Kufic
style of Arabic script
The Kufic script (Arabic: الخط الكوفي, romanized: al-khaṭṭ al-kūfī) is a style of Arabic script that gained prominence early on as a preferred script for Quran transcription and architectural decoration, and it has since become a reference and an archetype for a number of other Arabic scripts. It developed from the Arabic alphabet in the city of Kufa, from which its name is derived. Kufic is characterized by angular, rectilinear letterforms and its horizontal orientation. There are many different versions of Kufic, such as square Kufic, floriated Kufic, knotted Kufic, and others. The artistic styling of Kufic led to its use in a non-Arabic context in Europe, as decoration on architecture, known as pseudo-Kufic.
History
Origin of the Kufic script
Calligraphers in the early Islamic period used a variety of methods to transcribe Quran manuscripts. Kufic is the oldest calligraphic form of the various Arabic scripts. The name of the script derives from Kufa, a city in southern Iraq which was considered as an intellectual center within the early Islamic period. Kufic is defined as a highly angular form of the Arabic alphabet originally used in early copies of the Quran. Sheila S. Blair suggests that "the name Kufic was introduced to Western scholarship by Jacob Georg Christian Adler (1756–1834)".
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q29647. The Library of Congress control number is sh85097066. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1756 and 1834.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kufic” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.