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[[File:Khatt-e Nastaliq.jpg|thumb|right|
Example reading ("Nastaliq script") in Nastaliq.
The dotted form is used in place of .]]
Nastaliq (; ; ), also romanized as Nastaʿlīq or Nastaleeq (), is one of the main book hand used to write Arabic script and is used for some Indo-Iranian languages, predominantly Classical Persian, Urdu, Kashmiri and Shahmukhi. It is often used also for Ottoman Turkish poetry, but rarely for Arabic. Nastaliq developed in Iran from naskh beginning in the 13th century and remains widely used in Iran, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries for written poetry and as a form of art.
Thus, "our earliest written source also credits Shirazi scribes with the development of nastaʿliq and Mir ʿAli Tabrizi with its canonization." Wright's proposed origin of nastaliq was complicated by studies of Francis Richard, who argued on the basis of some manuscripts from Tabriz that its early evolution was not confined to Shiraz. Finally, many authors point out that development of nastaʿliq was a process which occurred over several centuries. For example, Gholam-Hosayn Yusofi, Ali Alparslan and Sheila Blair recognize a gradual shift towards nastaʿliq in some 13th-century manuscripts. Hamid Reza Afsari traces the first elements of the style to 5th/11th-century copies of Persian translations of the Qur'an, and Rawāqī argues that the referenced translations may be even older.
Persian differs from Arabic in its proportion of straight and curved letters. It also lacks the definite article al-, whose upright alif and lam are responsible for distinct verticality and rhythm of the text written in Arabic. Hanging scripts like taliq and nastaliq were suitable for writing Persian – when taliq was used for court documents, nastaliq was developed for Persian poetry, "whose encourage the pile-up of letters against the intercolumnar ruling. Only later was it adopted for prose."
The first master of nastaliq was the aforementioned Mir Ali Tabrizi, who passed his style to his son ʿUbaydallah. A student of ʿUbaydallah, Jafar Tabrizi (d. 1431) (see quote above), moved to Herat, when he became the head of the scriptorium ( kitabkhana) of prince Baysunghur (therefore his epithet Baysunghuri). Jafar trained several students in nastaliq, of whom the most famous was Maulana Azhar (d. 1475). Its classical form nastaliq achieved under Sultan Ali Mashhadi (d. 1520), a student of Azhar (or perhaps one of Azhar's students) who worked for Sultan Husayn Bayqara (1469–1506) and his vizier Ali-Shir Nava'i.
Simultaneously, a different style of nastaliq developed in western and southern Iran. This style was associated with ʿAbd al-Rahman Khwarazmi, the calligrapher of the Pir Budaq Qara Qoyunlu (1456–1466), and then with his children, ʿAbd al-Karim Khwarazmi and ʿAbd al-Rahim Anisi (both active at the court of Ya'qub Beg Aq Qoyunlu; 1478–1490). This more angular western Iranian style was largely dominant at the beginning of the Safavid Iran, but then lost to the style canonized by Sultan Ali Mashhadi; however, it continued to be used in the Indian subcontinent.
The most famous calligrapher of the next generation in eastern lands was Mir Ali Heravi (d. 1544), who was especially renowned for his calligraphic specimens ( qitʿa). The eastern style of nastaliq became the predominant style in western Iran, as artists gravitated to work in the Safavid royal scriptorium. The most famous of these calligraphers working for the court in Tabriz was Shah Mahmud Nishapuri (d. 1564/1565), known especially for the unusual choice of nastaliq as a script used for the copy of the Qur'an. Its apogeum nastaliq achieved in writings of Mir Emad Hassani (d. 1615), "whose style was the model in the following centuries." Mir Emad's successors in the 17th and 18th centuries developed a more elongated style of nastaliq, with wider spaces between words. Mirza Mohammad Reza Kalhor (d. 1892), the most important calligrapher of the 19th century, reintroduced the more compact style, writing words on a smaller scale in a single motion. In the 19th century nastaliq was also adopted in Iran for lithographed books. In the 20th century, "the use of nastaliq declined. After World War II, however, interest in calligraphy and above all in nastaliq revived, and some outstandingly able masters of the art have since then emerged."
The use of nastaliq early expanded beyond Iran at a very early date. Timurid Empire brought it to the Indian subcontinent, and nastaliq became the favorite script of the Persian court of the Mughal Empire. Notable masters of nastaliq such as Muhammad Husayn Kashmiri (d. 1611/1612) and Abd al-Rahim Anbarin-Qalam worked for Akbar (1556–1605) and Jahangir (1605–1627). Another important practitioner of the script was Abd al-Rashid Daylami (d. 1671), nephew and student of Mir Emad, who became court calligrapher of Shah Jahan (1628–1658) after arriving in India. During this era, nastaliq became the common script for writing the Hindustani language, especially Standard Urdu.
Nastaliq was also adopted in the Ottoman Empire, which has always had strong cultural ties to Iran. Here it was known as taliq (Turkish talik), not to be confused with the Persian taliq script. The first Iranian calligraphers who brought nastaliq to Ottoman lands, including Asadullah Kirmani (d. 1488), belonged to the western tradition. However, at a relatively early stage, Ottoman calligraphers adopted the eastern style of nastaliq. In the 17th century, a student of Mir Emad, Darvish Abdi Bokharai (d. 1647), transplanted his style to Istanbul. The greatest master of nastaliq in 18th century was Mehmed Yasari (d. 1798), who closely followed Mir Emad. This tradition was further developed by Yasari's son Mustafa Izzet (d. 1849), who founded a distinct Ottoman school of nastaliq. He introduced new and precise proportions of the script that differed from the Iranian tradition. The most important member of this school in the second half of the 19th century was Sami Efendi (d. 1912), who taught many famous practitioners of nastaliq, including Mehmed Nazif Bey (d. 1913), Mehmed Hulusi Yazgan (d. 1940) and Necmeddin Okyay (d. 1976). The specialty of the Ottoman school was celî nastaliq, used in inscriptions and mosque plates.
The first important calligraphers of shekasteh were Mohammad Shafiʿ Heravi (d. 1670–71) (he was known as Shafiʿa and hence shekasteh was sometimes called shafiʿa or shifiʿa) and Mortazaqoli Khan Shamlu (d. 1688–89). Both of them produced works of real artistic quality, which does not change the fact that in this early phase shekasteh still lacked consistency (it is especially visible in writing of Mortazaqoli Khan Shamlu). Most modern scholars consider that shekasteh reached its peak of artistic perfection under Abdol Majid Taleqani (d. 1771), "who gave the script its distinctive and definite form." The tradition of Taleqani was later followed by Mirza Kuchek Esfahani (d. 1813), Gholam Reza Esfahani (d. 1886–87) and Ali Akbar Golestaneh (d. 1901).
The added frills made shekasteh increasingly difficult to read and it remained the script of documents and decrees, "while nastaʿliq retained its pre-eminence as the main calligraphic style." The need for simplification of shekasteh resulted in development of secretarial style ( shekasteh-ye tahriri) by writers like Adib-al-Mamalek Farahani (d. 1917) and Nezam Garrusi (d. 1900). The secretarial style is a simplified form of shekasteh which is faster to write and read, but less artistic. Long used in governmental and other institutions in Iran, shekasteh degenerated in the first half of the 20th century, but later again engaged the attention of calligraphers. Shekasteh was used only in Iran and to a small extent in Afghanistan and Ottoman Empire. Its use in Afghanistan was different from the Persian norm and sometimes only as experimental devices ( tafannon)
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