Arabic script

Arabic
Type	Abjad (originally)
Languages	Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashtun, Kurdish, Sindhi, etc.
Time period	400 AD to the present
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Syriac Nabataean Arabic
ISO 15924	Arab, 160
Direction	Right-to-left
Unicode alias	Arabic
Unicode range	U+0600..U+06FF U+0750..U+077F U+FB50..U+FDFF U+FE70..U+FEFF (v. 6.1.0 beta) U+08A0..U+08FF
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.

The Arabic script is a writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. After the Latin script, it is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world.^[1]

The Arabic script is written from right to left in a cursive style. In most cases the letters transcribe consonants, so most Arabic alphabets are classified as abjads.

The script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Qurʾān, the holy book of Islam. With the spread of Islam, it came to be used to write languages of many language families, leading to the addition of new letters and other symbols, with some versions, such as Kurdish being abugidas or true alphabets. (See section Languages written with the Arabic script below.) It is also the basis for a rich tradition of Arabic calligraphy.

The Arabic script has the ISO 15924 codes Arab and 160.

Contents 1 Languages written with the Arabic script 1.1 Languages currently written with the Arabic alphabet 1.1.1 Middle East and Central Asia 1.1.2 East Asia 1.1.3 South Asia 1.1.4 Southeast Asia 1.1.5 Africa 1.2 Alphabet 1.3 Languages formerly written with the Arabic alphabet 1.3.1 Africa 1.3.2 Europe 1.3.3 Central Asia and Russian Federation 1.3.4 Southeast Asia 1.3.5 Middle East 1.4 Table 2 Unicode 3 References 4 See also

Languages written with the Arabic script

Worldwide use of the Arabic script
Countries where the Arabic script:
	→	is the only official orthography
	→	is the only official orthography, but other orthographies are recognized for national or regional languages
	→	is official alongside other orthographies
	→	is official at a sub-national level (China, India) or is a recognized alternative orthography (Malaysia)

The Arabic script has been adopted for use in a wide variety of languages besides Arabic, including Persian, Kurdish, Malay, and Urdu, which are not Semitic. Such adaptations may feature altered or new characters to represent phonemes that do not appear in Arabic phonology. For example, the Arabic language lacks a voiceless bilabial plosive (the [p] sound), so many languages add their own letter to represent [p] in the script, though the specific letter used varies from language to language. These modifications tend to fall into groups: all the Indian and Turkic languages written in Arabic script tend to use the Persian modified letters, whereas Indonesian languages tend to imitate those of Jawi. The modified version of the Arabic script originally devised for use with Persian is known as the Perso-Arabic script by scholars.

In the case of Kurdish, vowels are mandatory, making the script an abugida rather than an abjad as it is for most languages. Kashmiri and Uyghur, also, write all vowels.

Use of the Arabic script in West African languages, especially in the Sahel, developed with the penetration of Islam. To a certain degree the style and usage tends to follow those of the Maghreb (for instance the position of the dots in the letters fāʾ and qāf). Additional diacritics have come into use to facilitate writing of sounds not represented in the Arabic language. The term ʿAǧamī, which comes from the Arabic root for "foreign", has been applied to Arabic-based orthographies of African languages.

Languages currently written with the Arabic alphabet

Today Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Israel and China are the main non-Arabic speaking states using the Arabic alphabet to write one or more official national languages, including Dari, Kurdish (sorani dialect/southern Kurdish), Pashto, Urdu, Kashmiri,Sindhi, Saraiki, and Uyghur.

Calligraphy

Arabic Chinese Georgian Indian Japanese Korean Kufic Nepalese Persian Sini Tibetan Western

The Arabic alphabet is currently used for the following:

Middle East and Central Asia

• Garshuni (or Karshuni) originated in the seventh century AD, when Arabic was becoming the dominant spoken language in the Fertile Crescent, but Arabic script was not yet fully developed and widely read. There is evidence that writing Arabic in Garshuni influenced the style of modern Arabic script. After this initial period, Garshuni writing has continued to the present day among some Syriac Christian communities in the Arabic-speaking regions of the Levant and Mesopotamia;
• Kazakh in Pakistan, Iran, China, and Afghanistan; and
• Karakalpak in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan;
• Kurdish in Northern Iraq, and Northwest Iran. (In Turkey and Syria, the Latin script is used for Kurdish);
• Kyrgyz by its 150,000 speakers in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China;
• Turkmen in Turkmenistan and partly in Afghanistan, Iran and other neighbour countries as well as in southern Russia, where the Trukhmen language is occurred;
• Official Persian and regional languages including Azeri, Kurdish and Baluchi in Iran;
• Official Dari (which differs to a degree from Persian) and Pashto and all regional languages including Uzbek in Afghanistan;

• Tajik also differs only to a minor degree from Persian, and while in Tajikistan the usual Tajik alphabet is an extended Cyrillic script, there is also some use of Arabic-script Persian books from Iran; in the southwestern region of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China Arabic script is the official one (like for Uyghur in the rest of Xinjiang);
• Uyghur changed to Latin script in 1969 and back to a simplified, fully voweled, Arabic script in 1983.

