Crowd-funding campaign launched to keep Arabic Andalusi script alive with documentary film

Andalusi Calligraphy. Courtesy Zakariyya Whiteman

Andalusi Arabic was the language spoken for eight centuries by the Muslims of Europe’s Iberian Peninsula – the area now contemporary Spain and Portugal.

But following the Expulsion of the Moriscos in the 17th Century, the language dissipated, went underground, and was vanquished from the continent.

With it disappeared the characteristic Andalusi script, said to be Europe’s only indigenous way of writing the Holy Qur’an, and reportedly the language of millions of written works on the Islamic sciences, from botany to medicine, astronomy, poetry, chemistry, agriculture and more.

Falling into disuse, the script was largely unknown until it was rediscovered by contemporary calligraphers.

Now a multimedia label, Barzakh is launching a bid to tell the unique language’s tale – and the story of the Andalusi Muslims – through a documentary film, directed by Zakariyya Whiteman.

Set in Andalusia itself, the film will be narrated by experts in the fields of Spanish Islam, art and history. It will also zero in on one modern day practitioner of the ancient writing, Abdallateef Whiteman a designer and calligrapher currently residing in the Alpujarra mountains, one of the last places Andalusi Muslims lived.

However to make the dream a reality, Barzakh have launched a crowd-funding campaign at LaunchGood.

Donate to the campaign here.