A Comparative Study of the Readability of the Naskh Script in Writing the Works of Yaghoot Al-Mostasemi and Ahmad Neyrizi

 
Among calligraphic types, Naskh script has an ancient record. This script has been used as the most widely readable script for writing books (especially Qur'an and religious books) till now. The shape of the types and the ability to extract multiple fonts from it make this script's role more prominent in the typesetting of texts, magazines and more and is more at service for the audience and the reader of the text more than any other calligraphic types. Therefore, in addition to its visual beauty, readability is the first and foremost feature of this script till now. Yaghoot Al-Mostasemi was one of the great scribes of this script, who has been described in calligraphy research sources as having played an important role in removing the features of other calligraphic types from the script as well as the evolution of the types' form in Naskh script, and after some modifications, his script was evolved and considered in Arabic and Ottoman contexts. Ahmad Neyrizi is also one of the great artists of this script in Iran who combines Naskh manuscript with Nastaliq (invented script by Iranians) and gives it a soft and Iranian-beautiful style spirit, and writing the Naskh in his own way (relying, of course, on the scripts of his professors, including Mohammad Ibrahim Qomi and Alaeddin Tabrizi), so that Iranian calligraphers still have followed the style of his Naskh (Iranian Naskh). Given that, text readability is the primary factor in the proper relationship between text and audience that depends on a variety of factors, but much of it comes from adhering some standards such as the tracking and kerning between words and types, spacing of lines (leading), proper alignment, fine-contrast between text and context, and so on and was less considered in researches related to the calligraphy. Studying the characteristic of manuscripts written in Naskh script by calligraphers throughout history could be helpful for activists in this field. The main question of the present study is to determine how much are the works written by Yaghoot Al-Mostasemi and Ahmad Neyrizi readable? Therefore, the present study is descriptive-analytical. The statistical samples were collected by library method and objective observation of the works as well as using printed works by museums as six books written by the artists in different periods of his artistic life and also compared and analyzed according to the mentioned components after selection of a paper of each book as a sample. And for easier understanding of the illustrations, an illustration of comparison and analysis of works in articles along with some explanations about the component and its standards are provided in the article. Then, by adjusting the table and writing the characteristics of each style, their differences and similarities are outlined, and the main structure of the article is organized. Findings indicate that in Yaghoot ​​style, the form of the letters is much simpler than the Neyrizi style, and the spaces between letters and words are sometimes too tight or open to maintain alignment of the lines. The leading between the lines is also more than Neyrizi style and has more ornamentation. Therefore, the overall layouts of the pages are more important than dealing with the details of the text. But in Neyrizi style, the calligrapher focuses on the text of the book. Thus, the attention to the form of letters, arrangement of types and word spacing, adjusting line spacing, alignment, number and length of lines on the page has made his manuscript more readable than Yaghoot style. Thus, over time and in a sense of need, in the style of Neyrizi rather than than Al-Mostasemi one, attention is drawn to the audience's visual limitations, and the readability of text is more considered, and the text written in Neyrizi style communicates easily with its audience. In contrast, attention to the visual beauty and form and text composition in Al-Mostasemi style have made each page of his works as an exquisite panel which is one of the most valuable works of Naskh script history. On the other hand, the font size in Al-Mostasemi style is often small, which is slightly larger in the Neyrizi style and the length of the lines is reduced compared to the Al-Mostasemi style.