Arabic calligraphy styles
Thuluth is the hand of large writing and titles. Its letters are tall, its tails sweep wide, and it lets words stack over each other until a phrase reads as one shape. Most calligraphers call it the hardest hand to train a hand on.
Thuluth appeared under the Abbasids, and its name comes from the width of its pen, one third of the tumar pen. In the tenth century Ibn Muqla set the proportions of the letters against the dot and the alif, which gave the script a measure anyone could check. Ibn al-Bawwab refined it further, and Yaqut al-Musta'simi cut the nib on a slant, which gave the strokes their edge. The Ottoman school brought it to its mature form, first with Sheikh Hamdullah and later with Mustafa Rakim and Sami Efendi. From then on Thuluth was the script of monumental writing on mosques and in Qurans.
Start at the tails. In Thuluth they drop wide and deep and end on the slanted edge of the pen. The uprights of alif and lam are tall with sharpened heads, and the space between them is measured rather than crowded. When room runs short the words climb over one another and interlock, and that stacking is the clearest sign of the hand.
You see it on mosque inscriptions, Quran chapter headings, seals, and emblems that need weight. Designers still reach for it when the word itself has to be the picture.
Write your phrase, then build its composition the way Thuluth does: edit each letter on its own to lift it off the line and stack the words, stretch the kashida so the joins run long, and place every tashkeel mark exactly where you want it. Add a Text Effect to give the phrase its weight and shine, then export your work as a vector file for print or cutting.
Open the editor, write your phrase, and shape its letters yourself. The account is free and one word is enough to start.