Religion, Press, and Politics in Sadat’s Egypt.” Middle
East Journal 40, no. 3 (Summer, 1986): 462–477; Ibn
al-Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom. Translated by R. W. J.
Austin (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1980); Annemarie
Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 259–286.
Ibn al-Bawwab, Abu al-Hasan Ali
(unknown–1022) copyist of the earliest extant
Quran manuscript using all elements of 10th-century
calligraphic reforms
Ibn al-Bawwab worked as librarian for the Shii
Buyid rulers in Shiraz (in iran) and was later bur-
ied in baghdad, the city that gave rise to the calli-
graphic khatt (Arabic script) reforms and the girih
mode of geometric ornamentation that in the 11th
century suppressed variant readings of the qUran.
He produced a copy of the Quran in 1000–01 that
is now preserved at the Chester Beatty Library in
Dublin. Ibn al-Bawwab’s use of the proportioned
scripts and accompanying geometric designs soon
after their creation indicates that he was loyal to
the Sunni Abbasids (r. 750–1258) as opposed to
the Buyid dynasty (932–1062).
Ibn al-Bawwab occupies a special place among
medieval commentators on khatt as the person
who perfected, through the elegance of his writ-
ing, the proportioned script invented by abU ali
mUhammad ibn mUqla (d. 940). His is the first
surviving copy (and one of the very first such
copies) of a Quran in cursive scripts, or what were
originally considered secular scripts (the six pens
of Ibn Muqla). His signed and dated manuscript
provides a rare instance of a preserved work that
exemplifies major shifts in the processes of copy-
ing and producing these manuscripts.
Earlier, making copies of the Quran was the
domain of specialists who used gold ink on vel-
lum, often employing brushes to fill in the out-
lines of stylized, extended, and difficult to read
letters. Each horizontally disposed page carried a
few lines of about seven to nine words, resulting
in expensive, multivolume products of limited
circulation. In contrast, Ibn al-Bawwab’s copy is
a small volume (ca. 13.5 × 17.8 cm) in a vertical
paper format in which the text is written with
pen. The body of the text is entirely vocalized and
written in a clear, rounded naskhi script, while
chapter headings, verse counts, and other statis-
tics are in thuluth script. The text itself follows
the approved Abbasid version, while the use of
reform scripts and geometric (girih) decoration
in the frontispieces similarly expresses Abbasid
dogma on the accessibility of the divine message
and eternity of universal order.
See also abbasid caliphate; arabesqUe; books
and bookmaking; calligraphy; Fatimid dynasty;
madrasa.
Nuha N. N. KhouryFurther reading: D. S. Rice, The Unique Quran Manu-
script of Ibn al-Bawwab in the Chester Beatty Library
(Dublin: E. Walker, 1955); Yasser Tabbaa, The Transfor-
mation of Islamic Art during the Sunni Revival (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2001).Ibn al-Farid, Abu Hafs Umar (1181–1235)
leading poet of the Arabic language and a widely
recognized Sufi saint of Egypt
Umar Ibn al-Farid was born and lived most of his
life in egypt. He spent 15 years in mecca, where
he went after the death of his father. It is not clear
how he supported himself, but he probably made
a living teaching poetry and literature as well as
having a sinecure teaching hadith, in which he
was trained.
Ibn al-Farid’s poetry has long been highly
esteemed for its beauty. His poems often bear mul-
tiple meanings and can be read as poems of love
and pleasure or of the mystical path of sUFism.
During his life and in the first generations after
his death, Ibn al-Farid was mostly known as a
mystically inclined poet, and it was very much his
poetry that defined his early reputation. He was an
active member of the literary society of his time,K 328 Ibn al-Bawwab, Abu al-Hasan Ali