An Artistic and Spiritual Retreat
Music for the Eyes
What earlier appreciation for this practice has failed to fully embrace is that all throughout the world the richness of Islamic calligraphy has flourished, in different regions that are both at the center and the periphery of Islam, with different schools finding their roots in the spirituality and the unique practice of Islam in each region. Today the Reed Society for the Sacred Arts and the West African Calligraphy Institute invite you to discover the diversity of the calligraphic form, to learn from practitioners, both of traditional schools and those at the frontiers of Islam, and to join a growing community of people who seek to increase human understanding and compassion through artistic expression. If, in the words of the American calligrapher, Mohamed Zakariya,“calligraphy is music for the eyes,” then we invite you to join us this October in Abiquiu, New Mexico for a beautiful symphony.
An artistic and spiritual retreat
anchored in three traditions of Arabic calligraphy:
West African, Ottoman and Persian
Annual Retreat in
Abiquiu, New Mexico
Returning
October 2025
Abiquiu, New Mexico
Returning
October 2025
We invite you to…
Spend time with award winning artists and scholars who will be your instructor and share their unique perspectives on art and spirituality and guide you with hands on experience in exploring different calligraphy styles and scripts…
Step into the sacred space of Dar al Islam, an American Islamic sacred space dreamed and designed by the internationally renowned architect, Hassan Al Fathy. Al Fathy wrote the book Architecture for the Poor and was consciously trying to create structures that seamlessly melded with the nature and environment of the each place...
Explore the landscape that drew Georgia Okeefe to this very area, leaving behind the bustle of city life to settle into a reverential rapport with the mountains, the rocks, the moon and the sky of Abiquiu and create paintings that are part of the American canon
Enjoy the company of seekers who understand the intersectionality of spirituality and art and have an unforgettable weekend, one that you will carry with you forever
The Retreat Center
Dar Al Islam is a retreat center situated on 1,600 acres in Abiquiu, New Mexico. The landscape is dramatic and awe inspiring and utterly different than the rest of the United States.
Designed by Egyptian architect Hasan Fathy and completed in 1981, the campus is anchored by its Nubian inspired mosque and includes a library, lecture hall, dorm spaces, and multiple courtyards. Dar Al Islam is a nonprofit organization dedicated to cultivating a harmonious, integrated society through their mission and vision.
Another gem of the property is the geological landscape of the Plaza Blanca (White Place). The Plaza Blanca is a beautiful slot canyon, unlike any other in the Southwest, well know for its mystical desert beauty where our participants will hike in the mornings.
2025 Retreat Information
The Artists
Bahman Panahi
Franco-Iranian artist Bahman Panahi was born in 1967. He holds a Ph.D. in music and musicology, he is a visual artist, calligrapher and musician. At a very young age, he understood that calligraphy is a living art, where gesture is combined with rhythm in the search for balance and a consonant harmony, seeking to sublimate sentences, words and letters, whilst revealing their melodic dimension. This poetic conception led him naturally to highlight the resonances of calligraphy and music. Inspired by these two artistic practices, he has made them his vocation. From his teenage years onwards, he devoted his studies to that purpose. His studies took him to France, where he deepened his research and developed the concept of Musicalligraphy in his doctoral thesis at Sorbonne University. In his work, Bahman Panahi consistently endeavoured to bring out this conceptual dimension of calligraphy. This artistic practice, comprising both traditional and abstract calligraphic compositions, has allowed him to travel: exhibitions, concerts, artistic performances around the world, exchanges with international artists have all waymarked Bahman Panahi’s life and have lent him international prominence.
Fallou Fall
Fall is a graphic artist and calligrapher born and raised on the outskirts of Dakar, in the locales of Pikine and Guédiawaye. He was trained in the technique of West African calligraphy (a maghrebi derived script) and in the mystical significance of the Arabic alphabet by his father, renowned international artist Yelimane Fall. Fallou Fall is part of the Mouridiyya and is learned in both the Holy Quran, and the teachings and khassaides (poetry) of Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba. Fallou is a burgeoning artist in Senegal, taking on his father’s name le Messeger de la Foi. He continues to develop West African calligraphic style, creating large and medium sized multi-media artworks and murals centered on Islam, the poetry of Bamba, and themes of social importance. Fallou is the Artistic Director of the West African Calligraphy Institute, continuing the work in Senegal in social activism and establishing the Institute and school.
