Doha. March 2015
The Corniche is the best place to stroll in Doha on a lovely day. I walked it up and down a few times during my short stay in Qatar. The Calligraphy Sculpture caught my eye mainly because of its jumbled look. I clearly cannot read Arabic, but I wondered if anyone could make heads or tails of it?
Sabah Arbilli, British calligraphy artist was inspired to make a sculpture for Qatar National day based on a poem by H. E. Sheikh Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani, the founder of Qatar.
"And amongst the sultans I stood out; as a lanneret floating over mountain peaks."
A "lanneret" is a male falcon and given how important falconry is as a sport in the Middle East, the imagery makes sense. Apparently Sheikh Jassim had no shortage of modesty.
The Islamic prohibition of the portrayal of humans or animals led to stylized calligraphy becoming a refined Islamic art form only equaled by Chinese and Japanese in East Asia. My question was always if people could actually read any of those super-stylized scripts in any language? If the words were overly stretched and bent and melded together, were they still legible? I know my Japanese friends often related that highly stylized calligraphy was extremely difficult to read without some explanation. Arabic took that stylization to an entirely different level.
So along the Doha Corniche, the national founder's words are immortalized in a gleaming metal monument. His words indeed stand out along the most beautiful walkway in his legacy nation - but can anyone read them?