In the early years of Islam, kufic became the main calligraphic style employed for copying the Qur’an, it was used on coins and on architectural inscriptions. The kufic style went through several phases of development, from flat and stiff in shape – from which ‘muhaqqaq’ script was developed – to a more lenient phase, which subsequently led to the thuluth, Maghrebi, and riqa’a scripts. The various types of kufic script were gradually standardised, making it almost impossible to identify and attribute an inscription to a particular region by looking at the calligraphy alone.