Nastaliq

Nastaʼlīq (; , ) is one of the main calligraphic hands used in writing the Persian alphabet and the Urdu alphabet, and traditionally the predominant style in Persian calligraphy. It was developed in Iran in the 14th and 15th centuries. It is sometimes used to write Arabic language text (where it is mainly used for titles and headings), but its use has always been more popular in the Persian, Urdu and Turkic sphere of influence. Nastaliq remains very widely used in Iran, Afghanistan and the Indian Subcontinent and other countries for written poetry and as a form of art.
A less elaborate version of Nastaliq serves as the preferred style for writing in Kashmiri and Urdu and it is often used alongside Naskh for Pashto. In Persian, it is used for poetry only. was historically used for writing Ottoman Turkish, where it was known as (not to be confused with a totally different Persian style, also called "taʿlīq"; to distinguish the two, Ottomans referred to the latter as , "old ").
Nastaliq is the core script of the post-Sassanid Persian writing tradition and is equally important in the areas under its cultural influence. The languages of Iran (Western Persian, Azeri, Balochi, Kurdi, Luri, etc.), Afghanistan (Dari Persian, Pashto, Turkmen, Uzbek, etc.), India (Urdu, Kashmiri, etc.), Pakistan (Urdu, Punjabi, Saraiki, Pashto, Balochi, etc.) and the Turkic Uyghur language of the Chinese province of Xinjiang, rely on . Under the name (lit. "suspending [script]"), it was also beloved by Ottoman calligraphers who developed the Diwani () and Ruqah () styles from it.
 is amongst the most fluid calligraphy styles for the Arabic script. It has short verticals with no serifs, and long horizontal strokes. It is written using a piece of trimmed reed with a tip of , called ('pen', Arabic and Persian ) and carbon ink, named "siyahi". The nib of a can be split in the middle to facilitate ink absorption.
Two important forms of panels are and . A ("cross", in Persian) panel usually consists of four diagonal hemistiches (half-lines) of poetry, clearly signifying a moral, ethical or poetic concept. ("black drill") panels, however, communicate via composition and form, rather than content. In , repeating a few letters or words (sometimes even one) virtually inks the whole panel. The content is thus of less significance and not clearly accessible.
History.
After the Islamic conquest of Persia, the Iranian Persian people adopted the Perso-Arabic script and the art of Persian calligraphy flourished in Iran as territories of the former Persian empire. Apparently, Mir Ali Tabrizi (14th century) developed by combining two existing scripts of and . Hence, it was originally called . Another theory holds that the name means "that which abrogated ("naskh") "Taʿlīq"".
 thrived and many prominent calligraphers contributed to its splendor and beauty. It is believed that reached its highest elegance in Mir Emad's works. The current practice of is, however, heavily based on Mirza Reza Kalhor's technique. Kalhor modified and adapted to be easily used with printing machines, which in turn helped wide dissemination of his transcripts. He also devised methods for teaching and specified clear proportional rules for it, which many could follow.
The Mughal Empire used Persian as the court language during their rule over South Asia. During this time, came into widespread use in South Asia. The influence continues to this day. In India and Pakistan, almost everything in Urdu is written in the script, constituting the greatest part of usage in the world. The situation of in Bangladesh used to be the same as in Pakistan until 1971, when Urdu ceased to remain an official language. Today, only a few people use this form of writing in Bangladesh.
Nastaliq is a descendant of and . - literally: "broken Nastaliq" - style (below) is a development of .
Notable Nastaliq calligraphers.
And others, including Mirza Jafar Tabrizi, Abdul Rashid Deilami, Sultan Ali Mashadi, Mir Ali Heravi, Emad Ul-Kottab, Mirza Gholam Reza Esfehani, Emadol Kotab, Yaghoot Mostasami and Darvish Abdol Majid Taleghani.
And among contemporary artists: Hassan Mirkhani, Hossein Mirkhani, Keikhosro Khoroush, Abbas Akhavein and Qolam-Hossein Amirkhani, Ali Akbar Kaveh,
Kaboli.
Etiquette.
Islamic calligraphy was originally used to adorn Islamic religious texts, specifically the Qurʼan, as pictorial ornaments were prohibited in sacred publications and spaces of Islam. Therefore, a sense of sacredness was always implicit in calligraphy.
A disciple was supposed to qualify himself spiritually for being a calligrapher, besides learning how to prepare "", ink, paper and, more importantly, master . For instance see "Adab al-Mashq", a manual of penmanship attributed to Mir Emad.
Nastaliq.
' or ' (, , "cursive " or literally "broken ") style is a "streamlined" script of . It was developed in the 14th century to ease communication for non-calligraphic purposes, such as commerce and administration. "Shekasta" is characterized by "[letters] greatly reduced in size... thinner strokes... [and] letters that in the formal versions of the Arabic script do not connect to the left were made to connect."
Nastaliq typesetting.
 Typography first started with attempts to develop a metallic type for the script, but all such efforts failed. Fort William College developed a Type, which was not close enough to and hence was never used other than by the college library to publish its own books. The State of Hyderabad Dakan (now in India) also attempted to develop a Typewriter but this attempt failed miserably and the file was closed with the phrase “Preparation of on commercial basis is impossible”. Basically, in order to develop such a metal type, thousands of pieces would be required.
Modern typography began with the invention of "Noori Nastaleeq" which was first created as a digital font in 1981 through the collaboration of Mirza Ahmad Jamil TI (as Calligrapher) and Monotype Imaging (formerly Monotype Corp & Monotype Typography).
Although this was a ground-breaking solution employing over 20,000 ligatures (individually designed character combinations) which provided the most beautiful results and allowed newspapers such as Pakistan's "Daily Jang" to use digital typesetting instead of an army of calligraphers, it suffered from two problems in the 1990s: (a) its non-availability on standard platforms such as Windows or Mac OS, and (b) the non-WYSIWYG nature of text entry, whereby the document had to be created by commands in Monotype's proprietary page description language.
InPage.
In 1994, InPage Urdu, which is a fully functional page layout software for Windows akin to Quark XPress, was developed for Pakistan's newspaper industry by an Indian software company Concept Software Pvt Ltd. It offered the "Noori Nastaliq" font licensed from Monotype Corporation. This font, with its vast ligature base of over 20,000, is still used in current versions of the software for Windows. As of 2009 InPage has become Unicode based, supporting more languages, and the "Faiz Lahori Nastaliq" font with Kasheeda has been added to it along with compatibility with OpenType Unicode fonts. Nastaliq Kashish has been made for the first time in the history of Typography.
Letter forms.
For the Arabic alphabet, and many others derived from it, letters are regarded as having two or three general forms each, based on their position in the word (though obviously Arabic calligraphy can add a great deal of complexity). But the Nastaliq style uses more than three general forms for many letters, even in non-decorative documents. For example, most documents written in Urdu, which uses the Nastaliq style.