Permission Letter (Ijazat Nameh) in the Teaching Tradition of Ottoman Calligraphy: Its Structural and Content Analysis

In the teaching tradition of Ottoman calligraphy, there was a custom known as "Ijazat Nameh", "Idhn Nameh" or "Ahliyat Nameh". This custom was apparently only prevalent in the Ottoman calligraphy. According to this custom, the apprentice wrote a piece in naskh, thuluth, or Nasta’liq script, and s/he brought it to the sight of one or more professors, and professors also often confirmed it by a script called "authorization script" ( Ijazah script). In addition to examining the concept of permission ( Ijazah ) in this teaching tradition and its origin, research on the structure and content of permission letter (Ijazat Nameh) and the recognition of a script called " Ijazah script", the size of Ijazat Namehs, permission terms and the place penned by master as permission, are required to better understand this custom. And this is what this article is to undertake.