Works of Contemporary Historians and Researchers in the Field of Calligraphy in Iran, a Critical Reassessment (With a Comparative Approach to Turkish Researchers)

The expansion of calligraphic scripts in Islamic communities necessitated writing on calligraphy and transcription from the very beginning of the Islamic period. In early centuries of the Islamic calendar writings were mostly related to instructive purposes, but from the 4th century AH/ AD 10th century onward the act of writing scripts’ history and calligraphers’ biographies became widespread and it continued with fluctuations until the 11th century AH/ AD 17th century. In the mid-12th century AH/AD 18th century some calligraphers and experts in Islamic lands, particularly in Iran and the Ottoman Empire, embarked upon writing biographies of calligraphers with a look at the past documents. With the advent of modernity, researchers in both lands accomplished together the development of scripts as well as the process of biography writing. On the basis of new methodologies, they adopted a more analytical approach and they used more substantial resources, either written or visual. Structural and thematic conformity in the works of Persian and Turkish researchers in this field is indicative of common cultural foundations in the two lands. Such a matter is still evident in both sides, but it seems to have become rather monotonous with some fixed standards for historiography and biography writing. We should note that there remain challenges in the field of Islamic calligraphy to tackle.Adopting a comparative and critical approach, the present essay is to briefly examine historical and research books on calligraphy during the past 150 years in Iran and Turkey and it is to show their impacts on each other or their independency, as well as to propose some suggestions for the future scholarship.