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Works and Collection of the Master Calligrapher Shams Anwari-Alhosseyni
Calligraphy, the art of beautiful writing, holds special significance in the Islamicate regions. As the script of the Qur'an, Arabic carries an aura of the sacred for many people, as it is believed that God revealed Himself through this language. Calligraphy first developed through the careful transcription of the Qur’an and later extended to secular texts, becoming a highly respected art among literati across almost all parts of the Islamicate world.
Among the contemporary masters of this tradition is Shams Anwari-Alhosseyni. The Iranian-German calligrapher, was born in Tehran in 1937. Since 1958, he has lived in Cologne and currently serves as a lecturer in Persian literature and Islamic calligraphy at the University of Cologne. He has spent decades exploring the possibilities of the written word, creating compositions that are rooted in the classical traditions of Persian calligraphy while developing a distinctly personal artistic language.
Shams Anwari-Alhosseini:
"I was eight years old when my father built a school in southern Tehran. One day, an elderly man visited. He unpacked his tools, and my father dictated: “avoid those to whom you have been good.”
The way the master prepared the thick pen, mixed the ink, and placed a kind of seal on the newly built school fascinated me so deeply that this seal was impressed not only on the building, but also on my heart.
He immediately made me a pen, and from then on I practiced feverishly. I have been engaged in this for about 67 years."
Shams Anwari-Alhosseyni embodies a tension typical of classical Islamic calligraphy: that between imitation and innovation. While rooted in the traditions of earlier schools and masters, he continuously invents new visual expressions of language - he has rendered the word “love” in dozens of variations.
Like many of his predecessors, he is inspired by the mystical dimension of Islam, where unity with God is sought beyond literal interpretation of texts, through the devotion of the heart. For him, heart and hand belong together. As he himself describes calligraphy, “it is something beautiful—beauty itself—and beauty is associated with God. It must move you, stir you. For me, it is like breathing—if I do not breathe, I do not live.”
His texts are often drawn from poetry or various religious writings. When asked what a viewer gains from calligraphy without understanding its content, Anwari emphasizes that “beauty is beauty, and one should simply let it have its effect,” while at the same time insisting that meaning and visual form must remain inseparable: both must go hand in hand.
Anwari's rendition of Classical Persian poetry
Visiting the Tavern (Hafez, 2012)
This composition is based on Ghazal 347 from the Divan of Hafez (Khanlari’s edition). Anwari structures the work through reversal and interruption. Every second line is written in reverse, requiring the viewer to rotate the page. Alternating black and blue ink creates a visual tension between presence and inversion. The blue lines form complete bayts, and the black lines similarly form complete yet separate bayts. Anwari pens a selection of four bayts (verses) from a longer ghazal (lyric poem) of nine verses.
The poem itself is concerned with immediacy, contradiction, and action. It seems too that Anwari visualizes the contradictions embraced in the poem. Anwari’s calligraphy functions like a visual translation of the original ghazal and resists both reading and translation because of the ways in which the individual verses (bayts) are split and rearranged.
The ghazal is visually disassembled and reassembled. Individual verses are separated, reversed, and redistributed across the page. Reading becomes unstable, and meaning emerges only through physical engagement with the work.
Selected verses from Ghazal 347 from the Divan of Hafez by Anwari
1 حالیا مصلحت وقت در آن میبینم
که کشم رخت به میخانه و خوش بنشینم
Transliteration: hāliyā, maṣlahat-e vaqt dar ān mībīnam
Ke kasham rakht be mey-khane o khosh be-neshīnam
EN: Now, I see, it’s time to collect my things at the bar and settle in
2 جام میگیرم و از اهل ریا دور شوم
یعنی از اهل جهان پاکدلی بگزینم
Transliteration: Jām-e mey gīram o az ahl-e rīyā-duōr shavam
ya’nī āz ahl-e jahān pākdelī bogzīnam
EN: I grab my glass and sit apart from charlantry
So that I can connect with sincerity
1 جز صراحی و کتابم نبود یار و ندیم
تا حریفان دغا را به جهان کم بینم
Transliteration: Joz ṣurāḥī o ketābam nabavad yār o nadīm
tā harīfān-e daghā-ra be jahān kam bīnam
EN: Save my book and cup I keep no company
So, I see tricksters less in quantity
2 بر دلم گرد ستمهاست خدایا مپسند
که نکدر شود آیینه مهرآیینم
Transliteration: bar delam gard-e setamhāst khodāyā mapasand
ke mukaddar shavad āyīne-ye mehrāyīnam
EN: Dust of tyranny lies weighs on my heart
do not, God, allow my sun-reflecting mirror be dimmed
Caravan of Life (Khayyam, 2012)
In this work, Anwari’s pen strokes appear to echo the movement of a twisting storm cloud, creating a visual impression of transience and movement that resonates with the poem’s meditation on the passing of life. Written in Nastaʿliq script with chestnut-brown ink on light green paper, the composition is based on a quatrain by the poet Omar Khayyam:
this caravan of life wondrously passes
sieze a bit that with merriment passes
Verse from Omar Khayyam by Anwari
Literary Source: Omar Khayyam
این قافله ی عمر عجب می گذرد
دریاب دمی که با طرب می گذرد
Transliteration:
īn qāfele-ye ‘omr ‘ajab mīgozarad
Darīāb damī ke bā ṭarab mīgozarad
EN (M. Shortle):
this caravan of life wondrously passes
sieze a bit that with merriment passes
EN (1898 translation):
This caravan of life passes by mysteriously
Mayest thou seize the moment that passes happily
Edited Sources and Published Translations:
Khayyam, Omar. The Rubā’iyat of Omar Khayyam: Being a Facsimile of the Manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, Translated and Edited by Edward Heron-Allen. London: H.S. Nichols, 1898. (p. 11 poem 60).
