Kufic script originated in Kufa, Iraq, during the first decades of the AH 1st / AD 7th century. It developed from the hijazi script, which was itself influenced by the Syriac. Syriac script, in turn, was born from the meeting of the two cultural types and was attributable to the migration of a number of Iraqi Christian scholars to Kufa in the first half of the 1st / 7th century. Kufa’s strong political and military position helped the kufic style to spread and gave it its name. The presence of a large number of Muslim scholars, reciters of the Qur’an and of the Hadiths helped to spread the kufic style beyond the city, and also aided its development both stylistically and aesthetically.