Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Claude Addas, Quest for the Red Sul-

phur: The Life of Ibn Arabi (Cambridge: Islamic Texts 

Society, 1993); William C. Chittick, Ibn Arabi: Heir to 

the Prophets (Oxford: Oneworld Publishers, 2005); Th. 

Emil Homerin, “Ibn Arabi in the People’s Assembly: 

Ibn al-Arabi, Muhyi al-Din

  

327  J

---

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 i

ran

) and was later bur-

ied in b

aghdad

, 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 q

Uran

.

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 a

bU

 a

li

m

Uhammad

  i

bn

  m

Uqla

 (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  a

bbasid

  c

aliphate

; 

arabesqUe

; 

books

and

 

bookmaking

; 

calligraphy

; F

atimid

 

dynasty

; 

madrasa

.

Nuha N. N. Khoury