The Persian calligraphic tradition to which Anwari belongs emerged from centuries of artistic refinement. The first formulation of the most important calligraphic styles emerged in the cosmopolitan city of Baghdad in the 10th and 11th centuries. A key figure was the minister Ibn Muqla (d. 939/940), who standardized writing systems based on the proportionality of the rhombic dot, drawn with the tip of a reed pen. This system became the basis for many of the major calligraphic styles that followed.
Among the various styles that developed over centuries—angular, rounded, and others—Persian calligraphy primarily used the “hanging” and the “broken” scripts. The “hanging” style, the elegant cursive Nastaʿliq, was perfected by the calligrapher Mir Ali al-Herawi (d. 1446–47). Even more famous was Mir Emad al-Hasani (1554–1615), who worked at the Safavid court of Shah Abbas in Isfahan and is considered by connoisseurs to have produced the finest Nastaʿliq.
Other forms, including chalipa compositions, in which verses are arranged diagonally in a cross-like form and, siahmashq (“ink practice”), consisting of repeated words or verses and the expressive shekasteh (“broken”) script, expanded the visual possibilities of writing and continue to influence contemporary calligraphers. Since the 18th century, shekasteh, has been popular in Iran. In this style, the movement of the pen is partially written into the script, and letters that are normally separate flow into one continuous line, similar to shorthand writing. These historical forms remain active in Anwari’s work.
Anwari's work in Nastaʿliq and Chalipa Script
He took the pen. (Anwari, 2015)
In this composition Anwari uses the Nastaliq script and offers a visual word play. The line is extracted from the 12th c. poet Anwari’s corpus and thematizes writing and writing quickly. The circular arrangement of the calligraphy appears to spin, visually reflecting the playful expression 'farfar farū nevesht'. The repeated sound of farfar evokes the movement of a spinning top or pinwheel (Steingass, 920), allowing the motion of the poem and the movement of the pen to merge within the composition.
Verse from Awhad al-Din Mohommad Anwari by Anwari
Literary Source:
Awhad al-Din Mohommad Anwarī (12th c.)
Persian:
بر داشت کلک و کاغذ و فرفر فرونوشت
Transliteration:
bar dāsht kalak-o kāghaz-o farfar farū nevesht
EN:
He grabbed a pen and paper and jotted it down.
Heartbreak from separation (Rumi, 1994)
Anwari seems to visualize content in the line calligraphed in this work. The composition presents letter combinations in repetition akin with the siyah mashq (black practice) genre and rendering the poetic line nearly illegible. Yet, it seems rather not to be entirely illegible but rather a visual translation of the literary content.
The layered strokes and repeated letter combinations possibly evoke the imagery of the poem’s phrase: sīne khāham sharh-e sharh-e… (“I want a heart cut open, wounded…”). Through the repetition of sharh-e sharh-e—a rhetorical device known as takrār—Anwari transforms the language of longing and separation into a visual experience. The fragmented and overlapping forms of the calligraphy mirror the emotional intensity of Rumi’s words, bringing together poetic meaning and visual expression.
Verse from Jalal al-Din al-Rumi by Anwari
Literary Source:
Jalal al-Din al-Rumi, masnavi; ME 1:3 Meter: ramal
Persian:
سینه خواهم شر حه شرحه از فراق تا بگویم شرح د رد آشتیاق
Transliteration:
sīne khāham sharh-e sharh-e āz ferāq tā beguyām sharh-e dard-e eshteyāq
EN (M. Shortle):
I want to tear my heart from parting
So I may speak of hurt and yearning
Anwari's work in Shekastah Script
Writing as Motion (Hafez, 2006)
This example from Anwari is of a classically penned verse from a classical poet in Shekastah script. The composition reveals the close relationship between the eye and the ear in Persian artistic traditions, where poetry and calligraphy function as interconnected forms of expression. Extracted from a longer ghazal, the composition visually exhibits the rhythmic structure of a single bayt. The repeated sounds of chō and tō, as well as ghan-che and hamchō, create a visual echo across the composition. Although they do not rhyme, these recurring sounds produce a sense of internal harmony, which Anwari translates into the visual language of calligraphy.
