Writing Used as Architecture

The angular style became the standard hand for inscribing buildings, and Islamic monumental epigraphy begins with it. A late seventh century inscription band inside the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, running for many metres in gold on a dark ground, is among the earliest substantial religious texts of Islam to survive in any form, and it is a building rather than a book. The same development turned coinage into a text bearing object, replacing rulers' portraits with words. The style was then elaborated for exactly this purpose. Letters grew leaf and flower terminals, their vertical strokes were plaited or knotted, and backgrounds filled with vegetal ornament, so that the inscription functions as decoration while remaining legible to a reader who knows what to expect.

A later development squared the letters entirely into a grid, which suited brickwork and tilework and produced inscriptions that can be read as pattern from a distance and as text up close. For copying scripture the style was superseded by rounder cursive hands that were faster to write and easier to read. It survived as the script of surfaces, and that is where most people meet it: on walls, domes, mihrabs, coins and tiles rather than on a page.