohibition of adhering to the Calvinist interpretation (*) of the Caliph, and the fact that it did not arise until about six thousand years ago prevented many Europeans from accepting flint tools and bones. Animals, cutting tools and hand tools buried under a deep level of ice piles dating back to the Ice Age. .

European researchers in general did not accept that the first humans only appeared in the ancient world (Asia, Africa, Europe) about a million years ago. in
The first part of the last glacial period. Geologists have now known from studying extinct animals and glacial changes, and using climate tables, that the ice age, which they called “Pleistocene E,” lasted approximately several million years, and during that period huge masses of skin formed on the continents of the hemisphere. The northern hemisphere, and at the same time, parts of the southern hemisphere were under the influence of rainy ages. Ice formed four times and melted four times during the Pleistocene on the surface of the Earth. These four ice ages were a response to huge changes in climate and rain.

After geoarchaeologists continued to use other sciences to date human evidence, the pattern of human events began to take on a clear pattern that could be accepted. They knew that the last ice age, or the Wisconsin Ice Age, had ended about eight thousand years ago, as the animals of the Ice Age that passed through this era took It has been extinct since that date.

With these scientific innovations of history, archaeology reached its maturity as an exact nonexistent, and archaeologists became able to discover a continuous course of history that is no less in its investigation than the course that historians follow, relying on written documents. Human developments have been known since the cave was the first place for primitive human habitation, then he moved from the dark cave to the conical hut, built from tree branches in the middle of the forest. The primitives graduated from hunting to herding and then to agriculture, which greatly required cooperation and gathering, so the humans learned the works of thought. In building houses from mud and brick, they learned how to protect what happened, and from this arose traditions that dealt with the relationships of individuals with each other in one family and the relationship of the family together with others among them, which created the first state of the clan and then of the tribe and then the village.

Then the problems that arose among the primitives led to the emergence of principalities and leaders, and that situation did not take long until it in turn led to the emergence of rulers and governments for social guidance, and magicians and priests were concerned with writings to supervise worship, and leaders from all temporal and spiritual authorities.

The idea of ​​annihilation and death was troubling the first man, so he wanted to understand where man goes after death? . From that feeling, religiosity and worship were born, places of worship appeared alongside residential homes, the village began to expand and became a city, and means of exchanging ideas grew in the city, so the state was formed and the worship of monuments, “stones,” the sun, fetishes, and idols appeared.

The use of metals in the production of primitive goods is attributed to the last period of the Neolithic era, as copper finds were found indicating its use in Egypt four thousand years before the birth of Christ, and that the use of iron followed the use of copper in making tools, which led to a comprehensive change in human life. Arnold Toynbee, considered one of the greatest philosophers of cultural history in the modern era, said in the fields of historical study: “...the number of known civilized societies is much less than the number of primitive societies that have existed and disappeared since the dawn of human history.” (And perhaps its first beginning will remain ambiguous forever) They are: Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Hittite, Syriac, Minoan, Hellenistic, Iranian, Arab, Hindu, Indian, Chinese, civilizations of the Far East (Chinese, Korean, Japanese), Andean, Yucatecan, Mayan, Mexican (Byzantine Christian Orthodoxy) (and Russian Christian Orthodoxy) and Western civilization.

Toynbee continues and arranges the twenty-one civilizations in a continuous series, and two different types of societies appear to him at both ends: the type of societies “connected” by ancient civilizational lineages, and their number, regardless of the nature of their connection, is fifteen societies.

The type of societies “that are not related to any civilizational lineage” are six: Egyptian, Andean, Sumerian, Mennonite, Chinese, and Mayan. Toynbee presents some geographical environments and notes that Palmyra, Petra, and Phoenicia were natural challenges.

