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You are correct about the history. Unfortunately the Abbasid empire came to an end in 1258 AD and Urdu wasn't even around then. I take your point that naskh ha

You are correct about the history. Unfortunately the Abbasid empire came to an end in 1258 AD and Urdu wasn't even around then. I take your point that naskh has been wide-spread. And it is true that it is even in the Indian sub-continent. Sindhi, for example, is a naskh based language. Punjabi, which my parents spoke, on the other hand, prefers nastaliq, and regionally the two places are adjacet. That doesn't mean that those people didn't historically play around with scripts. They did. However, my piece is entirely about what is going on today. Sure you can find Ottoman era signs in Egypt and the Levant that display Arabic in nastasliq (my readers sent me plenty such pictures), but by and large Arabic today is written in naskh and almost never in nastaliq. Take a look at some of the fonts that the Omani government is playing around with. They are not nastaliq. This is the political aspect I briefly touched upon in the article. I hope you will get a chance to look into the Arabization aspects of the political debates raging in that part of the world. I make brief mention of it by bringing up the fight over "Khuda Hafiz" or "Allah Hafiz." Meanwhile, the past two or three generations of Urdu readers and writers grew up associating nastaliq and Urdu almost exclusively with each other (thus the jarring effect associated with having to read Urdu in something else). I have plenty of emails testifying to this from people from my parents generation and some people of mine. In short, no one is really talking about ancient Arab history here, as fascinating as that would be.

zohaibr 12y ago
As a person who grew up reading Urdu in Pakistan- I can attest to the fact that I associate nastaliq with Urdu exclusively. Regardless of the history - his post is about what's currently happening with the Urdu script. If given the opportunity to read Urdu in nastaliq, I would probably read Urdu more often. I have tried reading BBC Urdu various times, and have given up due to the naskh script.
- 616c 12y ago
  I can see the value in said script, but I have to live a more pratical lifestyle: as an IT guy, if I could stop reading English, Arabic, or Persian every time it is in an ugly font, I would. And if you want to see ugly fonts, try Arabic news sites. BBC, Nastaliq or Naksh, have nothing on Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabiyya.
  - sampo 12y ago
    According to Wikipedia, the difference between Nastaʿlīq and Naskh is much more than just a different font. And also, according to this discussion, I have also learned that Nastaʿlīq is deeply connected to feelings of origin and pride in (at least some) Urdu speakers, and these are delicate matters. So why would you even make such an obnoxious, and totally incorrect, reduction of this matter to differences in mere font choices?
616c 12y ago
I understand you might find my comments on history annoying, but I was pointing out a few things because the average reader is not familiar with such things, namely these scripts are not specific to Urdu despite Urdu reading-writing communities appreciating it and there is some undertone that Arabic scripts of lesser beauty are being forced upon Urdu readers and writers. All of them come from Arabic (not just the letters, the scripts) as well, and as an Arabic speaker I find that attitude strange. I could be reading too much into it. And thanks for your notes re politicization of Arabic and script. I happen to live in that part of the world, hence I know. Off-topic: saw your bio blurb and saw what you write about. Sounds cool. I will definitely try to read your stuff when I have some down time.
- alieteraz 12y ago
