Mir Ali Tabrizi

Background

Mir Ali Tabrizi was born around 1360 in Herat, Afghanistan.

Career

Biographies of calligraphers and treatises composed in sixteenth-century Iran credit Mir Ali Tabrizi with the “invention” of the nasta‘liq script. For that distinction, he later received the prestigious title qudwat al-kuttab (“model for the scribes”). It is known that he lived in Tabriz and was a poet as well as an adept calligrapher. Mir Ali Tabrizi was active in the royal workshop in Tabriz under the reign of the Jalayrid sultan Ahmad, who died in 1410. The renowned calligrapher transmitted his art to his son Abdallah. He, in turn, was the master of Ja‘far Tabrizi, who popularized nasta‘liq in eastern Iran at the Timurid court of Herat after 1420.

Little is known about Mir Ali’s life and work. According to legend, he created the new script after Ali ibn Abi Talib, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, appeared to him in a dream. Ali, who was traditionally seen as the very initiator of calligraphy in Islam, told Mir Ali Tabrizi to draw letters that looked like the wings of flying geese. Nasta‘liq allegedly came into existence from that directive. Scholars have recently argued, however, that the script, in fact, emerged gradually in the second half of the fourteenth century in the cities of Shiraz and Tabriz. The artist died about 1420 in Tabriz, Iran.

Achievements

• Mir Ali Tabrizi was highly famous for his unique Persian calligraphy. Moreover, he was the inventor of the cursive nastaʿlīq script, traditionally regarded as the most elegant of the Persian scripts.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Panel

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  • Poetric prayers for Ali

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  • An album of Nasta'liq Calligraphy

  • Persian calligraphy

  • Khamseh

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  • A Calligraphic Leaf

  • Prayers for Safety and Success

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Connections

Son:

Abdallah Ali Tabrizi

colleague:

Mir Ali Mirza Jafar Tabrizi