Arabic calligraphy styles
Kufic is the oldest disciplined Arabic hand. Its letters are built more than they are written: straight lines, right angles, and measured space. That is why it still belongs to architecture and to logos.
Kufic is named after the city of Kufa in Iraq, and the earliest Quran copies on parchment were written in it. For centuries it was the formal hand of books and inscriptions, until the rounded scripts took over the copying of books because they were faster and easier to read. Kufic did not disappear. It moved to walls, tilework and coins, and branched into several forms: square Kufic built on a grid, foliate Kufic with leaves growing from the letter tips, and plaited Kufic whose uprights knot together. Each of those forms belongs to a particular region and period.
Do not look for curves. Kufic is built from straight strokes and angles. The uprights are tall and even, the rounded letters turn into half squares, and the gaps between letters are as measured as the letters themselves. In the later forms you will see ornament growing out of the tops of the uprights or braided between them.
You meet it on mosques, domes and tilework, and on early coins. Designers pick it today for logos and covers that want a plainly geometric shape.
Write your word, then set the height of the uprights and the letter spacing, letter by letter, until the construction sits square. Fit the text inside a square or a circle with the path tool, frame it with ornament from the Shapes menu, then export your work as a vector file for print or a cutting file for engraving and signs.
Open the editor, write your phrase, and shape its letters yourself. The account is free and one word is enough to start.