Calligraphy · a Light

An Ottoman calligrapher copied forty seven Qur'ans

Shaykh Hamdullah was born in Amasya in 1436 and knew the future sultan Bayezid II when they were both young men there. When Bayezid took the throne he brought him to Istanbul. In 1485 the sultan set a group of Yaqut al-Musta'simi's writings in front of him and asked for something better. Hamdullah went away, worked, and came back with a reformed naskh that became the Ottoman standard and stayed so into the twentieth century. He is said to have copied forty seven complete Qur'ans. An Ottoman saying held that the Qur'an was revealed in the Hijaz, recited in Egypt and written in Istanbul, and it was Hamdullah's line of students that earned the third clause.

Shaykh Hamdullah · Amasya 1436 to 1520