Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"This book, an important and much-needed contribution to the field of Islamic calligraphy, provides a nuanced and complex study of this enigmatic art form by placing it into a transcultural context and examining it from new vantage points. It is stimulating, carefully thought out, and well documented."—Maryam Ekhtiar, Curator of Islamic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
"Muthanna not only makes a welcome intervention in the larger field of the history of calligraphy, but also highlights the specific practice of mirror writing, which has hitherto received almost no attention. The book brings religion and art together in an innovative and meaningful fashion, and Akın-Kıvanç is to be commended for her courageous pioneering work."—Emine Fetvaci, Boston University
"A truly groundbreaking study of a little-understood subject, muthanna (mirror writing) in Arabic script. Although all too often discussed as simple decoration, grounded at least in part by an alleged Islamic prohibition of figural imagery, the author shows that muthanna was, in fact, governed by a complex aesthetic and that its roots go back to inscriptions in Greek, Syriac, Samaritan, and Hebrew. A remarkable work of historical, cross-cultural, and aesthetic scholarship, Professor Akın-Kıvanç's book will doubtless stand as the go-to source for this distinctive, but much misunderstood, subject."—Howard Crane, The Ohio State University
Table of ContentsA Note on Transcription and Translation
Introduction: Axes
Part I: A History of Mirror Writing
1. Perspectives: Previous Scholarship on Mirror Writing
2. Foundations: The Practice of Mirror Writing
3. Orientations: Reversed and Repeated Writing in Non-Arabic and Arabic Scripts
4. Convergences: Mirror Writing in Greek and Arabic
5. Diffractions: Mirror Writing in Arabic
Part II: A Theory of Mirror Writing
6. Reflections: Mirrors in Islamic Studies
7. Illuminations: A New Discourse on Mirror Writing
8. Directions: The Single-Letter Muthanna
9. Receptions: Multiletter and Multiword Muthannas
10. Projections: Calligraphic Nazires and Mobility
Conclusion: Refractions
Works Consulted
Index
