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A square panel of square Kufic on a fine grid: subhan Allah, glory be to God, in cream letters turned four times round the square, a mint ring inside, and Allah turned four times in gold at the centre. Taller shapes add a band of the Name above and below.
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The Pattern Atlas

Square Kufic

No. 84 of 100 · free · 300 dpi

What you seeA square panel of square Kufic on a fine grid: subhan Allah, glory be to God, in cream letters turned four times round the square, a mint ring inside, and Allah turned four times in gold at the centre. Taller shapes add a band of the Name above and below.

What it meansSquare Kufic builds letters from the cells of a grid, so that words can wrap round squares and fill walls with brick or tile. It is found on buildings in Iran and Central Asia from the medieval period onward. These letters are drawn cell by cell on the grid, not taken from a font.

Where it worksA bold, graphic plate for a hallway, a stairwell or a modern living room.

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2:3 · 7200 × 10800 px4×6 · 8×12 · 12×18 · 16×24 · 20×30 · 24×36 in
3:4 · 5400 × 7200 px6×8 · 9×12 · 12×16 · 18×24 in
4:5 · 7200 × 9000 px4×5 · 8×10 · 16×20 · 24×30 in
11:14 · 3300 × 4200 px11×14 in
A-series · 7023 × 9933 pxA5 · A4 · A3 · A2 · A1

Everything is one ZIP: every shape and size, the phone wallpaper, the SVGs and a printing guide.

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More from The Pattern Atlas

All 100 prints
A table of Arabic letters in four columns, isolated, initial, medial and final, read from right to left, with each row a different letter in blue, teal or terracotta on paper. The number of letters grows with the height of the shape.Letter PositionsNo. 85
A diagram in gold and bone on ink: a column of five rhombic dots, a naskh alif of the same height standing as the diameter of a circle, and a reed pen whose cut nib rests on the top dot.ProportionNo. 86
The twenty-eight Arabic letters in the abjad order on lapis, each with its number value in gold, arranged as units, tens, hundreds and a thousand, under the traditional memory words abjad hawwaz hutti kalaman sa'fas qurishat thakhadh dazagh.AbjadNo. 87
The twenty-eight Arabic letters in their usual order on cream tiles against rose, read from right to left and numbered. Letters that share a shape, such as ba, ta and tha, share a colour.The AlphabetNo. 88
Two panels on sage. Above, bare letter shapes beside their dotted forms, the dots in brown. Below, the letter ba with the short-vowel and reading marks: fatha, kasra, damma, sukun, shadda and tanwin, each named.Dots and VowelsNo. 89
A full palmette on terracotta: a fan of gold, blue and cream lobes rising from a green cup with curled volutes, flanked by two split half-palmettes on scrolling stems, inside a faint roundel. Tall shapes add a stem with paired leaves.PalmetteNo. 90
A repeating field on cream: rows of the cintamani motif, three blue balls each marked with a pale crescent above two red wavy lines, alternating with running gold cloud bands that curl at every crest.Cloud BandsNo. 91
A coral, cream and gold lotus seen from the front, rising on a slender stem between two long, curving serrated saz leaves in green, with small white blossoms on fine stems, on deep teal.Saz Leaf and LotusNo. 92

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