• Judeo-Arabic languages
• Azerbaijani language

East Asia

• The Chinese language is written by some Hui in the Arabic-derived Xiao'erjing alphabet.
• The Turkic Salar language is written by some Salar in the Arabic alphabet
• Sini (script)

South Asia

• Official language Urdu and regional languages including
  • Pashto in Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Dari in Afghanistan and Pakistan
  • Punjabi (where the script is known as Shahmukhi)Shahmukhī scriptof Pakistan
  • Saraiki
  • Sindhi in Pakistan
  • Kashmiri in Pakistan
  • and Balochi in Pakistan;
• Urdu, Sindhi and Kashmiri in South Asia. Urdu is one of several official languages in the states of Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh; Kashmiri also uses Sharada script;
• The Arwi language (a mixture of Arabic and Tamil) uses the Arabic script together with the addition of 13 letters. It is mainly used in Sri Lanka and the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu for religious purposes. Arwi language is the language of Tamil Nadu Muslims.

• Malayalam language represented by Arabic script variant is known as Arabi Malayalam. The script has particular letters to represent the peculiar sounds of Malayalam. This script is mainly used in Madrassas of South Indian state of Kerala and Lakshadweep to teach Malayalam.
• The Thaana script used to write the Dhivehi language in the Maldives has vowels derived from the vowel diacritics of the Arabic script. Some of the consonants are borrowed from Arabic numerals.

Southeast Asia

• Malay in the Arabic script known as Jawi is co-official in Brunei, and used for religious purposes in Malaysia, Indonesia, Southern Thailand, Singapore, and predominantly Muslim areas of the Philippines. Therefore, Arabic script or Jawi can be seen or used for the sign board or market or shop board. Particularly in Brunei, Jawi is practically used in terms of writing or reading for Islamic Religious Educational Program which is like Primary school, Secondary School, College even higher educational institute such as University. In addition, some television programs is associated with Jawi for announcement, advertisement, news, social programs, obviously religious program and etc.
• Early history of Islamic belief and culture is experienced by Brunei from the influence of Arabian merchants. Through the Arabian reached Brunei, some culture of Brunei is mixed with Arab even today some language is derived from Arab words. According to history, during the 14th century the founder of Brunei Sultanate is Sultan Muhammad Shah (1363 to 1402, formerly Awang Alak Betatar) who converted to Islam through the relational marriage with Tumasek (now Singapore) princess (now Johor in which at that time already received the teaches of Islamic faith). However, the influence of Islam is not strong enough at that time in Brunei.
• During 15th century one of Arab merchant named Sharif Ali, who believed was the direct-descendant of Muhammad, his grandchild, was Saidina Hassan r.a who married Sultan Ahmad's daughter, Puteri Ratna Kesuma. He became the third sultan of Brunei and called as Sultan Sharif Ali (also known as Barkat Ali ibnu Sharif Ajlan ibni Sharif Rumaithah). He was made Sultan after Sultan Ahmad died without leaving any male descendants, and as such, at the request of the people of Brunei themselves, he became eligible for the throne after marrying Sultan Ahmad's daughter, Puteri Ratna Kesuma. His legacy by adding "Darussalam" which mean abode of peace after Brunei. Today, in the Brunei flag there is Jawi scripted in the emblem.^[4]

Africa

• Bedawi or Beja, mainly in northeastern Sudan;
• Comorian (Comorian) in the Comoros, currently side by side with the Latin alphabet (neither is official);
• Hausa, for many purposes, especially religious (known as Ajami), also includes newspapers, mass mobilization posters and public information;
• Swahili, was originally written in Arabic alphabet, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators.
• Mandinka, widely but unofficially (known as Ajami), (another non-Latin script used is the N'Ko script);
• Fula, especially the Pular of Guinea (known as Ajami);
• Wolof (at zaouia schools), known as Wolofal.
• Berber languages have often been written in an adaptation of the Arabic alphabet. The use of the Arabic alphabet, as well as the competing Latin and Tifinagh scripts, has political connotations.
• Wadaad's writing, used in Somalia

Alphabet

• ڤ‎ and/or ۋ‎ – Ve, used in Kurdish language when written in Arabic script to represent the sound /v/. Also used as pa in the Jawi script.

