By Shaik Zakeer Hussain, TwoCircles.net,
Banglore: “Do not forget that while you are writing, you are on a path that is finer than a hair and sharper than a sword,” said Yesari Mehmed Es’ad Efendi (d. 1798) to one of his calligraphy students.
When as a young school student, he was told that his beautiful handwriting looked more like calligraphy, Muqtar Ahmed; one of country’s most renowned calligraphers and Principal at the Institute of Indo-Islamic Art and Culture in Bangalore, had found his calling.
Born to a farmer family from Ranjhol in Medak district near Hyderabad, his journey initially began when he was introduced to ustad Zakir al-Hashmi and Gazi Tahiruddin Qaisar, two prominent calligraphers practicing and teaching their art in the city’s Chatta Bazaar, which is renowned for printing invitation cards in Urdu calligraphy.
After spending some time with them, he left for Bangalore in 1990 and started working for the Urdu newspaper `Salar`.
“There were no typewriters in Urdu language back then, so newspapers relied on calligraphers,” says Ahmed. “But things started changing when computers were introduced and calligraphers soon found themselves jobless.”
Shocked, Ahmed decided to master the art, however, it wasn’t career which pushed him in that direction, but it was the apathetic attitude of many of his colleagues, who were willing to give up their craft for odd jobs.
“The situation shocked me and I feared that we might lose the art forever in this country,” says Ahmed, who is the only Indian to obtain an ‘Ijazah’ from the Istanbul based Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA) of the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
That’s when his mission to save traditional calligraphy and his own urge to learn more led him to Syrian-American master calligrapher and founder of Sakkal Design, Mamoun Sakkal and Mohamed Zakariya, an American master of Arabic calligraphy, who designed the popular Eid U.S. postage stamp.
“Meeting them changed my outlook towards the art, and introduced me to classical International Arabic Calligraphy,” says Ahmed excitedly. What followed was a four and half years of correspondence study with Master Mohamed Zakariya, from whom he learnt different styles or scripts of calligraphy, including the most visually pleasing of all – Sulus also called the mother of calligraphy.
Ahmed says when you practice calligraphy; you’re training your heart to be calm. “This art involves your brain, your eyes and your heart to work in cohesion.” His work embodies aesthetic, geometry and rhythms giving birth to poetry in a different form.
In 2008, he visited Istanbul, Turkey, where he learnt calligraphy from world-renowned master calligraphers Hasan Çelebi and Dawood Biktash.
His works have sold in many international calligraphy exhibitions, including the one purchased by a former governor of Madina in 2011 in Saudi Arabia.
Muqtar Ahmed now wants to revive the art form in India and teaches calligraphy to interested students free of cost at his Institute in Bangalore’s Richmond Road, which was setup by Bearys Group in 2010.
“There is no stipulated time period, which takes to learn calligraphy, so how long can I charge anyone for and moreover my own masters and masters in past never charged their students. I am following that tradition of teaching and learning,” claims Ahmed.
TwoCircles.net in Arabic, written by Muqtar Ahmed.
He recently started teaching calligraphy in city’s Oasis International School and plans to showcase his work at exhibitions and conferences to promote calligraphy in India, and has some events lined up.
Link:
Institute of Indo-Islamic Art & Culture