Muhammad Zakariya is not a household name. Few know he designed the first Eid stamp in US history. Even fewer know he is one of a handful of Islamic calligraphers in the US and is considered one of the leading calligraphers in the world.
You won’t learn this from Zakariya, an extremely modest man who lives in the suburbs in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife and two cats. An Islamic calligrapher and artist, he also makes custom scientific instruments, including astrolabes and celestial globes.
Zakariya was born into a typical American family in Ventura, California, in 1942. It was during a second trip to Morocco in 1964 that he began studying Islamic calligraphy with A.S. Ali Nour. “Nour was an Egyptian and a great lover of classical Arabic; you don’t find people like that anymore. We kept up our friendship until a few years ago, when he passed away,” says Zakariya. “I am forever grateful to him.”
He continued his studies at London’s British Museum, and in 1984 was invited to study at the Research Center for Islamic History, Art and Culture in Istanbul with two celebrated Turkish calligraphers: Hasan Celebi and Ali Alparslan. Celebi, Zakariya says, has remained his lifelong best friend.
“I was able to get a good backing when I studied in Turkey, where I had to learn functional Turkish and Ottoman Turkish. But I can’t go back further than 1750 in Ottoman Turkish... After that, I have to use a dictionary all the time,” says Zakariya.
It doesn’t take long to realize how passionate and knowledgeable Zakariya is of his work. “Calligraphy is a sacred art. You can’t treat it as you would a painting, you need to wait for the door to open and then home in on it.” Unlike Western art, Islamic calligraphy should have no single focal point; rather, every part should have equal visual value, he explains. “The thing about Islamic calligraphy is that there is no focal point... There should not be one, it should not draw your eye to one place.”
Zakariya says that when you look at calligraphy, the experienced observer should see both writing and meaning, which should be considered within the work’s historical context. “The observer is also, in a sense, witnessing the creative moment and sharing in the artist’s struggle to get it right, to honor traditional precedents, to rise to high standards, to meet both subjective and objective criteria for excellence,” says Zakariya. “I love calligraphy, but it’s very stressful. It’s an art where people can spot it — if you make mistakes.”
Zakariya says that even a newcomer to calligraphy will notice how the letters are shaped and connected. And if the strokes are flowing and smooth. If the letters are crisp and not ragged. In calligraphy, he says, the lines must have energy and vitality.
He is a real stickler for tradition. “While I find great value in exploring the art of Hispanic/Maghribi script and illumination, I had to seek out the best place for which I, as a Muslim of American/European background, could jump off to the present and the future. For me, that was the Ottoman method, which is both more modern and more rigorous. In its modern Turkish guise, this method is still the most living branch of the ancient tree.”
Zakariya admits: “Some Muslim people don’t like the fact that I — as an Anglo-Saxon — am doing this.” He said he was once commissioned by a wealthy Muslim to produce an entire Qur’an in calligraphy. He blocked out any possible commissions for the next two years and set to work. After several months, he learned through others that another Muslim calligrapher had approached the client and persuaded him to hire him, rather than Muhammad — “that Anglo Muslim.”
“But you can’t mess with the Qur’an,” Zakariya says. “I was told the man was unable to finish the job.” Fortunately, Zakariya was able to recoup most of his postponed projects.
Symbolism also fascinates Zakariya. “For Muslims, the function of calligraphy is to support and strengthen the spiritual edifice of faith. The art can be said to be successful if this is its effect; if it diminishes faith, it fails. This is a weighty responsibility, but calligraphy is not a ponderous or brooding art; rather, the finest calligraphy is light and uplifting.
“In the Islamic world calligraphy had always been as much an art as an occupation, and men of letters delighted in coining phrases to describe it. Perhaps the best of these classical Arabic metaphors is this: ‘Calligraphy is music for the eyes.’”
