Nastaliq Typography and Typefaces
- Komal Salman
- 26 minutes ago
- 2 min read
In 1949, shortly after the creation of Pakistan, the government commissioned the world’s first Urdu typewriter, produced by Everst.
Most of the typefaces developed failed to capture the fluid beauty and calligraphic nuance of the Nastaliq script. As a result, most newspapers continued to be lithographed and hand-set.
In the 1960s and 70s, the Panj Lisani typewriter—also known as the Harrkara—was introduced, enabling typing in five regional languages: Urdu, Pashto, Punjabi, Sindhi, and Balochi.
Around the same time, Olympia’s Persian typewriter also hit the market.
In 1981, the first computerised typeface, Noori Nastaliq, developed by Ahmad Mirza Jamil for the Monotype Corporation, was developed in Pakistan.
This was followed by Linotype’s Sheeraz (1986–87) and Qalmi (1994), developed by Mike Fellows, Tim Holloway, and Fiona Ross.
In the following decades, Thomas Milo and Mirjam Somers contributed DecoType Nastaliq (2010) and Nastaleeq Press (2013), each offering solutions for digital typesetting in Urdu and Persian Nastaliq.
However, these typefaces were not developed as OpenType fonts and required specific software, limiting their usability.
A new chapter in Nastaliq typography and typefaces began with the development of OpenType fonts across Iran, Pakistan, and Europe.
Notable examples include Iran Nastaliq by Hossein Zahedi (2007–08), inspired by the calligraphy of Amir Ahmad Falsafi.
In 2014, Google Fonts commissioned Noto Nastaliq Urdu, by Patrick Giasson and Kamal Mansour.
Mehr Nastaliq Web was developed in Pakistan by Muhammad Zeeshan Nasar (2017), based on the calligraphy of Nasrullah Mehr.
Mirza Nastaliq, based on the hand of Mirza Gholam-Reza Esfahani, was also developed in 2017 by the Iranian type designer Amir Mahdi Moslehi.
The most recent addition to Google Fonts, Gulzar, is the first Nastaliq typeface designed with a Latin counterpart.
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