Vol 3, No 2

Table of Contents

  1. Research Article
    From Arabic Alphabets to Two Dimension Shapes in Kufic Calligraphy Style Using Grid Board Catalog PDF
    Dhamyaa A. AL-Nasrawi, Ahmed F. Almukhtar, Wafaa S. AL-Baldawi

    The Kufic font takes its name from the location in which the font was created around the end of the seventh century, Kufa, Iraq.  Kufic was the principal script used to replicate the Qur'ans until approximately the eleventh century. Depending upon where a character is located in a word, the character may be represented differently.  Given this location-specific representation, the Arabic characters uses in script are expanded to 116 shapes.  A character can have an isolated shape, a joined shape, a left joined shape and a right joined shape.

    The goal of this study is to convert Arabic script to a two-dimensional shape in Kufic calligraphy style that has regular geometric components (lines, circles, curves, arcs, etc.) by using a grid board catalog. The converting process represents a method of learning electronically as well as production for all Arabic alphabets in aesthetic shapes. The proposed grid board produces all possible shapes of any letter in Arabic alphabets.  Some alphabets are shared by sub shapes and are overlapped in the grid board in order to visualize them as groups of similar characters. The position of a letter in the grid board, the letter dimension itself (width and height) and the position of letters in Arabic words were required to convert the characters. The results showed that the proposed grid is a powerful and influential tool that can be used to learn the Kufic font style with a simple, easy and effective method when contrasted to the classical method.