Bosnian Arts & Crafts (UNESCO): Sarajevo Calligraphy Workshop

Meet our team at the office and take a short walk through the old town where your guide will introduce you to the Ottoman history. Also, he will make sure no questions remain unanswered, even of personal nature, so don’t refrain from sharing your thoughts and opinions at any moment of time.

We will take a stroll through the old town from our office and will make sure to give you a nice introduction to the Ottoman Period which left a huge impact in the old town of Sarajevo-Bascarsija. Our first stop will be a stunning Bey’s mosque.

Bey’s mosque is one of the most elegant works of architecture in BiH and a masterpiece of Ottoman period. It was built in 1503 and conveniently placed in the heart of Bascarsija.The mosque has suffered through much of a damage over the centuries, and especially the frequent fires from the recent.

However, Bey’s mosque never closed its door to its visitors. It is a less known fact that this stunning mosque has gained back its splendour thanks to Hazim Numanovic, calligraphy artist whom we are going to meet next.

Welcome to Husni Hatt (Ar. Beutiful Letter). Although calligraphy has significantly lost its importance in Europe after the beginning of the new era, it still lives on as an art form and its purest and most beautiful form we will find in a charming studio of Hazmin Numanagic.

We will have a pleasant talk over typical Bosnian coffee or, if someone prefers, tea and Hazim will make sure there are no unanswered questions. By simply talking to an artist such as our host, it is impossible to resist entering a new dimension of the past times which as Hazim often says “give the modern world a way of understanding something that can not be explained by any means of modern technology – spiritualism which is deeply nested in the roots of calligraphy art.”

Your basic tool will be a reed qalam – a type of pen made from a cut, dried reed. Hazim makes his own qalam as well as doing all the paper preparation work which you will have a chance to observe. The paper is dyed with natural dyes of plant origin using different techniques, then a writing pad is prepared, usually with coatings of egg whites. The paper prepared in this way stays for at least six months and only then is it used for writing after ironing. This way, you can be sure that, once this art work enters your home, it will certainly stay there as a faithful friend for many centuries and many, many future generations to come.

Calligraphy demands time and dedication. Therefore, we do not promise you will become calligraphy master within just a few hours, but we do promise an incredible experience while using the old reed qalam.

We should finish around the time of lunch and will make sure to recommend some good place with tasty local dishes in order to have a perfect closure of a day.