Sufi Quotes book – شطح الكلمات ومشق الحروف

SHATEH AL KALIMAT WA MASHEQ AL HURUF
Calligraphy & selection by Samir Sayegh
Book design by Karma Tohmé

Edition of 400 copies.
Printed in offset on Favini Old Mill + Fabriano Fabria Brizzato, Pergamon & Murillo
Silkscreened cover | Hand-bound | 22x30cm | 70 pages + 24 pages introduction

A book featuring a selection of Sufi quotes by three great authors (Al Nefari, Ibn Arabi and Al Jili) as well as an introduction to the project and to these three great authors all calligraphed by Samir Sayegh.

Sufi writings are a major part of Samir’s world and inspiration. In his words, they are his reference “whenever darkness closes in, or ink dries, or a pen breaks”. His spontaneous renderings of some of his favourite quotes, mixing his handwriting with more elaborate calligraphy, were never meant to become a publication. They were more of a meditative exercise, seeking to give these ancient words a new life, by giving them a new form “in which the hand and the eye listen to the breath and palpitations of these words in their new incarnations and goes towards them as if they were newly born”. “Calligraphy is liberated from its rituals and moulds”, it flies through the pages and goes “back to the first days of calligraphy, when it was seeking to give the adequate form to the divine Word.” (Excerpts from the book’s introduction).