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Topic

Reimagining the Art of Qurʾānic Calligraphy in Contemporary Pakistan

Department of Art History and Visual Studies

Date & location

• Wednesday, December 17, 2025

• 1:30 P.M.

• Virtual Defence

Reviewers

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Marcus Milwright, Department of Art History and Visual Studies, UVic (Co-Supervisor)

• Dr. Catherine Harding, Department of Art History and Visual Studies, UVic (Co-Supervisor)

• Dr. Melia Belli Bose, Department of Department of Art History and Visual Studies, UVic (Member)

• Dr. Andrew Wender, Department of Political Science, UVic (Outside Member) 

External Examiner

• Dr. Alex Dika Seggerman, Department of Arts, Culture and Media, Rutgers University-Neward 

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Isaac Woungang, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UVic

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the nature of Qurʾānic calligraphy in contemporary Pakistan. Qurʾānic calligraphy today is a dynamic, multifaceted practice—rooted in tradition yet reshaped through artistic innovation, socio political realities, cultural narratives, and everyday devotion. Through three case studies, the project examines the di#erent ways that Rasheed Butt (1944—), Amin Gulgee (1965—), and Muzzumil Ruheel (1985—) activate the Qurʾān’s visual, textual, and conceptual power in innovative ways, encouraging audiences to engage deeply with the art.

A dedicated chapter focuses on the everyday creation and use of Qurʾānic calligraphy by craftspeople, hobbyists, street artists, and religious practitioners. Placing these practices in dialogue with elite art highlights the circulation of calligraphy across multiple systems, from international exhibitions to domestic interiors. Structuring the dissertation in this way was a deliberate choice: it acknowledges Qurʾānic calligraphy’s dual life as both a medium of global artistic innovation and a vital form of lived devotion. Only by holding these systems simultaneously can the full complexity of Qurʾānic calligraphy in Pakistan be understood. The research suggests that understanding contemporary Qurʾānic calligraphy requires a multifaceted approach embracing production on di#erent social levels. This approach values imagination, intuition, cultural understanding, and embodied interpretation, alongside formal analysis.

The dissertation, therefore, situates elite transnational practice within a broader ecosystem that includes artists, critics, curators, educators, everyday viewers, and users—each actively shaping how calligraphic art is produced, interpreted, and circulated. Audience reception is central to this ecosystem: the relationship between artist and viewer is dialogical and fluid, with meaning negotiated across diverse perceptions and contexts.

The research across four main chapters draws on interviews with a wide range of stakeholders (artists, users, viewers, art critics, educators, and art historians), positioning their perspectives at the heart of the analysis. This methodological choice is one of the dissertation’s central contributions: by foregrounding lived experiences and interpretive voices, the study moves beyond formalist or purely art-historical accounts to reveal how Qurʾānic calligraphy is not simply made or displayed, but continually reinterpreted through the perceptions, emotions, and cultural worlds of those who encounter it.

Central to this investigation is the argument that contemporary Qurʾānic calligraphic art invites deep forms of engagement in ways that transcend surface aesthetics, building on ethics, imagination, intuition, narrative sensibility, and contextual knowledge. These works are often challenging, because they operate on multiple registers: visual, philosophical, historical, and spiritual, as demonstrated in close readings of key images. Reading them demands a form of critical empathy and inferential engagement—a willingness to read between, around, and beyond the lines and connect with the intellectual, social, political, sensorial, and metaphysical dimension embedded in the text-based art.

Given the complexity of Qurʾānic visual culture in Pakistan, the study avoids a singular narrative. Instead, it o#ers a first step toward identifying the cognitive, emotional, and cultural literacies needed to engage with this emergent field. It is my hope that the dissertation extends Iftikhar Dadi’s critical rethinking of modernism and calligraphic abstraction by foregrounding Qurʾānic art as a site of contemplative inquiry, liminal transformation, embodied knowledge, political imagination, and spiritual agency within Muslim cultures.