Naskh (script) in the context of "Nastaʿlīq"

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⭐ Core Definition: Naskh (script)

Naskh is a small, round script of Islamic calligraphy. Naskh is one of the first scripts of Islamic calligraphy to develop, commonly used in writing administrative documents and for transcribing books, including the Qur’an, because of its easy legibility.

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👉 Naskh (script) in the context of Nastaʿlīq

Nastaliq is one of the main calligraphic hands used to write Arabic script and is used for some Indo-Iranian languages, predominantly Classical Persian, Urdu, Kashmiri and Punjabi. It is often used also for Ottoman Turkish poetry, but rarely for Arabic. Nastaliq developed in Iran from naskh beginning in the 13th century and remains widely used in Iran, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries for written poetry and as a form of art.

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Naskh (script) in the context of Official languages of the United Nations

There are six official languages used in United Nations (UN) meetings and in which the UN writes and publishes all its official documents. In 1946, five languages were chosen as official languages of the UN: English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Chinese. In 1973, Arabic was voted to be an additional official language. As of 2025, the official languages of the United Nations are:

According to the UN Charter each of these six languages is equally authoritative although English and French have traditionally received preferential status and are the only two official and working languages of the UN Secretariat. It is an unspoken rule that the UN Secretary General and other high ranking United Nations officials must be fluent (at least C1 – Advanced fluency level according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages / CEFRL) in at least English and French. The UN has struggled to provide parity of all 6 languages as the English language has become the dominant world language in the digital age.

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Naskh (script) in the context of Minaret of Jam

The Minaret of Jam (Pashto: د جام منار, Dari: منار جام) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in western Afghanistan. It is located in a remote and nearly inaccessible region of the Shahrak District, Ghor Province, between the Jam and Hari Rivers. The 62 m (203 ft) or 65 m (213 ft) high minaret was built c. 1190, entirely of baked bricks, and is famous for its intricate brick, stucco and glazed tile decoration, which consists of alternating bands of Kufic and Naskhi calligraphy, geometric patterns, and verses from the Qur'an. Since 2002, the minaret has remained on the list of World Heritage in Danger, under serious threat of erosion, and has not been actively preserved. In 2014, the BBC reported that the tower was in imminent danger of collapse.

In 2020, the Minaret of Jam was listed among cultural heritage sites of the Islamic world by the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO). According to the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), the Minaret of Jam is Afghanistan's first cultural heritage site to be listed by ICESCO.

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Naskh (script) in the context of Urdu alphabet

The Urdu alphabet (Urdu: اُردُو حُرُوفِ تَہَجِّی‌, romanizedurdū ḥurūf-i tahajjī) is the right-to-left alphabet used for writing Urdu. It is a modification of the Persian alphabet, which itself is derived from the Arabic script. It has co-official status in the republics of Pakistan, India and South Africa. The Urdu alphabet has up to 39 or 40 distinct letters with no distinct letter cases and is typically written in the calligraphic Nastaʿlīq script, whereas Arabic is more commonly written in the Naskh style.

Usually, bare transliterations of Urdu into the Latin alphabet (called Roman Urdu) omit many phonemic elements that have no equivalent in English or other languages commonly written in the Latin script.

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Naskh (script) in the context of Sindhis in India

Sindhis in India (Devanagari: सिन्धी, Sindhī, Naskh script: سنڌي) refer to a socio-ethnic group of Sindhi people living in the Republic of India, originating from Sindh (a province of modern-day Pakistan).

After the 1947 Partition of India into the dominions of new Muslim-majority Pakistan and remaining Hindu-majority India, a million non-Muslim Sindhis migrated to independent India. As per the 2011 census of India, there are 2,772,364 Sindhi speakers in the Indian Republic. However, this number does not include ethnic Sindhis who no longer speak the language and also includes Kutchis who may not identify as ethnic Sindhis (especially those in Gujarat).

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Naskh (script) in the context of Zubdat al-Tawarikh

The Zubdat al-Tawarikh ('Essence of History') is an Ottoman genealogy written in Turkish nashki script by calligrapher Sayyid Loqman Aşuri and illuminated throughout with miniatures by painters al-Sayyid Lutfi, Molla Kasım (Mulla Qasim) and Ustad Osman and their workshop, in 1583, for Sultan Murad III. The manuscript is in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, Istanbul (TIEM 1973).

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