NASTA`LEEQ, also spelt nastalig, is considered the most beautiful of all hands used in Persian and Urdu calligraphy. But using this style of penmanship for writing Urdu with the help of mechanical devices, such as, a typewriter, had been a pipe dream for ages, let alone using nasta`leeq font for composing Urdu text on computer.

The biggest challenge ever posed to Urdu typewriter developers was how to incorporate nasta`leeq font in this machine, as naskh the other calligraphic style widely used for writing Arabic, Persian and Urdu was deemed a font not beautiful enough. So all efforts to use naskh in Urdu typewriter and printing met with the same fate: it was only half-heartedly accepted.

Even the early nasta`leeq typesetting was rejected as letters were clumsily joined together and were thought to be a compromised version of nasta`leeg, lacking the realbeauty. This attitude was based on aesthetic sense as calligraphy is an art form, though insistence on nasta`leeq created a hindrance in progress of Urdu printing and publishing. But it took about 200 years to change.

In 1780s, some printing presses at Calcutta had published several Urdu and Persian books composed in typesetting. Fort William College followed the suit in early 1800s. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan published his Urdu magazines composed in Urdu typesetting in 1860s and 1870s.

Then Abul Kalam Azad launched weekly Al-Hilal in 1912. Muhammad Ali Jauher brought out daily Hamdard in 1913. Both were printed in Urdu`s naskh type. Then in 1920s and 1930s, Deccan`s princely state, Usmania University and Moulvi Abdul Haq at Anjuman Taraqqi-iUrdu began using Urdu typewriters and tried to popularise nast`aleeg typesetting for printing as well, but it was mechanically so complex and expensive that in 1940s they decided it was simply not feasible oncommercial level.

Till some 40 years ago, it was quite common to use naslch font in Urdu books and magazines composed on typewriter, albeit manyreaders frowned upon it, and a vast majority of Urdu books, magazines and newspapers were printed through a procedure that required the text to be handwritten first in nast`aleeg indeed! But scribes, or kaatibs, usually took quite long to write a book by hand. Sometimes a voluminous book would take a couple of years to be handwritten and yet correcting the calligraphic errors was another daunting task.

The biggest hurdle in creating a worl(able Urdu nast`aleeq printing system was that in Urdu`s script many letters are joined together and in the process may lose a part of them or change shape, hence Urdu script virtually turns into a kind of short hand. As put by Shanul Haq Haqqee, letter `bey`, representing the sound `b`, may take up to 14 different shapes, in such Urdu words as bulbul, behr, battakh, abr, etc.

Finally, in early 1980s, Urdu`s nast`aleeq font for computerised composing and printing was introduced,ensuring a securefuturefor the language and its script in theage of rapidly-developing technology. The technique basically involved using joined letters as one character or image, which is known as ligature in linguistics. Ahmed Mirza Jameel, the developer of Noori Nast`aleeg Font, was the brain behind the revolution, making writing, printing and publishing in Urdu script easy, quick and beautiful. Being a painter and calligrapher himself, he handwrote about 18,000 ligatures whose images were scanned and installed on computers.

Jameel was born in Delhi on Feb 21, 1921. His father Noor Ahmed, after whom he was to name his nast`aleeq font later on, was a calligrapher and had established a lithographic printing press. With an artistic bent of mind young Ahmed, too, was really into graphic arts and loved calligraphy. In 1938, he was admitted into J. J. School of Art, Bombay. He spent about seven years there, learnt painting and printing, took parts in art exhibitions and won accolades. Soon he was workingas art director in Calcutta with a film company. Then he established a publicity studio in Calcutta.

In 1949, Jameel migrated to Pakistan and began a printing press and turned into an innovative and modern printing facility. Both Jameel and his friend Matloobul Hasan Syed were interested in modernising and mechanising Urdu printing. In 1979, Jameel participated in a printing exhibition at Singapore and was stunned to see Chinese language being written on a computer screen with a keyboard as thousands of Chinese characters had been saved on computer. He decided that nasta`leeq too can be composed like this. Ultimately, with the help of Matloobul Hasan, his Noori Nast`aleeg Font was developed and Urdu has never looked back. The journey that began in 1780s in Calcutta, had reached a great milestone in 1981 in Karachi.

Jameel died in Karachi on Feb 17, 2014.

drrauf parekh@yahoo.com