Nuria Garcia Masip
Born in 1978 in Ibiza, Spain, Nuria Garcia Masip grew up between Spain and the USA. In 1999, after completing her university studies, she traveled to Morocco where she developed an interest in Islamic art. In 2000, she returned to Washington D.C. where she started studying the rik’a, sülüs, and nesih scripts with calligrapher (hattat) Mohamed Zakariya. In 2004, she moved to Istanbul where she continued to study the sülüs, and nesih scripts with hattat Hasan Çelebi, and with hattat Davut Bektaş. In 2007, she received her diploma (ijazah) in these two scripts, signed by her three teachers. She holds a Masters in Art History from the Sorbonne University, has won prestigious prizes in international calligraphy competitions and her work forms part of various private and museum collections. She has also organized numerous workshops and conferences on this art to promote the art of calligraphy internationally. Her work is firmly rooted in the classical school of calligraphy and she enjoys preserving the techniques and materials of the tradition. Nuria is currently living in Paris where she teaches, researches, and works on calligraphy.
Schedule
8PM
Welcome Dinner
7:30AM
9AM
10:30AM—12:30PM
1 PM
2—4PM
5—7PM
7:30PM
9—10PM
10:30PM
Hike in Plaza Blanca
Breakfast
Session with First Artist
Lunch
Session with First Artist
Hike/Archery
Dinner
Fireside Gathering
Lights Out
Day 3
Day 4
7:30AM
9AM
10:30AM—12:30PM
1 PM
2—4PM
5—7PM
7:30PM
9—10PM
10:30PM
Hike in Plaza Blanca
Breakfast
Session with First Artist
Lunch
Session with First Artist
Hike/Archery
Dinner
Fireside Gathering
Lights Out
7:30AM
9 AM
10:30AM—12:30 PM
1PM
2—4PM
5—7PM
Hike
Breakfast
Session with Third Artist
Lunch
Session with Third Artist
Dinner/Departure
Pricing
Includes program and meals
Includes program, meals and lodging
FAQs
Terms and Conditions
Terms and Conditions form can be found here
An Endeavor by Reed Society
National Sufi Ensemble
“The music grounded in traditional studied Sufi practice transports
the listener to the third space of
no space, a place beyond place and time where the listener can experience the Divine.”
Dhruv Sangari and the National Sufi Ensemble at SXSW 2023 at the Parker Jazz Club
Dhruv Sangari and the National Sufi Ensemble on the Millennium Stage at The Kennedy Center
National Festival Organized by Reed Society
Sufi Music
Festival
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Al Firdaus Ensemble - Millennium Stage (September 30, 2023)
Sufi Music Festival - Burdah Ensemble
An Exhibition by Reed Society
Living Lines,
Living Legacy
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An Online Exhibition by Reed Society
Beauty in
Solitude
Explore the Exhibit
Acknowledgements
Just as a piece of calligraphic art takes many people- ebru artists who make the paper, tehzib artists who illuminate the words, and the unseen chain of the artist’s teachers, this exhibition has been a labor of love that simply would not be possible without the efforts of many people.
Special thanks to Salman Malik who spent countless hours helping to make ideas into a reality. His creativity and technical expertise helped shaped the direction of this exhibition. Thank you also to our interns on this project: Fatima Tourk and Lailah Mozaffar. We are honored to have collaborated with The Walters Art Museum for this exhibition and, in particular, with Ashley Dimmig whose expertise added a vital component to the understanding of this art. Finally, much love and gratitude to all the artists who contributed to this endeavor.
The Walters Art Museum
The Walters Art Museum, located in Baltimore’s historic Mount Vernon Cultural District at North Charles and Centre Streets, is free for all. The collections include Egyptian and Greek art from the ancient world, medieval art and manuscripts, Asian art, Islamic art, 19th-century French paintings, Renaissance and Baroque art, jewelry and decorative arts and much more. At the time of his death in 1931, museum founder Henry Walters left his entire collection of art to the city of Baltimore. For more information visit thewalters.org.
Ashley Dimming
Ashley Dimmig was currently the Wieler-Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow in Islamic Art at the Walters Art Museum. Her curatorial work aimed to make Islamic art engaging and accessible to audiences in Baltimore and beyond. Within the broad scope of Islamic art history, her fields of specialization include a range of art and architecture from Turkish and Persian spheres in the early modern and modern periods. With a fine arts background in fiber arts and weaving, Dimmig is especially interested in textiles across the Islamic world. She is also interested in the historiography of the field of Islamic art and its intersections with museology, collecting, and issues of cultural heritage.
