By: Moe Elhossieny | Date: May 28, 2025 | Itsnicethat.com
In 1922, King Fuad I established the Khalil Agha School for Arabic Calligraphy in Cairo as part of a broader effort to modernise Egypt. Aside from the school’s role in preserving the practice, institutionalising it was a move to assert Egypt’s cultural sovereignty in the wake of independence. Since then, the school has stood as a symbol of Egypt’s modernisation ambitions and its ongoing struggle for cultural self-determination – a role it continues to play, even as it faces challenges on various fronts. Among them, the rise of new print and digital technologies has steadily eroded the reverence of the very tradition it was built to protect – or has it?
As a profession, calligraphy exemplifies what economist Joseph Schumpeter termed “Creative Destruction” – a phenomenon in which new technologies disrupt existing industries, rendering certain skills obsolete while giving rise to others. Yet, despite the speed, scale, and efficiency that print technology offered, it could not replicate the human rhythm and expressive variability of the calligrapher’s hand.
