Islam Week 2004
Illuminating Islam:
a guide to better understanding

Islamic Calligraphy: 
A Hidden Treasure
presented by 
Calligrapher Elinor Aishah Holland

Monday, March 22, 7:30 p.m.
Highlands Room, College Center

Elinor Aishah Holland is one of the few Americans to study Islamic calligraphy in the traditional method of the Ottoman Hattat (calligraphers). She is a student of Master Calligrapher Mohamed Zakariya, the first Hattat from the Western world to receive a diploma in this traditional school. Although she has not yet received her "ijazet," or diploma, an achievement requiring many years of study, with the permission of her teacher she has been offering lectures and programs introducing Islamic calligraphy to adults and children across the US and Canada.  She has a BA in Religious Studies from Temple University, and studied Classical Arabic at the University of Pennsylvania and the CASA program of the American University in Cairo. 

Purchasers of her Arabic calligraphy include the Museum of the City of New York, Aramco, and the Sultan of Brunei. Her programs have been offered at the African and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian Institution, Columbia University, the New York Society of Scribes, the Rihla Deen Intensive in New Mexico, at various Islamic centers in North America. 

Holland is also accomplished in the Western lettering tradition, in which she likewise teaches and accepts commissions. She is a past board member of the New York Society of Scribes, and has curated an exhibit, "Alphabetics East to West," at the Pratt Institute.  

She is currently working on an instructional book about Islamic calligraphy with Mohamed Zakariya. 

Aishah Elinor Holland has a son and daughter and lives in the Hudson Valley in New York State.