Her dissertation, “Making Modernity in Fabric Architecture: Imperial Tents in the Late Ottoman Period” (University of Michigan, 2019) views tents as imperial fabric architecture and analyzes their myriad functions and malleable meanings in the Ottoman court from the eighteenth century to the end of the empire in the early twentieth century. The dissertation was generously supported by the Ittleson Fellowship with the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts (CASVA), the Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi Fellowship in Ottoman Architectural Culture and History at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) in Istanbul, and the Rackham Merit Fellowship from the University of Michigan. Dimmig also holds two Master of Art degrees from Indiana University Bloomington and Koç University in Istanbul, as well as a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Kansas City Art Institute.
Şeyh Hamdullah
Şeyh Hamdullah (d. 1520)
Ottoman Turkey, 15th century
Opaque watercolor and ink on paper mounted on thin pasteboard bound between sheepskin-covered boards with gold and chamois leather
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, bequest of Henry Walters, 1931, acc. no. W.672 (featuring folio 5a)
by Ashley Dimmig
The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore is home to a beautiful album of calligraphy bound in an accordion format in the 18th century in the Ottoman empire. It contains nine calligraphic works attributed to Şeyh Hamdullah (d. 1520), known as the “father of Ottoman calligraphy.” [1] Indeed, the renowned artist ushered in a new age of calligraphic arts in the Ottoman empire with his revitalization of the so-called six scripts (sulus, nesih, muhakkak, reyhani, tevki’, and riqa’), especially nesih (naskh). The presence of this important calligrapher’s work in Baltimore is made all the more significant given that students who can trace their master-student lineage back through the centuries to Şeyh Hamdullah continue to learn the art of calligraphy through Mohamad Zakariya, also based in the DMV (District-Maryland-Virginia) area. Therefore, the linear chain of transmission (silsila, lit. “chain”) of knowledge comes full circle here in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.
The album contains nine folios, each with a calligraphy framed in 18th-century decorated papers known as ebru (marbled). The pages include verses from the Qur’an, excerpts from Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), and two karalama (lit. “blackening”), or pen exercises. One kıta (small calligraphic work) bears the name of the master calligrapher in its colophon (fol. 5a, seen above). The stylistic consistency throughout the album and the absence of other artists’ names suggests that all of the works are by the same hand—that is, the master-calligrapher Şeyh Hamdullah. In addition to the Walters, Şeyh Hamdullah calligraphies can be found in the collections of two other U.S. institutions: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the special collections at the University of Michigan—incidentally, where I earned my PhD last year (2019).
The collection of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum contains nearly 200 Islamic manuscripts—including albums and single folios—in addition to the wealth of art objects of various media from the Islamic world in the collection, totaling approximately 1200 objects. This collection of art from Islamic cultures began with the purchase of a single magnificent Qur’an (W.563) by Henry Walters (1848-1931), the founder of the museum who bequeathed his collection to the city of Baltimore in 1931, “for the benefit of the public.” [2]
In the Ottoman tradition of album-making, albums were used as repositories of exemplars from which calligraphers-in-training could model their own work. Yet, albums—like many other kinds of art—can have multiple functions, which may change over the course of their lives, through time and across the world. Thus, in addition to serving as models for learning the art of calligraphy, albums—whether comprised of calligraphies, drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, or some combination thereof—can be thought of as hand-held museums, containing strategically curated two-dimensional works, which then can be admired, compared, displayed, or simply enjoyed in close proximity. Indeed, albums in the Ottoman empire were seen as a source of inspiration, reflection, and renewal. In her analysis of another important Ottoman album, compiled by Kalendar Pasha (d. 1616) for Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603-1617), Emine Fetvacı says that Kalendar Pasha “presents the images in this album not only as tools for learning and sources of wisdom but also as means to counter troubling times and as sources for rejuvenation.” [3]
Albums can and do continue to bear such power today. In our current moment, as we process events in the world today and as we look to the future with both uncertainty and hope, the ability of art to touch the human spirit and bring us together is as important as ever. While accessible from anywhere in the world through its digital proxy, the album itself remains in trust at the Walters, while nearby the artistic traditions founded in its pages continue to thrive through the hands, hearts, and minds of living artists.
[1] Farhad and Rettig, The Art of the Qur’an, 82.
[2] Excursions through the Collection, 50; https://thewalters.org/about/history/
[3] Fetvacı, “Album of Ahmed I,” 129.
Works Cited & Further Reading
Akın-Kıvanç, Esra. Mustafa ‘Ali’s Epic Deeds of Artists: A Critical Edition of the Earliest Ottoman Text about the Calligraphers and Painters of the Islamic World. Leiden: Brill, 2011.
