Language of Beauty and Meaning: Ancient Arabic Calligraphy Available Online

摘要

A collection of Arabic script calligraphy sheets dating from the 8th to 19th centuries is now available on the Library of Congress' Global Gateway Web site at http://international. loc.gov/intldl/apochtml/. During the late 1920s, early 1930s and 1990s the Library of Congress acquired a large collection of Arabic script calligraphy sheets. Almost all of the sheets were acquired from Kirkor Minassian of New York and Paris. The remaining sheets were acquired by the Library's field office in Islamabad, Pakistan, with permission from the Pakistani government to acquire and export calligraphic materials belonging to a Pakistani citizen. The 355 sheets placed online are the vast majority of the Islamic calligraphic items in the Library's collections, housed in the African and Middle Eastern Division. In a forthcoming final update of the Web site another 36 images of material from the 8th through 10th centuries will be added.