arabstateofmind:

Everitte Barbee is a U.S. citizen who grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. He’s also a calligraphy artist. About a year and a half ago, the 24-year-old commenced work on a unique project: The Quran for Solidarity is, as far as Barbee is aware, the first Quran to be completely handwritten by a non-Muslim. He also believes it may be the first edition of the book entirely written in figurative calligraphy.

“I don’t know of any other non-Muslims to write the entire Quran by hand,” Barbee, who currently lives in Beirut, told The Daily Star. “I [also] don’t know of another Quran written completely in pictures, in actual figurative designs … Normally it’s just linear text.”

Barbee, who studied international business and Arabic at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, learned his art from master calligrapher Adnan Farid while living in Damascus in the fall of 2009.

The Quran for Solidarity project emerged almost by accident as Barbee sought to improve his skills as a calligrapher. The artist began writing Surahs from the Quran because he didn’t have many reliable sources of Arabic in dual translation and needed text with which to practice his art.

“I wrote one or two Surahs, just short ones here and there – all just geometric designs,” he explains. “But then after I’d done five or six, I thought, you know, why don’t I try to write the whole Quran.”

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For further information on The Quran for Solidarity or Everitte Barbee’s other works visit http://everitte.org/

(Photo 1: Surah Al-Hujurat. Photo 2: Surah Al-Rahman is depicted as a tree. Photo 3: Barbee works on a Surah)