Then this great historian continues and explains in his historical encyclopedia, which contained ten huge volumes, in which he dared to delve into the darkness of distant times and began to search into its labyrinths and present the most important achievements of the great civilizational achievements of the Syriac Aramaic and Arab society, which are:
First - the invention of the alphabet.
Second - the discovery of the Atlantic Ocean
Third - arriving at a specific concept. God Almighty, among the four religions:
They are: Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam. Toynbee discussed how Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Nestorianism, and Jacobitism failed in combating Roman-Byzantine tyranny, which was under the influence of Anand, as Rome annexed what remained of Alexander’s conquests to the Hellenistic domain, and Rome took severe revenge from the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucids, He examines what happened to the Jews between the years 66 and 70 AD due to the crushing defeat. Nestorianism and Jacobinism did not succeed when they purified Christianity from Hellenism and reformulated it again into a Syriac religion. The matter ended with the expulsion of Nestorianism eastward beyond the Euphrates, and the settling of Jacobitism in Syria, Egypt, and Armenia among the popular classes. All of these peoples failed in their attempts to dislodge the steadfast Hellenistic challenge in the face of the decadent Syriac society, until the Islamic call to which the corners of the Arabian Peninsula rejoiced and which emerged in the year 630 AD - an ominous date for the Byzantine and Persian empires. History tells us that when Omar ibn Al-Khattab was given the caliphate. He addressed the people and said: (*) “O people, you do not have a home in the Hijaz except on the Najah, and its people do not have the strength to support it except through Ibn al-Tara’, who migrated from the promise of God?” Walk in the land that God promised you to bequeath to you, for He said, “To make it prevail over all religions, and God is the Mighty and Supporter of its people, and the Master of its people, the inheritances of the nations, the son of the righteous servants of God?” .. . The people felt their duty towards the call of the Caliph of the Messenger of God for their Islamic call and their commitment to a dignified life, so a vast state arose on their shoulders, and their legions were able to conquer the state of Persia, which was the most dangerous force of the greatest Sasanian empire in the East.

As for the Byzantine Empire in Syria, Emperor Heraclius was decreed not to leave the world before he witnessed the armies of the Farouks sweeping through his empire and destroying forever what he himself had established and what Pompey and Alexander before him had established within the confines of the Syriac community. Islam achieved everything that Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Nestorianism, and Jacobinism had repeatedly tried to achieve. In vain, Islam accomplished the expulsion of Hellenism and paganism from the Middle East and restored in the person of the emerging Arab state equipped with the Islamic religion, from which Iranian, Indian, Turkish, and Afghan society and other peoples launched into the civilizational development that condemned Islam.

The Arabic script, in which the Holy Qur’an was written, set off as a conqueror and teacher with the conquering armies to neighboring and distant kingdoms. Wherever it came, it annihilated the lines of the conquered nations.

This Islamic world, which extended from Transoxiana in Turkestan in the east to the Far Maghreb in North Africa in the west, has produced an innumerable number of immortal artists who have left on the pages of the ages what is imprinted on the Islamic character in this vast area.

Modern Arab devotion requires indoctrination of the Arab self, based largely on understanding its historical and cultural roots in its religious, archaeological, and calligraphy topics that are related to the nature of these artistic studies.

It is clear that the people of the first line were the people of the Hijaz, the Levant, and Iraq in particular, and there is nothing surprising in that. Iraq, which was the cradle of civilization and the emergence of cuneiform writing since ancient times, is worthy of this artistic leadership, after the emergence of Kufa and Basra and the establishment of Baghdad (the abode of peace) as its capital. To the Arab state, the art of perfecting the Arabic calligraphy began to manifest itself in its most beautiful manifestations. Then this increased, expanded, and developed until its pens multiplied and its forms diversified. The perfecting of the Kufic and Hijazi script in writing was not limited to ghazal parchment or Samarkandi paper, or inlaid covers with gold and bright colors, but rather it went beyond to marble, so the walls of mosques were decorated and ornamented. Monuments, swords are engraved, and coins are minted with this fine calligraphy. It is the pride of our civilization and a symbol of our Islamic culture that has no equal. It is the venerable means of writing the Holy Qur’an, the great word of God. All we have to do is take care to master this script, and increase our knowledge of its types and those that are frequently used. With studying how to simplify letters, master the subtleties of their shapes, and compose their words and sentences in an artistic way that brings together good coordination and quality writing. And to good handwriting, the soundness of the camel; In my opinion, the brief chapters I wrote in this book do not deserve to be fully researched, and they are a prelude to producing a more comprehensive book on Arabic calligraphy in the near future, God willing.