Page with calligraphy, Hadith (Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad)
Shaykh Hamdullâh (1436–1520) was a highly regarded Ottoman calligrapher, who refined the shapes and proportions of the letters in the style of calligraphy developed in the 13th century by Yāqūt al-Musta‘ṣimī (d. 1298). The "Six Pens" that Hamdullâh refined are the classical scripts: thuluth, naskh, muhaqqaq, rayhani, tawqi', and riqa'. Hamdullâh was born in the city of Amasya in present-day Turkey, where he was part of the artistic and literary circles of Ottoman crown princes. Sultan Bâyezîd II (r. 1481–1512) commissioned Hamdullâh to produce a number of manuscripts for the library of his father, Sultan Mehmed II “the Conqueror" (r. 1451–1481). When he acceeded to the throne, he brought Hamdullâh with him to Istanbul. This calligraphic panel containing Hadith, or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, was composed using the naskh style of script for the smaller lines and the thuluth style for the one large line.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, collectors and dealers from Europe and the United States tended to value individual folios of Arabic-language calligraphy more highly than they did entire albums. Because they appeared closer to the more familiar format of European painting, single folios were regarded as individual works of art and their sale was substantially more profitable than the sale of albums. The demand among European and American collectors for single folios of calligraphy led to the disassembly of many albums originally assembled in the Ottoman Empire. This folio was likely excised from the same album as another MFA folio of Ottoman calligraphy, 29.86.