• پ – Pe, used to represent the phoneme /p/ in Persian, Urdu, and Kurdish.

• چ – Che, used to represent /t͡ʃ/ ("ch"). It is used in Persian, Urdu, and Kurdish.
  • Ca in the Jawi script

• ژ – Že/zhe, used to represent the voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ in, Persian, Kurdish, Urdu and Uyghur.

• ڭ‎ – Ng, used to represent the [ŋ] phone in Ottoman Turkish, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Uyghur.

• ݙ‎ – used in Saraiki to represent a voiced retroflex implosive [ɗ̢].

• ݐ‎ – used to represent the equivalent of the Latin letter Ƴ (palatalized glottal stop [ʔʲ]) in some African languages such as Fulfulde.

• ݫ‎ – used in Ormuri to represent a voiced alveolo-palatal fricative [ʑ], as well as in Torwali.

• ݭ‎ – used in Kalami to represent a voiceless retroflex fricative [ʂ], and in Ormuri to represent a voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative.

• ݜ‎ – used in Shina to represent a voiceless retroflex fricative [ʂ].

• ݪ‎ – used in Marwari to represent a retroflex lateral flap [ɺ̢], and in Kalami to represent a voiceless lateral fricative [ɬ].

• ﭒ‎ – B̤ē, used to represent a voiced bilabial implosive [ɓ] in Hausa, Sindhi and Saraiki.

• ﭞ‎ – Ṭhē, represents the aspirated voiceless retroflex plosive [ʈʰ] in Sindhi.

• ﮎ‎ – Khē, represents [kʰ] in Sindhi.

• ﭦ‎ – Ṭe, used to represent Ṭ (a voiceless retroflex plosive [ʈ]) in Urdu.

• ڳ‎ – represents a voiced velar implosive /ɠ/ in Sindhi and Saraiki

• ڱ‎ – represents the Velar nasal /ŋ/ phoneme in Sindhi.

• ڻ‎ – represents the retroflex nasal /ɳ/ phoneme in Sindhi.

• ݨ‎ – used in Saraiki .

• ڀ‎ – represents an aspirated voiced bilabial plosive [bʱ] in Sindhi.

• ژ – Zhe, represents a voiced postalveolar fricative [ʒ] in Persian, Urdu, Kurdish, and Uyghur.

• ڑ‎ – Aṛ, represents a retroflex flap [ɽ] in Urdu.

• ڕ‎ – used in Kurdish to represent rr [r] in Yekgirtú spelling.

• گ – Gaf, represents a voiced velar plosive [ɡ] in Persian, Urdu, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Kurdish, Uyghur, and Ottoman Turkish.

• ݢ‎ or ڬ‎ – Gaf, represents a voiced velar plosive [ɡ] in the Jawi script of Malay.

• ے‎ – Bari ye, represents "ai" or "e" in Urdu [ɛː, eː] and Punjabi.

• ێ‎ – represents Ê or É [e] in Kurdish.

• ۆ‎ – represents O [o] in Kurdish, and in Uyghur it represents the sound similar to the French eu and œu [ø] sound

• ۋ‎ – represents a voiced labiodental fricative [v] in Kyrgyz, Uyghur, and Old Tatar; and /w, ʊw, ʉw/ in Kazakh; also formerly used in Nogai.

• ڽ‎ – Nya in the Jawi script.

• ڠ‎ – Nga in the Jawi script.

• ۏ‎ – Va in the Jawi script.

• ڈ‎ – Ḍ [ɖ] in Urdu.

Languages formerly written with the Arabic alphabet

Speakers of languages that were previously unwritten used Arabic script as a basis to design writing systems for their mother languages. This choice could be influenced by Arabic being their second language, the language of scripture of their faith, or the only written language they came in contact with. Additionally, since most education was once religious, choice of script was determined by the writer's religion; which meant that Muslims would use Arabic script to write whatever language they spoke. This led to Arabic script being the most widely used script during the Middle Ages.

