KU'EIC WRITING. An ancient form of Arabi!: characters which came into use shortly be fore Mohammed, and was chiefly current among the inhabitants of Northern Arabia, while those of the southwestern parts employed the old Sabrean Alaracters, called by the Arabs Maxim/. akin to the Ethiopic. The Kufic is derived from some form of the Naliatean alphabet as found in the inscriptions in Northern Arabia, the Sinaitie Peninsula. Petra, and the Hauran. It was origi nally written without diacritical and vowel points, these being gradually introduced during the first century of the Ilejira. The first copies of the Koran were written in it, and it took its name from Cufa (Arabic al-Klifah), a city in the Vilayet of. Bagdad, which in the early caliph al e had become a centre for Moslem studies. The alphabet was arranged like the Hebrew and Syriac; but this order, though occasionally used for numerical purposes, has now been superseded by another. The Kufie character, which is of a somewhat clumsy and ungainly shape, began to fall into disuse after about 1000, its place being taken by the Naskhi, which is the common form of writing to-day. This Naskhi made its way with difficulty. It is found first in documents dated 750. The Kufie has been largely employed in inscriptions on mosques, palaces. forts, etc., and on coins. Epigraphically it is found in several forms. The simple Kufic was employed from the first century of the llejira up to the middle of the fourth. It has all the clumsy and angular characters of this script. The orna mental Kufic is represented by the inscrip tions of the Fatimite dynasty in Egypt (tenth twelfth centuries) : this has wrongly been called the Karmatian. The decorative Kufie is used for Koran verses which simply serve the purpose of adornment. Since the introduction of the
round Naskhi characters, the decorative Kufic has developed several varieties, sometimes in the form of leaves and branches; at others elongated and thin: or, thirdly. square and geometric. The introduction of the Naskhi into Arabic epigraphy was due to the Sunnite reaction under the Sel inks, Atabeks, Nur ed-Din, and Saladin, and was coincident with the Crusade and Mongol inva sions. It started in Persia, where it is seen upon coins in the tenth century and in inscriptions during the eleventh century. It overran Bagdad, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine, and entered Egypt with Saladin. The earliest Naskhi inscrip tion in Syria is of 1155. The last Fatimite in scription in ornamental Kufic in Cairo is dated 1160. Saladin's first inscription in Cairo (in Naskhi) is dated 1133. Different kinds of these Naskhi (in which the alphabet is arranged ac cording to the outward similarity of the letters) are the Ditcani (only employed for decrees. pass ports, etc.), the (the Court script, chiefly used in Persia), the Thtiluth (threefold, highly flourished and involved, used at the head of books and documents). the etc. The Maghrebin cursive script used in Northwest ern Africa is a direct development of the Kufie. Consult: Taylor, The Alphabet. vol. i. (London. 1833) Von Berehem, Corpus Inseriptionum. A rabicorum (Paris. 1894-1900) : Hondas, Essai sur 1Veriture maglirebine (1886) : and the Pale ographical Society's "Oriental Series" (London, 1884).
Krif-FOW. A city in China. See KICII-FOW.