  You write: "All of them come from Arabic (not just the letters, the scripts) as well, and as an Arabic speaker I find that attitude strange. I could be reading too much into it." I think that's where our disconnect lies and I do think you're reading too much into it. Urdu is not a child of Arabic. The word itself is Turkish, and the old story about Urdu's genesis is that it amalgamated during the military conquests of Babar, a Central Asian Turk who was funded by the Ottomans but operated independently. A great percentage of Urdu was Turkish (I once heard upto 40% of the words are Turkish), and it contains many Sanskrit words as well. This notion that Urdu is a "Muslim" language, and because of that, it has some special relationship or descent from Arabic, is more of a 20th century phenomenon having to do with Pakistan's affiliation with the Arab world as a result of becoming an Islamic Republic. That's what I think. You are welcome to try and persuade me that Urdu is some kind of Arabic-lite. But in my experience except for a very small minority of very recently Arabized Pakistanis, I have never heard of that view. What I have seen more frequently, however, is resentment against the idea that Urdu is Arabic's baby. Its kind of like how the Anglicans would resent being declared Children of Catholicism. Sure, without revolting against the Church there would not Anglicanism, but that doesn't mean that an Anglican would like to be told, "you came from Catholicism." I will give you an example. I once had an Arab yell at me for pronouncing Eteraz with a zay ending. He tried to show me that since in Arabic Eteraz ends with a dawd, and since a dawd is a hard sound, I should pronounce it Eterawd. I gently reminded him that for me it comes from Urdu and Persian and I will pronounce it with a Z. That may irk an Arabic purist. But only if he thinks that all languages written in Arabic-script should follow Arabic's rules, which makes no sense. By that logic, Indians should demand that all people who count with a zero in their system should pronounce their numbers in Sanskrit. I did not intend to write this much in response to that one sentence, but your point of view is something I've experienced frequently enough that I felt inclined to respond longer. It is not just Arabs who say things like this, too. As I mentioned it now includes Pakistanis themselves, who consider themselves "of Arab culture." An example of these Pakistanis are kids in Lahore, Pakistan, who have a license plate tag that reads, "al-Bakistan." They want to Arabize. In you they would have an ally, I imagine :). I appreciate you looking into my other work. If you get a chance to check out the short story collection, you will find a pre-Islamic story set in Mecca there. There is also a story set in an imaginary state called Islamistan, and there I adhere to Arabic rules of transliteration instead of Urdu or Persian i.e. Dhulfaqar instead of Zulfikar, etc.
sharjeel 12y ago
> Sindhi, for example, is a naskh based language. Punjabi, which my parents spoke, on the other hand, prefers nastaliq, and regionally the two places are adjacet. Saying that Sindhi is Naskh based language while Punjabi is Nastaleeq based language is like saying English is Arial based language while French is Times New Roman based.
- alieteraz 12y ago
  Respectfully, you are ignoring European history where certain languages were pretty much exclusively rendered in certain "scripts." This was also the case -- and still kind of is -- in the subcontinent. Anshuman Pandey has an interesting anecdote about how the British tried to "standardize" a script in the early 20th century, only to discover that everyone wrote in different scripts and didn't want to change. In the end, the British tried to force everyone to write in Roman letters, but that failed too.
- eshvk 12y ago
  This is rather confusing. IIRC both Arial and Times New Roman let you express all 26 alphabets. Now if Naskh has Nastaleeq have differing number of characters, is this a mere font issue or is there something more fundamental differing between the two?
  - restalis 12y ago
    You got it wrong. European Latin-based scripts are not identical. They have, besides the basic Latin set of letters, different diacritics. The original Latin alphabet has/had less than 26 letters, and the European languages had to adapt (either by supplement it, or by expressing sounds through combinations of existing letters). Now, a font may or may not have all the European letters, but that makes it merely incomplete from a language's perspective, not that it belongs or not to a given language.
  - alieteraz 12y ago
    There are two issues. One is that some operating systems (ios) don't offer the full alphabet. As for those that do (Android/Windows), they don't offer the right script. Hope that helps.
ignoramous 12y ago
Another reason why some prefer Allah Hafiz over Khuda Hafiz is 'Khuda' is a word Zoroastrians used to refer to their 'God' and not Allah, the one true God revered by the Muslims.

