About the Author

A master calligrapher, type designer and graphic designer, Seyed Mohammad Vahid Mousavi Jazayeri has taken a particular personal interest in the Kufic script and devoted years to independent research, visiting archaeological locations, historic buildings and cemeteries, mosques, libraries and museums to study the script through direct contact. He has developed a systematic research methodology and published his findings in several books. His professional interest in script and calligraphy stimulated his discovery of the historic method for cutting the Kufic pen, which has had a direct impact on his own work, as seen in a number of well-received exhibitions and workshops. The historical research and achievements of Mousavi Jazayeri brought together the first international group dedicated to the study and revival of the historic Kufic script: Kuficpedia. Dr. Michelli is a multi-disciplinary historian of medieval and later art, with a particular focus on the treatment and function of inscriptions. Her understanding of the medieval deployment of classical aesthetics generated a special interest in the use of visually distinctive script styles of greater or lesser legibility, textual traditions that perpetuate mistakes and scribal errors, and inscriptions that seem to lack purpose or information, or do not apparently make sense, or that seem to include errors, flaws, or meaningless components. Her current focus of interest concerns the "benedictory" inscriptions on medieval Islamic Saad Abulhab is a known Arabic type designer, a librarian, an IT administrator, and an independent scholar with over 30 years of service at the City University of New York, New York University, and the New York public library. He has been awarded several patents and academic research grants and had authored several books and articles in the fields of Arabic language and script history, typography, and computing.