{"title":"A Handbook of Persian Calligraphy and Related Arts by Hamid Reza Ghelichkhani (review)","authors":"M. Simpson","doi":"10.1353/mns.2023.0010","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This is a detailed encyclopedia of Persian terms and their English equivalents for the arts of the book—first and foremost calligraphy but also illumination, painting, and binding—as these arts developed historically and continue to be practiced today in Iran. Originally published in 1994 and revised in 2009, the manual is based on thirty Persian treatises dating from the twelfth to twentieth centuries and on a number of recent studies in English and French that treat the paleography of Arabic script and codicology of Islamicate manuscripts. In addition—and perhaps most notably—the Handbook draws on the considerable experience of both the author and editor as trained calligraphers and artists. Thus, it melds past and present traditions, making it a complementary resource for scholars and practitioners alike. Altogether the publication contains hundreds of individual entries arranged in Persian alphabetical order, so ا (alef) through ى (ya). Each lemma gives its Persian transcription and correct pronunciation in transliterated form. Next comes the English translation in bold, sometimes in multiple versions and preceded by abbreviations such as “sc.” for script, “to.” for tool, and “lit.” for literally. This preliminary data is then followed by the term’s definition or explanation in English, often in a few words or succinct sentences. For example, sajāvandī, under the letter س, is defined as “the placing of diacritical marks in a text. This is usually done with a different pen after the text itself has been written” (180). Many lemmas are much more extensive, with multiple bullet points, and constitute richly documented essays, as in the entry for nastà līq, under the letter ن. From the initial definition as the “predominant script in Iranian calligraphy,” the entry continues in considerable detail about the script’s history and development, with quotations from a number of the treatises that form the Handbook’s primary source material.","PeriodicalId":40527,"journal":{"name":"Manuscript Studies-A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Manuscript Studies-A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mns.2023.0010","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This is a detailed encyclopedia of Persian terms and their English equivalents for the arts of the book—first and foremost calligraphy but also illumination, painting, and binding—as these arts developed historically and continue to be practiced today in Iran. Originally published in 1994 and revised in 2009, the manual is based on thirty Persian treatises dating from the twelfth to twentieth centuries and on a number of recent studies in English and French that treat the paleography of Arabic script and codicology of Islamicate manuscripts. In addition—and perhaps most notably—the Handbook draws on the considerable experience of both the author and editor as trained calligraphers and artists. Thus, it melds past and present traditions, making it a complementary resource for scholars and practitioners alike. Altogether the publication contains hundreds of individual entries arranged in Persian alphabetical order, so ا (alef) through ى (ya). Each lemma gives its Persian transcription and correct pronunciation in transliterated form. Next comes the English translation in bold, sometimes in multiple versions and preceded by abbreviations such as “sc.” for script, “to.” for tool, and “lit.” for literally. This preliminary data is then followed by the term’s definition or explanation in English, often in a few words or succinct sentences. For example, sajāvandī, under the letter س, is defined as “the placing of diacritical marks in a text. This is usually done with a different pen after the text itself has been written” (180). Many lemmas are much more extensive, with multiple bullet points, and constitute richly documented essays, as in the entry for nastà līq, under the letter ن. From the initial definition as the “predominant script in Iranian calligraphy,” the entry continues in considerable detail about the script’s history and development, with quotations from a number of the treatises that form the Handbook’s primary source material.
这是一本详细的波斯语术语百科全书,以及与书籍艺术相关的英语术语——首先是书法,还有照明、绘画和装订——这些艺术在历史上得到了发展,并在今天的伊朗继续被实践。该手册最初于1994年出版,2009年修订,基于12世纪至20世纪的30篇波斯语论文,以及最近用英语和法语进行的一些研究,这些研究涉及阿拉伯文字的古文字和伊斯兰手稿的法典学。此外,也许最值得注意的是,这本手册借鉴了作者和编辑作为训练有素的书法家和艺术家的丰富经验。因此,它融合了过去和现在的传统,使其成为学者和从业者的补充资源。该出版物总共包含数百个单独的条目,按波斯语字母顺序排列,所以是:从(alef)到(ya)。每个引理都以音译的形式给出了它的波斯语转录和正确的发音。接下来是粗体的英文翻译,有时有多个版本,前面有缩写,如script的“sc.”,“to”。“工具”代表“工具”,“字面”代表“字面”。这些初步数据之后是术语的英语定义或解释,通常是几个单词或简洁的句子。例如,在字母下面的sajāvandī被定义为“在文本中放置变音符号”。这通常是在文本本身写好之后用另一支笔完成的。”许多引理要广泛得多,有多个要点,并构成了丰富的文献文章,如nast l q的条目,在字母。从最初的定义为“伊朗书法中的主要文字”开始,该条目继续相当详细地介绍了该文字的历史和发展,并引用了构成手册主要来源材料的一些论文。