zohaibr 12y ago

As a person who grew up reading Urdu in Pakistan- I can attest to the fact that I associate nastaliq with Urdu exclusively. Regardless of the history - his post is about what's currently happening with the Urdu script. If given the opportunity to read Urdu in nastaliq, I would probably read Urdu more often. I have tried reading BBC Urdu various times, and have given up due to the naskh script.

616c 12y ago
I can see the value in said script, but I have to live a more pratical lifestyle: as an IT guy, if I could stop reading English, Arabic, or Persian every time it is in an ugly font, I would. And if you want to see ugly fonts, try Arabic news sites. BBC, Nastaliq or Naksh, have nothing on Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabiyya.
- sampo 12y ago
  According to Wikipedia, the difference between Nastaʿlīq and Naskh is much more than just a different font. And also, according to this discussion, I have also learned that Nastaʿlīq is deeply connected to feelings of origin and pride in (at least some) Urdu speakers, and these are delicate matters. So why would you even make such an obnoxious, and totally incorrect, reduction of this matter to differences in mere font choices?

616c 12y ago

I understand you might find my comments on history annoying, but I was pointing out a few things because the average reader is not familiar with such things, namely these scripts are not specific to Urdu despite Urdu reading-writing communities appreciating it and there is some undertone that Arabic scripts of lesser beauty are being forced upon Urdu readers and writers. All of them come from Arabic (not just the letters, the scripts) as well, and as an Arabic speaker I find that attitude strange. I could be reading too much into it. And thanks for your notes re politicization of Arabic and script. I happen to live in that part of the world, hence I know. Off-topic: saw your bio blurb and saw what you write about. Sounds cool. I will definitely try to read your stuff when I have some down time.

alieteraz 12y ago
You write: "All of them come from Arabic (not just the letters, the scripts) as well, and as an Arabic speaker I find that attitude strange. I could be reading too much into it." I think that's where our disconnect lies and I do think you're reading too much into it. Urdu is not a child of Arabic. The word itself is Turkish, and the old story about Urdu's genesis is that it amalgamated during the military conquests of Babar, a Central Asian Turk who was funded by the Ottomans but operated independently. A great percentage of Urdu was Turkish (I once heard upto 40% of the words are Turkish), and it contains many Sanskrit words as well. This notion that Urdu is a "Muslim" language, and because of that, it has some special relationship or descent from Arabic, is more of a 20th century phenomenon having to do with Pakistan's affiliation with the Arab world as a result of becoming an Islamic Republic. That's what I think. You are welcome to try and persuade me that Urdu is some kind of Arabic-lite. But in my experience except for a very small minority of very recently Arabized Pakistanis, I have never heard of that view. What I have seen more frequently, however, is resentment against the idea that Urdu is Arabic's baby. Its kind of like how the Anglicans would resent being declared Children of Catholicism. Sure, without revolting against the Church there would not Anglicanism, but that doesn't mean that an Anglican would like to be told, "you came from Catholicism." I will give you an example. I once had an Arab yell at me for pronouncing Eteraz with a zay ending. He tried to show me that since in Arabic Eteraz ends with a dawd, and since a dawd is a hard sound, I should pronounce it Eterawd. I gently reminded him that for me it comes from Urdu and Persian and I will pronounce it with a Z. That may irk an Arabic purist. But only if he thinks that all languages written in Arabic-script should follow Arabic's rules, which makes no sense. By that logic, Indians should demand that all people who count with a zero in their system should pronounce their numbers in Sanskrit. I did not intend to write this much in response to that one sentence, but your point of view is something I've experienced frequently enough that I felt inclined to respond longer. It is not just Arabs who say things like this, too. As I mentioned it now includes Pakistanis themselves, who consider themselves "of Arab culture." An example of these Pakistanis are kids in Lahore, Pakistan, who have a license plate tag that reads, "al-Bakistan." They want to Arabize. In you they would have an ally, I imagine :). I appreciate you looking into my other work. If you get a chance to check out the short story collection, you will find a pre-Islamic story set in Mecca there. There is also a story set in an imaginary state called Islamistan, and there I adhere to Arabic rules of transliteration instead of Urdu or Persian i.e. Dhulfaqar instead of Zulfikar, etc.

sharjeel 12y ago

> Sindhi, for example, is a naskh based language. Punjabi, which my parents spoke, on the other hand, prefers nastaliq, and regionally the two places are adjacet. Saying that Sindhi is Naskh based language while Punjabi is Nastaleeq based language is like saying English is Arial based language while French is Times New Roman based.

alieteraz 12y ago
Respectfully, you are ignoring European history where certain languages were pretty much exclusively rendered in certain "scripts." This was also the case -- and still kind of is -- in the subcontinent. Anshuman Pandey has an interesting anecdote about how the British tried to "standardize" a script in the early 20th century, only to discover that everyone wrote in different scripts and didn't want to change. In the end, the British tried to force everyone to write in Roman letters, but that failed too.
eshvk 12y ago
This is rather confusing. IIRC both Arial and Times New Roman let you express all 26 alphabets. Now if Naskh has Nastaleeq have differing number of characters, is this a mere font issue or is there something more fundamental differing between the two?
- restalis 12y ago
  You got it wrong. European Latin-based scripts are not identical. They have, besides the basic Latin set of letters, different diacritics. The original Latin alphabet has/had less than 26 letters, and the European languages had to adapt (either by supplement it, or by expressing sounds through combinations of existing letters). Now, a font may or may not have all the European letters, but that makes it merely incomplete from a language's perspective, not that it belongs or not to a given language.
- alieteraz 12y ago
  There are two issues. One is that some operating systems (ios) don't offer the full alphabet. As for those that do (Android/Windows), they don't offer the right script. Hope that helps.

ignoramous 12y ago

Another reason why some prefer Allah Hafiz over Khuda Hafiz is 'Khuda' is a word Zoroastrians used to refer to their 'God' and not Allah, the one true God revered by the Muslims.