The Ottomans handled the nasta’liq script — the “Persian” script, as it is called in Egypt — with great artistic command. They are renowned for perfecting it, especially its jali (large-scale) form. The jali mode of the Ottoman nasta’liq does not appeal to me personally; it reminds me too much of a paunch I have yet to be rid of.
But there is another side to the story of the Ottoman refinement of nasta’liq that has not received its due attention: the correspondence of the office of the Şeyhülislam — the Dar al-Mashyakha (the chief mufti’s chancery) — and the dispatches issued by the “Sheikh of the sheikhs of the Sublime State” were written in no script other than this nasta’liq, in a most refined and precisely scaled manner. They were all written in the fine “Persian” nasta’liq. This gives an important picture of the Ottoman administrative structure and its meticulous organization.
This script was also used to write ownership statements at the beginning of manuscripts copied in the Ottoman period. What is striking, however, is that the manuscript copyist — particularly in nasta’liq — would entirely neglect the diacritical pointing, clearly and conspicuously in many examples.
From the above, we may say the following: that the mode of writing on fatwa documents calls for an aesthetic, calligraphic study, and alongside it a study of the significance of using this very script for the fatwas issued by the Sheikh of Islam. And the omission of the diacritical points — is it an inheritance from the convention of the Mamluk manuscript that passed into the Ottoman manuscript? These are merely questions and points that deserve at least a little study.
