Mohamed Zakariya

Mohamed Zakariya was born in 1942 in Ventura, California, the son of art director Emrich Nicholson and Amy Aplin.

Zakariya saw Islamic calligraphy for the first time in the window of an Armenian carpet store in Los Angeles.

He received his diploma from Celebi in 1988 at the Research Center of Islamic History, Art, and Culture in Istanbul.

[1] From 2004 to 2012, Zakariya was a member of the Joint Advisory Board, Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar.

[6][7] In 2009, US president Barack Obama commissioned Mohamed Zakariya to create a piece of calligraphy that was presented to the king of Saudi Arabia.