Ahmad Nayrizi

Ahmad Nayrizi was an Iranian calligrapher active between 1682 and 1739, credited by Maryam Ekhtiar with codifying and perfecting "revival naskh", a large, elegant and clear form of naskh meant to make it bigger and more readable. ¹

His lines are well spaced and his letters bold, well formed and vocalised. Revival naskh was used mainly for Qur'ans, prayer books and other holy texts, as part of a movement in later seventeenth-century Iran to make Arabic religious texts more accessible to Persian speakers, which is why Nayrizi's Qur'ans often include interlinear Persian translations. ¹

He followed the late Safavid calligrapher Muhammad Ibrahim Qummi, as signatures at the foot of a few of his works acknowledge. The poet-calligrapher Muhammad Shafi' Visal-i Shirazi (1779–1846) and his sons kept his style alive into the nineteenth century. ^{1 2}

The Met holds a prayer book in his hand dated 1132 AH/1719–20 CE, probably made at Isfahan and illuminated, it is thought, by Muhammad Hadi (d. about 1771), in a lacquer binding; it includes two carpet pages with prayers in riqa' in gold on crimson. ^{2 3}