Muthanna / Mirror Writing in Islamic Calligraphy

“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

Esra Akın-Kıvanc is Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of South Florida’s School of Art and Art History. She is author of Mustafa Âli’s Epic Deeds of Artists: A Critical Edition of the Earliest Ottoman Text about the Calligraphers and Painters of the Islamic World and coauthor of Sinan’s Autobiographies: Five Sixteenth-Century Texts.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.