Page with illuminated calligraphy, Tongue twister in Arabic with Hadith (Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) below

Ottoman calligraphers often demonstrated their skills by writing different styles and sizes of Arabic script on rectangular sheets of paper, which were then mounted on pasteboard and assembled with colored and marbled papers into accordion fold albums, known as muraqqaʿ. In this calligraphic panel composed in the 18th century, Ottoman calligrapher Mustafâ el-Kütâhî combined an Arabic language tongue-twister written in the thuluth style of script with three lines of Hadith, or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, written in the naskh style of script. The calligraphic panel is unfinished, as indicated by the spaces between the lines of calligraphy, where verse markers would have been added by an illuminator.