In the 20th century, the Arabic script was generally replaced by the Latin alphabet in the Balkans, parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia, while in the Soviet Union, after a brief period of Latinisation,^[5] use of Cyrillic was mandated. Turkey changed to the Latin alphabet in 1928 as part of an internal Westernizing revolution. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many of the Turkic languages of the ex-USSR attempted to follow Turkey's lead and convert to a Turkish-style Latin alphabet. However, renewed use of the Arabic alphabet has occurred to a limited extent in Tajikistan, whose language's close resemblance to Persian allows direct use of publications from Iran.^[6]

Most languages of the Iranian languages family continue to use Arabic script, as well as the Indo-Aryan languages of Pakistan and of Muslim populations in India, but the Bengali language of Bangladesh is written in the Bengali alphabet.

Africa

• Afrikaans (as it was first written among the "Cape Malays", see Arabic Afrikaans);
• Berber in North Africa, particularly Shilha in Morocco (still being considered, along with Tifinagh and Latin, for Central Atlas Tamazight);
• Harari, by the Harari people of the Harari Region in Ethiopia. Now uses the Ge'ez and Latin alphabets.
• For the West African languages – Hausa, Fula, Mandinka, Wolof and some more – the Latin alphabet has officially replaced Arabic transcriptions for use in literacy and education;
• Malagasy in Madagascar (script known as Sorabe);
• Nubian;
• Swahili (has used the Latin alphabet since the 19th century);
• Somali (see Wadaad's writing) has used only the Latin alphabet since 1972;
• Songhay in West Africa, particularly in Timbuktu;
• Yoruba in West Africa (this was probably limited, but still notable)

Europe

• Albanian;
• Aljamiado
• Azeri in Azerbaijan (now written in the Latin alphabet and Cyrillic script scripts in Azerbaijan);
• Bosnian (only for literary purposes; currently written in the Latin alphabet; see Arebica);
• Crimean Tatar
• English by British authors and researchers from the across the British Empire during the Victorian Era.
• French by the Arabs and Berbers in Algeria and other parts of North Africa during the French colonial period.
• Polish (among ethnic Lipka Tatars);
• Greek in certain areas and Greece and Anatolia
• Belarusian (among ethnic Tatars; see Belarusian Arabic alphabet);
• Medieval Bosnian
• Medieval Albanian
• Mozarabic, Aragonese, Portuguese, and Spanish, when the Muslims ruled the Iberian peninsula (see Aljamiado);
• Ottoman Turkish
• Romanian in certain areas of Transylvania (until the 17th century a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire).

Central Asia and Russian Federation

• Avar as well as other languages of Daghestan: Nogai, Kumyk, Lezgian, Lak, Dargwa;
• Bashkir (officially for some years from the October Revolution of 1917 until 1928, changed to Latin, now uses the Cyrillic script);
• Chaghatai across Central Asia;
• Chechen (sporadically from the adoption of Islam; officially from 1917 until 1928);^[8]
• Circassian and some other members of the Abkhaz–Adyghe family in the western Caucasus and sporadically – in the countries of Middle East, like Syria;
• Ingush;
• Karachay-Balkar language in the central Caucasus;
• Kazakh in Kazakhstan (until 1930s, changed to Latin, now uses the Cyrillic script);
• Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan (until 1930s, changed to Latin, now uses the Cyrillic script);
• Tatar before 1928 (changed to Latin Janalif), reformed in 1880s (iske imlâ), 1918 (yaña imlâ – with the omission of some letters);
• Chinese and Dungan, among the Hui people (script known as Xiao'erjing);
• Tat in South-Eastern Caucasus;
• Turkmen in Turkmenistan (changed to Latin in 1929, then to the Cyrillic script, then back to Latin in 1991);
• Uzbek in Uzbekistan (changed to Latin, then to the Cyrillic script, then back to Latin in 1991);
• All the Muslim peoples of the USSR between 1918 and 1928 (many also earlier), including Bashkir, Chechen, Kazakh, Tajik etc. After 1928 their script became Latin, then later Cyrillic.

Southeast Asia

• Malay in Malaysia and Indonesia
• Minangkabau in Indonesia
• Banjar in Indonesia
• Javanese and Sundanese in Indonesia, used only in Islamic schools and institutions
• Maguindanaon in the Philippines
• Tausug in the Philippines

Middle East

• Turkish in the Ottoman Empire was written in Arabic script until Mustafa Kemal Atatürk declared the change to Roman script in 1928. This form of Turkish is now known as Ottoman Turkish and is held by many to be a different language, due to its much higher percentage of Persian and Arabic loanwords (Ottoman Turkish alphabet);
• Kurdish (Kurmanji dialect) in Turkey and Syria was written in Arabic script until 1932, when a modified Kurdish Latin alphabet was introduced by Jaladat Ali Badirkhan in Syria.

