Calligraphic Kufic

The Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo is not often visited by tourists, who focus instead on ancient Egyptian wonders, but it’s well worth visiting and has a fantastic collection. There’s a very nice set of Abbasid bowls from Iraq dating from around the 8th or 9th century. They have elegant inscriptions in Arabic in them, in Kufic script in a deep black, like this one here.