Guide

What is Square Kufic?

Square Kufic is a style of Arabic calligraphy drawn on a grid of squares, using only straight lines. It grew up on the walls of buildings, set in brick and glazed tile, and it's still used today in art and logos.

By Zaid Ahmed · 26 October 2026

A script made of squares

Square Kufic, also called geometric Kufic, is a very simplified, rectangular form of the Kufic script.¹ Its Arabic name, الكوفي المربع (al-kufi al-murabba'), means "square Kufic".¹

Every line runs across or down on a square grid, and the lines and the spaces between them are all the same thickness.³ That evenness is the one rule everyone agrees on.⁴ Because the background carries as much weight as the lines, it can spell words too.²

Other names

You'll also see it called banna'i, usually translated as "masonry script".¹⁴ Some sources use banna'i for the script itself and others for the brick and tile building technique behind it, where glazed tiles are set between plain bricks.⁵ In Turkish scholarship the style is called ma'qili.⁸

Where it came from

Square Kufic developed on buildings rather than on paper.² Builders laid glazed and plain bricks in patterns, and the bricks and tiles worked a lot like pixels.¹ Most sources date its growth to the 12th and 13th centuries.¹³

Where it started is less certain. Wikipedia says Iraq.¹ The calligrapher Mamoun Sakkal has written "most likely in Iraq or Iran" in one article and pointed to Iran and Afghanistan in another.²³ In 2019 he credited the style's look to its use on ceramic panels.⁷

It was used on Seljuk buildings in Iran and Anatolia,⁸ and by the 15th century whole buildings were covered in it. Designs got smaller under the Safavids, and the style went out of favour in the 18th century.²

Where you can see it

Sakkal names the tomb tower of Mil-i Radkan, near Mashhad in Iran, dated 1205 to 1206, as the first fully developed example still standing.² A few more:

• In the complex of Sultan Qalawun in Cairo (1284), the name Muhammad is turned four times, and the white space between spells Ali.²
• The façade of the Bibi Khanum Mosque in Samarkand, built by Timur at the end of the 14th century, is completely covered in it.²
• A minaret of the Shah Mosque in Isfahan carries a repeating pattern of square Kufic.¹
• The brickwork of the mausoleum of Khawaja Ahmad Yasawi in Turkistan, Kazakhstan, spells Allah, Muhammad and Ali.⁵

What it usually says

Many pieces repeat sacred names. A 15th century tile from Timurid Iran, now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, carries the names of Allah, Muhammad and Ali.⁶ Inscriptions on buildings are often phrases of praise and thanks to God.² Square Kufic's right angles suit designs that turn a word four times around the centre of the square.³

Square Kufic today

Sakkal describes a revival over the last few decades,² and the style turns up more and more in logos and identity design.³ If you want to try it, Square Kufic App lets you draw it in your browser and checks the rules as you go.

Sources

1. Kufic, Wikipedia.
2. Mamoun Sakkal, Mysteries of Square Kufi Calligraphy, Future Vision, 2003.
3. Mamoun Sakkal, Square Kufic Calligraphy in Identity Design, Identity no. 8, 2006.
4. Joumana Medlej, Creative Arabic Calligraphy: Square Kufic, Envato Tuts+.
5. Banna'i, Wikipedia.
6. Square tile with holy names in square kufic script, Ashmolean Museum, Jameel Centre.
7. Mamoun Sakkal, Origins of Square Kufic, Hroof Arabiyya no. 48, 2019.
8. Şimşek, Analysis of Square Kufic Calligraphy at Some Historical Buildings in Istanbul, 2023.

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