CHRONOLOGY: THE PATH OF AL-KĀTIB (1985 – PRESENT)
THE PRE-RUPTURE (1985-2010)
The Path Before the Shahādah
1985 — Born. Queens, New York.
1990 — At age five, a conscious decision is made to dedicate life to art. While classmates play during recess, the act of drawing is already regarded as the only necessary use of time.
1991 — Early determination to pursue art.
1998 — First exposure to the Crumb documentary. Establishes a model of obsessive, non-mainstream draughtsmanship.
2000 — Selected for group exhibitions sponsored by MoMA and at the Isamu Noguchi Museum (Long Island City, NY).
2003 — Meets Roberto Miguel and Sophie Crumb. Attends summer program at Cooper Union.
2008 — Attendance at The National Academy School of Fine Art Masters Summer Program in NYC under scholarship.
2010 — Commencement of career as a tattoo artist at Lifties Tattoo’s and Body Piercings, Queens, NY. Begins reading The Alchemy of Happiness by Imam al-Ghazālī.
THE EPISTEMIC RUPTURE & STANDARDIZATION (2011–PRESENT)
The Shahādah and the Path of Al-Kātib
2011 — Conversion to Islam.
Immediate Abandonment: Upon introduction to Tawhīd and the prophetic warning regarding the image-maker, all figuration, naturalism, and tattooing are ceased on the same day.
Initiation: Kitāb al-Ṣabr (The Book of Patience) is begun shortly afterward as a necessary compulsion driven by fear of that punishment. The work originates in this taqwā, not in legal reasoning.
2012 — Relocation to Oakland, California. Collaboration with friend and artist Robert Miguel. Continuation of work on Kitāb al-Ṣabr.
2013-2014 — Returns to New York. Begins formal study of Arabic and the Islamic sciences. Encounters the writings of Lois Ibsen al-Faruqi. Continues the work under the original constraint.
2016 — Travels to Egypt for classical studies. Confirms that the artistic labor begun in 2011 remains the primary vocation.
2018 — Return to NYC. Enrollment at LaGuardia Community College. Consideration of a PhD in Fine Arts.
2020 — Pandemic. Withdraws from Fine Arts PhD program due to incompatibility with the practice.
2022 — Encounter with The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art by Art History professor James Elkins. This text provides a critical perspective on the purpose of the work.
2023 — Relocation to the United Kingdom.
2025-2026 — Formalizes the corpus as Ṣaḥīfat al-Ṣabr, standardizes formats, and establishes the Origin & Record Authority (ORA). These systems protect and organize a body of work that originated in 2011; they do not create it.