Aside from Qur’anic quotes, Zakariya also enjoys using poetry for calligraphic art. “The old poets had a wonderful sense of wisdom and wit,” he says. “I like the poetry that sneaks up on you.” He picks up an example of his work, and translates a Turkish poem by Hakim Giray, which was taught to him by Cinucen Tanrikorur, a musician, and who was his close friend: “The thing I used to think of as a remedy, has now given me a headache. The one I used to think was my beloved has now become a disaster to me.” The elements used to produce this calligraphy are mind-boggling. Even the colors are complicated. Zakariya laughs and says: “They are no longer a trade secret. I get most of my colors from Kremer Pigments in New York; he collects them from around the world. The pigments come very coarse, and you have to grind them for hours.”
He dips his reed into a brilliant red ink pot, and explains: “This is Cochineal red, it comes from little gray bugs in India. You buy the bugs in bulk, grind them up into a powder, put a little alum in it, grind it some more, and you get this really deep, ruby red. But it’s only good for ink, I don’t use it as a paint.”
“Like all Islamic calligraphers, I use a number of specialized materials and techniques. My paper is first dyed and coated with aged starch and then varnished with several coats of ahar, a liquid composed of egg whites mixed with alum. The coated papers are highly burnished, using an agate burnishing stone, and then aged for at least a year,” explains Zakariya.
“The black ink is made from soot produced by burning linseed oil and kerosene. The soot is mixed with gum Arabic and ground for 30 hours by hand, then mixed with distilled water.”
When asked why his words are not always solid black in his designs, he explains that some calligraphers want to get more expression in their work by not making the ink as thick.
Zakariya also grinds gold leaf by hand — which produces the gold pigments used for illumination in the scripts. “I use four different alloys: 23K deep gold, 18K green gold, 18K red gold, and 12K white gold — to provide different tonalities. The gold is applied by pen and brush and then burnished to varying degrees. Gold is the color that unites the various elements of work.”
Approaching 60, Zakariya says his dream is to produce one book “that combines the entire history of calligraphy art — all the way from the time of the Qur’an’s revelation, basically up to the present, but only with the really ‘good stuff’ in it.
“I would like to translate some of the great Arabic and Turkish calligraphy. I can’t handle Persian. But I would like to deal with the personalities in the art, and the technology and techniques — things that have never been dealt with in English before.”
His dream is to make this book accessible to all people. “I’m currently writing a book for an art publisher in New York of 15 beautiful Hadiths that I’ve selected, all of them have ethical and interesting capabilities. But they will only print 300 books, and it will be an exclusive book, at a cost of anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000. Unfortunately, it will be way out of the reach of most people,” he explains.
Zakariya says it’s taken him 20 years to build up his artistic credibility, and now he hopes to attract the attention of publishers who can help him make calligraphy accessible and understandable to the American people.
“People are very open to Islamic calligraphy in the United States, even though they don’t speak Arabic. They can view it in the same way they view classical music. People can look at it and tell if it’s good or bad. The similarities are amazing between calligraphy and classical music.
“I can think of a calligrapher as being more like Mozart, and another more like Beethoven. These similarities are good examples of what I’m talking about.
“I am trying to bring a greater appreciation of calligraphy into the Western world — in its traditional form, not the new, radical form. We want the traditional, with all its great sayings, from the Qur’an, Hadiths, and the sayings of the great imams who said what people needed to hear, not what they wanted to hear,” says Zakariya, who admits tremendous respect for the ethics these men showed in their lives.
Zakariya is realistic about his art in America. “At the time of Sept. 11, I thought it was curtains, but the resiliency of the American public has been very encouraging. “This has been a hard time for Americans, and it has caused Muslim Americans to really rethink their positions. Most Muslim converts have been indifferent to politics in the past, but now they have to get active.
“I tell young people to get out of medical school and engineering and to get into media, art, entertainment and books. Let Americans see the names of ‘Abdur Rahman’ and ‘Muhammad’ attached to good things. I’m a big advocate for getting people into the art world, it’s a tough playground, but you can make it.”
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(Muhammad Zakariya is scheduled to deliver a series of lectures in Riyadh from Jan. 27-30. Contact the US Embassy in Riyadh for details: Tel. 01-488 3800.)
