Islamic art
Calligraphic design is omnipresent in Islamic art, where, as in Europe in the Middle Ages, religious exhortations, including Qur'anic verses, may be included in secular objects, especially coins, tiles and metalwork, and most painted miniatures include some script, as do many buildings. Use of Islamic calligraphy in architecture extended significantly outside of Islamic territories; one notable example is the use of Chinese calligraphy of Arabic verses from the Qur'an in the Great Mosque of Xi'an. Other inscriptions include verses of poetry, and inscriptions recording ownership or donation. Two of the main scripts involved are the symbolic "kufic" and "naskh" scripts, which can be found adorning and enhancing the visual appeal of the walls and domes of buildings, the sides of minbars, and metalwork. Islamic calligraphy in the form of painting or sculptures are sometimes referred to as "quranic art".
Chinese calligraphy
In about 220 BC, the emperor Qin Shi Huang （秦始皇, 259 BCE - 210 BCE）, the first to conquer the entire Chinese basin, imposed several reforms, among them Li Si's (李斯, 246 BCE - 208 BCE) character unification, which created a set of 3300 standardized "Xiǎozhuàn" characters. Despite the fact that the main writing implement of the time was already the brush, little paper survives from this period, and the main examples of this style are on steles.