Learn to Write Arabic Calligraphy Paperback – November 22, 2013

Finally, here is a book in English to guide interested learners through the assimilation of the required skills in the beautiful art medium of Arabic calligraphy. This is the book on the subject that I've been waiting over 25 years for. The teaching methodology using a step-wise learning process building on previous material is sound, and the coverage of even rarely encountered forms is laid out for the user to master up front. There are a few other books I've seen in the past on this topic, but they are nowhere remotely close to what you get out of this book. Also, it's a beautiful book. A lot of nice information about history, tools, and materials, too. It's all here, folks. This is THE book you want to get if your goal is proficiency with Arabic Calligraphy.

I purchased this book as well as Omar uddins video class on Arabic calligraphy and I'm not sorry. If recommend this to anyone wanting to learn about Arabic calligraphy.

Inshallah i will learn a lot from this book, the clean and descriptive illustrations with color are good. It would be beneficial if there was a video accompaniment to practice the strokes.

I've been studying and acquiring books on Arabic calligraphy for more than 30 years, seeking instruction on how to form these beautiful phrases. This one comes close but still lacks the important information about how to form the letters. The technical details are here for four different styles including letter heights, pen angles and multi-letter formations. Yet the book still lacks the necessary step-by-step that a student needs in order to see how to create the letters - how to stroke the lines, how to flick at the ends of letters, how to form the top crescent of an 'ayn, etc. It's not the author's fault - it's just that a book is not the best way to convey Arabic calligraphy instruction. For about the same price as this book, I recommend instead this same author's video course arabiccalligraphycourse.com .Take that video course and if you would like to have a reference book, this book can serve you well. However, even as a reference, this book falls slightly short. There are missing details (such as the three-dot diacritic in riq'a is not shown) and, more critically, the base-line references differ dramatically among the four scripts, leaving you without a uniform framework in which to compare the angles and shapes of the letters. In addition to all two-letter pairings, the author should include a table of all three-letter formations (mufraddat) along with common variations as a reference, not leave that as an exercise for the student. Show also more examples of masterpiece compositions in the final chapter.As an overall reference, I prefer the following book Arabic Script: Styles, Variants, and Calligraphic Adaptations which covers 33 scripts but is not really an instruction book. For riq'a, this book is the ultimate reference Writing Arabic: A Practical Introduction to Ruq'ah Script - one of my favorite books of all time, it is unparalleled in its completeness of riq'a covering all details of both day-to-day handwriting as well as calligraphic writing. Enjoy the beauty of Arabic calligraphy.

This book is an attempt to make a quick dollar. The author may be an accomplished calligrapher, but he put little effort in this book. It is only letter tables in the different scripts, with no explanation. Worse, these letter tables are made by computer fonts, not by hand. For example, the Naskh section was made by the "Arabic Typesetting" font that comes with MS Office.The most egregious part of this book is the "Riq'ah" section. The author did not even select a quality computer font, so the examples he provides have clear errors. For example, the Jim/Ha/Khaa does not take the correct form before a descending letter, and the Mim is connected inline, not from above, like it's supposed to be. See attached photo with errors circled.Any useful information in this book can be found online for free, even if you can't speak Arabic. Or you could just make your own copy of the book using MS Word!

A great reference for major Arabic fonts

It is nice good book to learn and maintain practice to get better

excellent book to learn calligraphy