Contents

Arabic alphabet

Arabic alphabet
Script type	Abjad
Time period	3rd century CE – present[1]
Direction	Right-to-left script
Languages	Arabic
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphics Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Nabataean Arabic script Arabic alphabet
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Arab (160), ​Arabic
Unicode
Unicode alias	Arabic
Unicode range	U+0600–U+06FF Arabic, U+0750–U+077F Arabic Supplement, U+0870-U+089F Arabic Extended-B, U+08A0–U+08FF Arabic Extended-A, U+FB50–U+FDFF Arabic Presentation Forms-A, U+FE70–U+FEFF Arabic Presentation Forms-B, U+10EC0-U+10EFF Arabic Extended-C, U+1EE00–U+1EEFF Arabic Mathematical Alphabetic Symbols
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The Arabic alphabet (Arabic: الْأَبْجَدِيَّة الْعَرَبِيَّة, al-ʾabǧadiyyah l-ʿarabiyyah [æl.ʔæb.d͡ʒæˈdɪj.jæ l.ʕɑ.rɑˈbɪj.jæ]orالْحُرُوف الْعَرَبِيَّة, al-ḥurūf al-ʿarabiyyah), or Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as specifically codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right-to-left in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters, of which most have contextual letterforms. The Arabic alphabet is considered an abjad, with only consonants required to be written; due to its optional use of diacritics to notate vowels, it is considered an impure abjad.^[2]

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The basic Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters. Forms using the Arabic script to write other languages added and removed letters: for example ⟨ژ⟩ is often used to represent /ʒ/ in adaptations of the Arabic script. Unlike Greek-derived alphabets, Arabic has no distinct upper and lower case letterforms.

Many letters look similar but are distinguished from one another by dots (ʾiʿjām) above or below their central part (rasm). These dots are an integral part of a letter, since they distinguish between letters that represent different sounds. For example, the Arabic letters ب b, ت t, and ث th have the same basic shape, but with one dot added below, two dots added above, and three dots added above respectively. The letter ن n also has the same form in initial and medial forms, with one dot added above, though it is somewhat different in its isolated and final forms. Historically, they were often omitted, in a writing style called rasm.

Both printed and written Arabic are cursive, with most letters within a word directly joined to adjacent letters.

There are two main collating sequences ('alphabetical orderings') for the Arabic alphabet: ʾabjadīy, and hijā’ī.

The original ʾabjadī order derives from that used by the Phoenician alphabet, and is therefore reminiscent of the orderings of other alphabets, such as those in Hebrew and Greek. With this ordering, letters are also used as numbers known as abjad numerals, possessing the same numerological codes as in Hebrew gematria and Greek isopsephy.

The hijā’īoralifbāʾī order is used when sorting lists of words and names, such as in phonebooks, classroom lists, and dictionaries. The ordering groups letters by the graphical similarity of the glyphs' shapes.

The ʾabjadī order is not a simple correspondence with the earlier north Semitic alphabetic order, as it has a position corresponding to the Aramaic letter samek ס, which has no cognate letter in the Arabic alphabet historically.

The loss of sameḵ was compensated for by:

• In the Mashriqi abjad sequence, the letter shin ש was split into two Arabic letters, ش shīn and ﺱ sīn, the latter of which took the place of sameḵ.
• In the Maghrebi abjad sequence, the letter tsade צ was split into two independent Arabic letters, ض ḍad and ص ṣad, with the latter taking the place of sameḵ.

The six other letters that do not correspond to any north Semitic letter are placed at the end.

This is commonly vocalized as follows:

ʾabjad hawwaz ḥuṭṭī kalaman saʿfaṣ qarashat thakhadh ḍaẓagh.

Another vocalization is:

ʾabujadin hawazin ḥuṭiya kalman saʿfaṣ qurishat thakhudh ḍaẓugh^{[citation needed]}

This can be vocalized as:

ʾabujadin hawazin ḥuṭiya kalman ṣaʿfaḍ qurisat thakhudh ẓaghush

Modern dictionaries and other reference books do not use the abjadī order to sort alphabetically; instead, the newer hijāʾī order is used wherein letters are partially grouped together by similarity of shape. The hijāʾī order is never used as numerals.

In the hijāʾī order replaced recently ^[when?] by the Mashriqi order,^{[4][unreliable source?]} though still used in many Quranic schools in Algeria,^{[citation needed]} the sequence is:^[3]

InAbu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdani's encyclopedia الإكليل من أخبار اليمن وأنساب حمير Kitāb al-Iklīl min akhbār al-Yaman wa-ansāb Ḥimyar, the letter sequence is:^[5]

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The Arabic alphabet is always cursive and letters vary in shape depending on their position within a word. Letters can exhibit up to four distinct forms corresponding to an initial, medial (middle), final, or isolated position (IMFI). While some letters show considerable variations, others remain almost identical across all four positions. Generally, letters in the same word are linked together on both sides by short horizontal lines, but six letters (و ,ز ,ر ,ذ ,د ,ا) can only be linked to their preceding letter. In addition, some letter combinations are written as ligatures (special shapes), notably lām-alif لا,^[6] which is the only mandatory ligature (the unligated combination ل‍‌‍ا is considered difficult to read).