Damascus - Sana
An Iraqi calligrapher, Hashem Muhammad al-Baghdadi, wrote on his tombstone, “Badawi is a great master whose charm in proportion is not handled by a calligrapher who typed his shame on his handwriting and chose for himself a method that distinguished him.” This phrase summarizes the creativity of Muhammad Badawi al-Dirani, the sheikh of the calligraphers of Bilad al-Sham and the founder of the Levantine school in the Persian taqul script.
The Dirani School of Arabic Calligraphy was distinguished by renewing letters, trimming them, refining the rules, and showing the scales with high accuracy and proportions in a unique harmony.
His rich career deserves to be considered. Valderani 1894-1967 belongs to a family from Daraya in the Damascus countryside who lived in the Damascus neighborhood of al-Midan, where he studied the sciences of the Qur’an in the book and began to practice calligraphy while he was in the prime of his youth and learned by the calligrapher Yusef Rasa, who contributed to the restoration of the Umayyad Mosque after the fire of 1894 And he kept accompanying him until his death in 1915 and after that he moved to the sponsorship of the Damascene calligrapher, Mamdouh al-Sharif, who had studied with his hands in the Kufic calligraphy, the third and the Ruqaa, and worked under his supervision for seventeen years.
Nehm Al-Dirani for the arts of Arabic calligraphy pushed him to travel to Cairo to learn and study the methods of Egyptian calligraphers, including Naguib Hawani, King Farouk's calligrapher, and he also studied calligraphy in the mosques of Alexandria, then he traveled to Iraq to benefit from the experience of the calligrapher Hashem Muhammad Al-Baghdadi.
Among the remaining effects of Dirani is his writing of Qur’anic verses in the mosques of Damascus, such as Rawda, al-Mansur, al-Daqqa, al-Mabit, and paintings in the building of the Ain al-Fijah Foundation on Nasr Street, which is one of the prizes of Damascene architecture, so he placed on its walls the lines engraved on marble and wood, and his creativity was also evidenced by calligraphy paintings in the People's Assembly building after it was restored following what it took from Destruction due to the French aggression against Damascus in 1945.
Among the remaining remains of Dirani is the nameplate of the shareholders in building the Mouwasat Hospital, a Quranic verse in the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, and a marble plaque from the numbered line in the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce building.
Dirani gave the letters in his art a Damascene character, based on simplicity and clarity, moving away from dissonance and exaggeration. Its development is the pinnacle of creativity.
Al-Dirani left our world on the 25th of July 1967 while he was in the process of planning the Al-Othman Mosque in the Al-Maysat neighborhood, where he had completed twenty-six meters that were executed with mosaics above the mihrab, and after his death he received the Order of Merit in 1968, leaving dozens of students who dreamed of his hands and were among the elite, including the calligrapher. Mahmoud Al-Hawari, who accompanied him until his death, in addition to other calligraphers such as the late composer Zuhair Mineni and Abdul Razzaq Qusaybati and the researcher Ahmed Al-Mufti. As for his famous students, they included the poet Nizar Qabbani, the lawyer Najat Kassab Hassan, the historian Shaker Mustafa, the journalist Yasser Al-Maleh, and the calligrapher of the Qur’an, Othman, and countless influenced by the style of Al-Badawi. From the writers of the Islamic world.
Rasha Mahfoud