Arabic Script by Gabriel Mandel Khan is not about learning the fundamentals of writing in Arabic. It is a book focused on the art: the many different scripts, which is to say the history and mechanics of different calligraphy styles. It contains lots of examples (drawn reproductions of actual sources) displaying the decorative capacity of Arabic calligraphy. The introduction discusses the origins of written Arabic and some of the famous historical figures who influenced the development of various writing traditions. The book also describes how to make and use the calamus, the traditional reed pen. Like the other books, this one focuses on individual letters, showing how each one appears in more than 30 individual scripts or fonts, sharing some of the oldest extant examples of the letter, the ideal proportions for the letter and its artistic and metaphysical values. The end of each individual letter section is a spread of a wide range of decorative examples with the specific letter highlighted, to facilitate reading comprehension of the amazing array of calligraphic decorations on every conceivable surface and object. This is not a book that introduces Arabic as a language. There's no vocabulary building or tips on pronunciation or explanation of ligatures, etc. This is an introduction to the art of calligraphy that focuses on individual letters as the building blocks of that art. ( )