Bayt 5 from Ghazal 269 from the Divan of Hafez by Anwari
Persian:
چو غنچه گر چه فروبستگیست کارِ جهان
تو همچو بادِ بهاری گره گشا میباش
Transliteration:
chō ghan-che gar che furūbastegī-st kār-e jahān
tō hamchō bād-e bahārī gareh gushā mībāsh
EN (M. Shortle):
when the world, like rose-bud,
remains moored,
like a spring breeze, exhale,
and loosen the knots (locks)
Literary Source:
KH: pg 554, ghazal 269, bayt 5; R: 370: ghazal 274, bayt 5
Tools and Practice
The spiritual dimension of writing remains central to Anwari's practice. This is particularly evident in his work inspired by the opening verse of Surat al-Qalam in the Qur'an. The pen occupies a privileged position within Islamic intellectual and artistic traditions, symbolizing both knowledge and creation. Through calligraphy, the written word becomes an act of reflection, devotion, and artistic expression.
Anwari pens surah 68:01:
نٓ ۚ وَٱلْقَلَمِ وَمَا يَسۡطُرُونَ
by the pen and that which they write.
Calligraphers usually carve their own pens (qalam). The tip of a bamboo reed is hollowed out and cut horizontally using specially made knives with straight blades.
They also prepare their own inks, mixing gallnuts, gum arabic, soot, and copper sulfate. More precious inks may include lapis lazuli, saffron, walnut, or even gold powder, producing various colors. The dried ink is placed into an inkwell with a small spoon and dissolved, traditionally with rosewater. A small bundle of silk inside the inkwell acts as a sponge, ensuring the correct amount of ink adheres to the pen.
All tools - spoon, knife, weights, and inkwell - are typically stored in a pen case (qalamdan).
Several of Anwari's compositions employ rich chestnut-brown and vivid blue inks, suggesting that some of these colours are prepared by the artist himself.
A Pearl Greater than the Sea (Rumi, 2012)
In this work, Anwari combines the visual language of siyah mashq ("black practice"), with its characteristic repetition of words and letter forms, with a rubaʿi (quatrain) by Jalal al-Din Rumi. The composition appears to unfold outwards from its centre, creating a sense of expansion that resonates with the poem's repeated metaphors of boundlessness and transcendence.
Rather than simply illustrating the text, Anwari seems to translate its poetic structure into visual form. Each line extends from the centre of the composition, echoing the poem's recurring assertion that its addressee (you) exceeds every measure of the natural world: a moon too vast for the sky, water beyond the Oxus (Jayhun), a pearl greater than the sea, and a mountain larger than the desert. The repetition of both words and forms creates a visual rhythm that reinforces the poem's meditation on the immeasurable.
Verses of Nezami by Anwari
Literary source: Jalāl al-Din al-Rumi
Secondary Sources: Lewis, Franklin. Rumi, Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings and Poetry of Jalāl al-Din Rumi. London: One World, 2000.
Lewis, Franklin. Rumi, Swallowing the Sun: Poems Translated from the Persian. London: One World, 2013.
Persian:
تو آن ماهی که در گردون نگنجی
تو آن آبی که درآبی که در جیحون نگنجی
تو آن دری که از دریا فزونی
تو آن کوهی که در هامون نگنجی
Transliteration:
tō ān māhī ke dar gardūn nagunjī
tō ān ābī ke dar jayhūn nagunjī
tō ān durrī ke az daryā fuzūnī
tō ān kūhī ke hāmūn nagunjī
EN (M. Shortle):
You are that moon whom the sky cannot contain
You are that water, whom Jayhun* cannot contain
You are that pearl whom the ocean cannot contain
You are that mountain whom Hamun* cannot contain
* Jayhun is Arabic for Amu Darya also known as the Oxus River; Hamun is not a specific place but a vast desert region or basin
A Living Tradition
Starting in June 2027, selected works by Shams Anwari-Alhosseyni will be exhibited alongside masterpieces by historical calligraphers in the Museum for Islamic Art—specifically in the gallery titled "With a steady hand and a fine brush | Book and writing art yesterday and today"—highlighting a contemporary interpretation and the continuation of a calligraphic tradition that spans more than a thousand years.
Co-authors
Based on the original curatorial and contextual text by Prof. Dr. Stefan Weber. Editorial development and adaptation of the text for publication by Farwah Rizvi. Research, analysis, and translations of the Persian poems and their visual relationships to Anwari’s compositions by Dr. Margaret Shortle.
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