Avcıoğlu, Nebahat. “Introduction: The Culture of Albums in the Long 18th Century,” Journal18, Issue 6 Albums (Fall 2018): http://www.journal18.org/3224. DOI: 10.30610/6.2018.1.
Farhad, Massumeh and Simon Rettig. The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art. Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2016.
Fetvacı, Emine. “The Album of Ahmed I,” Ars Orientalis 42 (2012): 127-138.
Simpson, Marianna Shreve. “‘A Gallant Era’: Henry Walters, Islamic Art, and the Kelekian Connection,” Ars Orientalis 30: Exhibiting the Middle East: Collections and Perceptions of Islamic Art (2000): 91-112.
Walters Art Museum. The Walters Art Museum: Excursions through the Collection. Baltimore, MD: The Walters Art Museum, 2020.
Şeyh Hamdullah (d. 1520)
Ottoman Turkey, 16th-18th century
Opaque watercolor and ink on paper mounted on thin pasteboard bound between sheepskin-covered boards with gold and chamois leather
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, bequest of Henry Walters, 1931, acc. no. W.672 (featuring folio 5a)
by Mohamed Zakariya
At the Reed Society, we hope to build an accessible literature about arts and concepts that remain somewhat hidden, in difficult languages and cultural zones. One such art is Arabic-script calligraphy, and a good place to start is with Sheyh Hamdullah, an Ottoman artist, athlete, and gentleman from the 15th-16th centuries. For calligraphers like myself, he is a constant inspiration. Those who take calligraphic training and are honored with the icazet, an unofficial license, partake of the many gifts this man left to posterity. When I go to Istanbul, I always visit his grave in the Karaca Ahmet Cemetery, as do most calligraphers.
Sheyh Hamdullah was born around 1436 in the town of Amasya in Ottoman Anatolia, a place famous for its many calligraphers. His father was a sheyh (or sheikh) of the Suhraverdi order, and Hamdullah often called himself “son of the sheyh.” The grand master of the archery lodge, Hamdullah was also a sheyh of the Sufi path. His teachers in calligraphy were trained in the style of writing perfected by Yakut el-Mustasimi of Baghdad, and Hamdullah excelled in these methods and the literature associated with them.
When Prince Beyazid, son of Mehmed the Conquerer, became governor of Amasya, he took calligraphy lessons from Sheyh Hamdullah and received his icazet from him. The two became life-long friends. Beyazid became Sultan Beyazid II in 1481 and, the following year, invited Sheyh Hamdullah to join him in Constantinople (now Istanbul). The sheyh was given a workshop in the Topkapi Palace, where he would write and teach and where the sultan could visit and watch him work. While there, the sheyh designed a good deal of monumental calligraphy around Constantinople, especially in the Beyazid Mosque and precinct, and in other cities.
By this time, however, calligraphy had become rather stodgy and rigid, and the sheyh was inspired to undertake a basic overhaul of the art, top to bottom, using the best examples of Yakut’s original works. He was shortly able to transform the six proportional scripts (sulus, nesih, muhakkak, reyhani, tevki’, and riqa’) into a new and vivacious medium. Using these scripts, he wrote 47 mushafs (Korans) and numerous other works, inscriptions, and murakkaas (albums), at least three of which are in collections in the United States. The sheyh’s sulus (thuluth) script, while magnificent, was still a bit stiff. It was his nesih (naskh), enlivened with vitality, that really took off, becoming the most important script in the Ottoman repertoire.
In addition to calligraphy, the multi-talented Sheyh Hamdullah was a champion archer, swimmer, tailor, and falconer. He was a brilliant maker of arrows and composite bows and taught archery to the best masters of the day. The sheyh lived into his late 80s and died in 1520.
When we look at his work and at other Ottoman calligraphy, we need to be aware that these are normally joint productions, involving many people. The calligraphy is the basis of the piece. But it is the assembly, polishing, gilding, mounting, painting, and sometimes binding or monumental carving and architectural application that finish the work and make an art object.
The known and unknown geniuses of calligraphy who followed the great founding master of Baghdad, Ibnul-Bawwab, paved the road of calligraphy so it could, in the hands of Sheyh Hamdullah, begin to become a true art. The teaching method he developed is the origin of the method we use today. His students went on to teach others, over the generations creating something of a family tree of calligraphic genealogy, a key to study the evolution of the art.
Created in Istanbul, Turkey
© 2024 Reed Society for the Sacred Arts