Calligraphy · a Light

He measured letters in dots and lost his writing hand

Ibn Muqla was born in Baghdad around 885 and served three times as vizier to the Abbasid caliphs. He is credited with putting Arabic calligraphy on a geometric footing: the rhombic dot made by pressing the reed pen once becomes the unit of measure, the alif is a set number of dots tall, and a circle whose diameter is that alif governs the proportions of every other letter. Scripts written this way were called al-khatt al-mansub, the proportioned hand. Politics ended badly for him. He was imprisoned, his right hand was cut off, his tongue was cut out afterwards, and he died in prison in July 940. His system was still being taught five hundred years later.

Ibn Muqla · Baghdad, c. 885 to 940 CE