The Qatari Forum for Authors organized a seminar entitled “Arabic Calligraphy and its Role in Preserving the Arabic language” as part of the World Arabic Language Day celebrations organized by the Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Qatar National Commission for Education, Culture and Science. Calligrapher Essam Ibrahim. who participated in the seminar, emphasized that Arabic calligraphy is an academic field taught at colleges and institutes in various Arab countries as part of their core curricula. He added that while Arabic calligraphy is essentially a profession that can be mastered with persistent practice, talent plays a major role. He explained that passion makes people learn art forms faster and transfer it to others with ease. He sees Arabic calligraphy as inseparable from the Arabic language, as calligraphy is an art form that takes language as its medium of expression. Essam Ibrahim sees that the combination of loving the language and calligraphy makes a calligrapher highly creative. He called for the inclusion of calligraphy as a school subject in elementary education because calligraphy should be taught to children from an early age and because it becomes more difficult to master the art form in older stages of life. Moreover, he believes that the preservation of Arabic requires mastery of Arabic calligraphy and regularly writing by hand, especially because in today’s world of technology, children tend to type on keyboards much more than write by hand.
Essam Ibrahim commented that no matter how masterful calligraphers may be, they have to practice every day. He concluded by saying that Arabic calligraphy has evolved over centuries into an independent art form. This is why it is not negatively impacted by technological developments. Technology, as he sees it, adds to the tools available to calligraphers, and these tools can be very useful as long as they do not alter the foundations of the art or change the basic font styles.