The arabic script, from visual analogy to model-based reasoning

Abstract

For the Arabs in the beginning was the sound and the letter. Only afterward, the written word embodied and conditioned by the Qur’an. The phonetic and graphic shapes of the letters inspired a series of analogies which related to God as universal wholeness and script. Basing themselves on the close observation of the Qur’anic script as absolute matrix the Arab scholars began to model it constructing formal theories to describe and explain its meanings and their applicability in everyday life. Thus, the Qur’anic written text and the geometrical forms derived from it extended to all aspects of real life subliminally placing man into an iconic world of letters which intermediate between theories, applications and their absolute model.