Abstract
ON THE CALLIGRAPHY OF THE KUFIC INSCRIPTION ON THE TEPSI MINARET BUILT BY THE SALTUKIDS
Turks used Gokturk alphabet, Sogdian alphabet and Uyghur alphabet which they developed from the first two in their daily life and engraved them on their monumental works for centuries. Upon the death of his brother Kul Tigin, Bilge Khagan from Gokturks had these words engraved on the monument erected for the memory of his brother: mDTixT : YTugyb / Bengü taş tokıtdım / I had this eternal stone engraved (Alyılmaz, 2005, pp. 12-13), which shows that writing is applied diligently to plastic arts. Moreover, it was the beginning of the numerous eternal monumental works to be created in the later years across the area extending from Central Asia to Anatolia.
One of the countless monuments merged with writing of Turks is the Tepsi Minaret built by the Saltukids in Erzurum.
The aim of this study is to address the spectacular kufic calligraphy, which we can see through photographs taken from certain angles, on the Tepsi Minaret as a whole by means of information technology.
This paper shows the position of the kufic characters on the minaret through 3D-modeled designs, examines the character anatomy typographically and with respect to the order of the bricks, and tries to create a True Type Font folder based on the script on the monument.
Keywords
Erzurum, Seljuks, Saltukids, Tepsi Minaret, kufic, calligraphy, typography, font.