Mir Ali ibn Hasan Tabrizi, known as the "Qudwat al-Kuttab Moala" (the pioneer of superior calligraphers) and Mir Ali ibn Elyas Tabrizi, were two famous calligraphers of the Jalayerid era in Baghdad. The only credible signed work of Mir Ali ibn Hasan Tabrizi was a Nizami’s Khusraw u Shirin manuscript (Freer Gallery, 3134) and the most well-known work of Mir Ali ibn Elyas Tabrizi was illustrated version of Khwaju Kermani ’s “Three Mathnavies” namely Homay o Homayun, The Kamal-Namah and the Raudat ul-Anwar, (British Library, 18113). In the treatise of the calligraphy, the name of Mir Ali ibn hasan Tabrizi has been mentioned as the first person to infer the calligraphy of Nastaliq from the Naskh and Taliq calligraphy, and established a distinct rule for this writing style. Although there is a lot of discussion about the creativity or clarity of Mir Ali ibn Hasan Tabrizi, all the scholars have emphasized the great power and its influence on the principles of the Nastaliq calligraphy. There is not much information from Mir Ali ibn Elyas Tabrizi, except Ghazi Ahmad Mir Monshi Qomi (Historian of the court of Shah Abbas Safavid) in Golestan Honar referred to the existence two Mir Ali calligraphers in Nastaliq in the 9th century A. H. / 15 A. D. that one of them was Mir Ali, the son of the Elyas. It is likely that these fellow-citizen, contemporary and homonymous calligraphers whom differenced in the way of writing and orthography, were only different in the name of father. Therefore, these two manuscripts have been studied and compared in this study.
The purpose of this study is to identify the writing style of each of these two calligraphers based on the Nizami ’s Khusraw u Shirin manuscript (Freer Gallery, 3134) and the version of Khwaju Kermani ’s “Three Mathnavies” (British Library, 18113). It also tried to answer this question: what are the differences between the Mir Ali ibn Hasan Tabrizi and Mir Ali ibn Elyas Tabrizi’s styles? In terms of objective, this is a basic research, but regarding its nature and method, it is a descriptive-analytical one with a comparative approach. The data collection methods were a library (written documents) and field (direct observation). ln the field method, each Persian alphabet was sampled from the Khusraw u Shirin and Three Mathnavies version, then they have been linearly drawn for analyzing the shape of the letters and comparing them with each other.
This research showed that these two calligraphers were different in the style of writing include, the four categories of elongations, circles, singles and dots. Mir Ali ibn Hasan Tabrizi ’s orthography followed certain and relative stable rules, but the letters were very diverse in the Mir Ali ibn Elias ’s work. The shape of (ب) with 8 points length and 2 points height can be considered as the base pattern in writing elongation letters in the Nizami ’s Khusraw u Shirin versions. So, the second movement in the letters (ک), (ف), and (ی) elongation have been written like this pattern. The long elongation was the indicator feature in the Three Mathnavies, which frequently varies between 7 to 11 points. Also, the end of the elongation was much lower than its beginning in compared with Khusraw u Shirin version. Therefore, elongations and lopsided were often unbalanced in this version. The second movement in the letters of the round letters (س), (ص) and (ل) are the same as the letter (ن), because all circle letters in Khusraw u Shirin version have been written according with (ن) with 3 dots opening and 1.5 dots height. Tendency and deviation of the roundabout to the left, which was more than Khusraw u Shirin versions was their common, although the circle letters have been appeared with different characteristics in the Three Mathnavies version. Although the nature of the single letters in Persian font cannot be considered a standard for writing these letters but, the number of round letters (ی) in the Three Mathnavies version was more than the Khusraw u Shirin version. All the single letters in the Khusraw u Shirin have been started from 2 points above the background line generally. The height of (د), (ذ), (ر), (ز), (و), (ه) and the first movement of the letters (ط) and (م) were equaling to each other. This amount for single letters in the Three Mathnavies was equal to 1.5 points. The method of writing dots was completely different in these two versions. In the Khusraw u Shirin version the punctuation angle was 60 degrees and the horizontal diameter of the dots relative to the background line have been tended 15 degrees to the left, but in the Three Mathnavies version, the punctuation angle was 45 degrees and the axis of the points was parallel to the background line.