A framed calligraphy panel by Mishkin-Qalam: the Bahá'í Greatest Name invocation written in huge sweeping black script across pink and blue marbled paper, with the artist's signature and date in smaller script at the bottom. Artist

Mishkin-Qalam

Religious Art & Worldviews · Artists

The Bahá'í master calligrapher whose rendering of the Greatest Name became the faith's most reproduced image — a word, beautifully written, in place of a face.

Tagged: Calligraphy Modern Devotional Aniconic (Calligraphic/Geometric) Bahá'í

Aqa Husayn, called Mishkin-Qalam — musk-scented pen — was calligrapher to princes before his conversion cost him his post and sent him into exile with Bahá'u'lláh. At Akka he became the young faith's defining penman.

His interlaced Greatest Name, an entry in this section, is reproduced on rings, pendants, and walls worldwide: the Bahá'í answer to the icon, executed by its greatest calligrapher.

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References

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