Tunis (AFP)

The elegant curves of the official letters written by the hand of Tunisian President Kais Saied, an academic keen on Arabic calligraphy, have brought to light this ancient but marginalized art, a heritage which Arab countries nevertheless want to have recognized by Unesco.

After his election in 2019, Mr. Saied appointed a Prime Minister and then transmitted to Parliament the government's list using letters carefully written in green ink, on thick paper illuminated with the arms of the presidency.

The calligraphic page published by his services has toured social networks, arousing admiration but also taunts.

To prove that he had written well with his own hand, the presidency released a video showing him drawing perfectly calibrated lines on a national television guestbook.

Mr. Saied took lessons with the Tunisian calligrapher Omar Jomni who found himself in the limelight when the head of state offered one of his works to a foreign leader.

The president, says this master in his sixties, "wishes to write his official correspondence in Maghrebian writing, and his private letters in Diwani".

The Maghreb writing is a kufic, angular and ancient style, while the diwani is a more ornamental Ottoman form, used in poetry.

The use of calligraphy by the Head of State has put a balm in the hearts of artists, while this tradition has, according to Mr. Jomni, suffered from "the brutal and disorderly marginalization of Islamic culture in the 1960s" in Tunisia. "We are suffering the consequences to this day."

- The fingers of the hand -

Indeed, the first president of Tunisia Habib Bourguiba (1957-1987) dismantled what was then the main university in Arabic language in the country, the Islamic University of Zitouna, after a power struggle with the clergy who was leading.

Books and manuscripts from this institution were seized. It was there that Mohamed Salah Khammassi, dean of calligraphers in Tunisia, was trained at the beginning of the 20th century, who transmitted this art to future generations.

Calligraphy, which has its letters of nobility in Asia and in the Gulf, today has only one reference body in Tunisia, the national center of the arts of calligraphy created in 1994.

And this center is about to disappear. The courses should stop due to the lack of trainers, regrets his manager Abdel Jaoued Lotfi.

"The number of professional calligraphers is insufficient. They can be counted on the fingers of one hand and work in precarious conditions," deplores Mr. Jomni.

Sixteen Arab countries, including Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq have prepared a candidacy to inscribe this know-how on the list of the intangible heritage of UNESCO.

This candidacy allows "to be interested in this art as a living heritage (...) and not as a simple technical skill", rejoices the researcher Imed Soula, who supervises the Tunisian dossier sent to Unesco.

- "Do not rust" -

For Mr. Soula, the decline in Arabic calligraphy also comes from "the adoption of new technologies or computer applications limiting this art, which was based on traditional supports such as copper or stone".

After the 2011 revolution which set Tunisia on the road to democratization, the young generation of calligraphers wishes to reinvent art "so as not to rust and be overwhelmed", explains calligrapher Karim Jabbari.

This thirty-something who travels the world uses light in particular as a tool for writing Arabic letters.

In 2011, he traced the names of "martyrs" of the revolution, killed in clashes before the fall of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, in Kasserine, a marginalized city in west-central Tunisia.

"Through this form of calligraphy, I want to highlight the beauty of the Arabic language and bring it closer to people", explains Mr. Jabbari, winner in 2015 in China.

He also wants to push future generations, sometimes overwhelmed by precariousness and lack of prospects, to give the "best of themselves" by drawing from art a "positive energy".

© 2020 AFP