ISLAMABAD, May 5 (TNS): King Fahd Complex for Printing of the Holy Qur’an in Madinah has recently launched a project to digitally process and implement suggested aesthetic improvements to the font of the Madinah Qur’an that was printed in 1422 Hijri.
Emir of Madinah, Prince Faisal Bin Salman, also head of Madinah Development Authority, has recently launched an initiative to look after the Madani font, Saudi Gazette reported.
The font Madani was used to write the Noble Qur’an and the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and it was also used in the Prophet’s correspondences to rulers around the world. Inscriptions on rocks and mountains’ slopes also used the Madani font.
The Prophet’s City of Madinah contains a rich legacy of early Islamic scriptures which were engraved on the city’s rocks in mountains and valleys and on roads which old caravans used.
King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Restoration Center, Tarmeem, is currently looking after this legacy. The center does not only look after the possessions of Darah but also looks after maintaining this legacy which citizens and public and private libraries possess.
Libraries across the world, such as the National Library of France, the Leiden University Library in the Netherlands, the University of Birmingham Library in Britain and the Berlin Library in Germany, keep copies of the Qur’an written in the Madani font.
Darah had said in one of its reports about Arabic fonts that searching for the origin of Arabic font has become some sort of an adventure.
The aim is to produce a high quality font via advanced computer programs that are specifically designed for this purpose and enhance the quality of the decoration to produce a high quality manual font.
On transforming the Madani font into a digital one, digital printing expert Suleiman Bin Abdullah Al-Mayman said the Madani font is the base of all fonts that are common today, noting that the point of the project is to revive this font so the old Qur’anic font is digitally imitated on computers.
