Visual Language of Samanid Writing (10th century A. D.) in Light of Graphology Principles

In historical studies, the meaning of script is interpreted from its content, whereas the visual feature of writing embraces further meaning. This approach was proposed by Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, in which they believed that graphological analysis of a national writing could reveal its ontological, sociological and ethnological dimensions. In fact, graphology is a kind of interdisciplinary approach, involving courses in calligraphy, psychology, philosophy and occult science.
In this paper, the authors made an effort to interpret visual aspects of Kufic scripts in Samanid era according to a specific semantic system. To this end, first of all, they proposed theoretical framework based on Benjamin and Derrida theories. After that, as stated in this framework, graphology was revisedin terms of both calligraphy principles and graphology-related sciences of Samanids in the sense that the principles of “khatt al-mansub” (proportional script) as well as the rules of“Husn-e Tashkil” (artistic form) and “Husn-e vaz” (artistic composition) were applied to infer the concept of essence, time(the time of elements formation( and place(the placement of composition)respectively. Consequently it is possible to analyze at least two samples of decorative letter named “Kaf”. As a result, we decoded symbolic signs of “Kaf-e Kon” and “Kaf-e Kafi & Kaf-e Kofr” to provide the foundation for reading the word “Baraka” to the extent that we can understand its allegorical meaning including “the lake of Baraka” and “the seal of heart”.
In summary, our analysis showed how semantic dimention of one era’s writings, e. g. decorative kufic of Samnid slipwares, can be discernable from three signs of letterforms including numerographic sign, psycho-graphographic signs, and logographic signs.