Wadaad's writing

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Wadaad's writing is Somali written with the Arabic script. Originally it referred to the writing of a kind of ungrammatical Arabic with some Somali words, used by Somali religious men (wadaads) and merchants. Throughout the ages various Somali scholars improved this form of writing.

The Arabic script was first introduced in the 13th century by Sheikh Yusuf al-Kowneyn to advance the teaching of the Qur'an. He devised a Somali nomenclature for the Arabic vowels which enabled his pupils to read and write in Arabic.

Though various Somalis wadaads and scholars had used the Arabic script to write in Somali for centuries, it wasn't until the 19th century when the Qadiriyyah saint Sheikh Uways al-Barawi improved the application of the Arabic script to represent Somali. He applied it to the Maay dialect of Southern Somalia which was the closest to standardizing Somali with the Arabic script at that time. Muuse Xaaji Ismaaciil Galaal (1917-1980) was a Somali linguist. In the 1950s he introduced a more radical alteration of Arabic to represent Somali by coming up with an entirely new set of symbols for the Somali vowels. Lewis (1958) considered this to be the most accurate Arabic script to have been devised for the Somali language.