Table

Alphabet	#Chars	Languages	Region	Derived from	Comment
Arabic alphabet	28	Arabic language	North Africa, West Asia		Abjad
Arebica	30	Bosnian language	Eastern Europe	Perso-Arabic	latest stage with full vowel marking
Arwi alphabet		Tamil language	Southern India, Sri Lanka
Belarusian Arabic alphabet		Belarusian language	Eastern Europe		15th/16th century
Berber Arabic alphabet(s)		various Berber languages	North Africa
Chagatai alphabet(s)		Chagatai language	Central Asia	Perso-Arabic
Jawi script	40	Malay language and others	Malaysia
Kazakh Arabic alphabet		Kazakh language	Central Asia, China	Perso-Arabic/Chagatai	since 11th century, now official only in China
Khowar alphabet		Khowar language	South Asia
Kyrgyz Arabic alphabet		Kyrgyz language		Perso-Arabic	now official only in China
Nasta'liq script		Urdu and others		Perso-Arabic
Pashto alphabet	45	Pashto language	Pakistan	Perso-Arabic
Pegon alphabet		Javanese language, Sundanese language	Indonesia
Saraiki alphabet	42	Saraiki language	Pakistan	Perso-Arabic
Persian alphabet		Persian language
Shahmukhi script		Punjabi language	Pakistan	Perso-Arabic
Sindhi Arabic alphabet	52	Sindhi language
Sorabe alphabet		Malagasy language	Madagascar
Soranî alphabet	33	Soranî language			Vowels are mandatory
		Swahili language
İske imlâ alphabet		Tatar language		Perso-Arabic/Chagatai	1920-1927
Ottoman Turkish alphabet		Ottoman Turkish language	Ottoman Empire	Perso-Arabic	Official until 1928
Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi		Uyghur language		Perso-Arabic/Chagatai
Wolofal script		Wolof language	West Africa
Xiao'erjing		several	China, Central Asia	Perso-Arabic
Yaña imlâ alphabet		Tatar language		Perso-Arabic/Chagatai	before 1920

Unicode

In Unicode the characters of the Arabic script are contained in four blocks:

• Arabic (0600–06FF)
• Arabic Supplement (0750–077F)
• Arabic Presentation Forms-A (FB50–FDFF)
• Arabic Presentation Forms-B (FE70–FEFF)

References

See also

• Arabic (Unicode block)

ISO 15924 (List) Afak · Arab · Armi · Armn · Avst · Bali · Bamu · Bass · Batk · Beng · Blis · Bopo · Brah · Brai · Bugi · Buhd · Cakm · Cans · Cari · Cham · Cher · Cirt · Copt · Cprt · Cyrl · Cyrs · Deva · Dsrt · Dupl · Egyd · Egyh · Egyp · Elba · Ethi · Geok · Geor · Glag · Goth · Gran · Grek · Gujr · Guru · Hang · Hani · Hano · Hans · Hant · Hebr · Hira · Hluw · Hmng · Hrkt · Hung · Inds · Ital · Java · Jpan · Jurc · Kali · Kana · Khar · Khmr · Khoj · Knda · Kore · Kpel · Kthi · Lana · Laoo · Latf · Latg · Latn · Lepc · Limb · Lina · Linb · Lisu · Loma · Lyci · Lydi · Mand · Mani · Maya · Mend · Merc · Mero · Mlym · Mong · Moon · Mroo · Mtei · Mymr · Narb · Nbat · Nkgb · Nkoo · Nshu · Ogam · Olck · Orkh · Orya · Osma · Palm · Perm · Phag · Phli · Phlp · Phlv · Phnx · Plrd · Prti · Qaaa — Qabx · Rjng · Roro · Runr · Samr · Sara · Sarb · Saur · Sgnw · Shaw · Shrd · Sind · Sinh · Sora · Sund · Sylo · Syrc · Syre · Syrj · Syrn · Tagb · Takr · Tale · Talu · Taml · Tang · Tavt · Telu · Teng · Tfng · Tglg · Thaa · Thai · Tibt · Tirh · Ugar · Vaii · Visp · Wara · Wole · Xpeo · Xsux · Yiii · Zinh · Zmth · Zsym · Zxxx · Zyyy · Zzzz

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