I’jam and the Development of Islamic Khatatti

In our study, we tried to find the roots and contexts which formed the Islamic Khattati and configured the form of letters, through social backgrounds, historical texts and also inscriptions of first century AH. According to the prevalent thesis, Arabic scripts originated before Islam from Nabatean in letter’s form and from Syriac in calligraphic structure. Nevertheless, the contentions raised through the first century, mainly on Quran, were the major cause and agent in formation of khattati, and the necessity of their sublation, brought about main parts of key Islamic principles, sciences and rules. The Islamic khattati formed correspondingly from the systematic sublation of contentions on exegesis, esoteric interpretation, collecting, reciting, and mainly I’jam of the Quran. I’jam, as the science of resolving the misgivings and mistakes, not only consists of diacritics, but also includes the shape of graphemes and words. Orthographical I’jam in its evolutionarily advanced phase, deconstructs the letters into their few in-dividual monomorphic elements (e.g. Muntasib, Munsatih, Munahhan, and Muqawas), determines a fixed form and size for each, and eventually reconstructs them in the homogenized distinguishable compositions.  Thenceforth, the letters will be repeated similarly and located orderly in text. Islamic khattati emerged, constituted and advanced based on this structure.