Arabic script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script),[2] the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it, and the third-most by number of users (after the Latin and Chinese scripts).[3]
For the Arabic script as it is used specifically to write Arabic, see Arabic alphabet.
Arabic script
4th century CE to the present[1]
Co-official script in:
See below
Arab (160), Arabic
Arabic
- U+0600–U+06FF Arabic
- U+0750–U+077F Arabic Supplement
- U+08A0–U+08FF Arabic Extended-A
- U+0870–U+089F Arabic Extended-B
- U+10EC0–U+10EFF Arabic Extended-C
- U+FB50–U+FDFF Arabic Pres. Forms-A
- U+FE70–U+FEFF Arabic Pres. Forms-B
- U+1EE00–U+1EEFF Arabic Mathematical...
- U+1EC70–U+1ECBF Indic Siyaq Numbers
- U+1ED00–U+1ED4F Ottoman Siyaq Numbers
- U+10E60–U+10E7F Rumi Numeral Symbols
The script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Quran, the holy book of Islam. With the religion's spread, it came to be used as the primary script for many language families, leading to the addition of new letters and other symbols. Such languages still using it are: Persian (Farsi and Dari), Malay (Jawi), Cham (Akhar Srak),[4] Uyghur, Kurdish, Punjabi (Shahmukhi), Sindhi, Balti, Balochi, Pashto, Lurish, Urdu, Kashmiri, Rohingya, Somali, Mandinka, and Mooré, among others.[5] Until the 16th century, it was also used for some Spanish texts, and—prior to the script reform in 1928—it was the writing system of Turkish.[6]
The script is written from right to left in a cursive style, in which most of the letters are written in slightly different forms according to whether they stand alone or are joined to a following or preceding letter. The script does not have capital letters.[7] In most cases, the letters transcribe consonants, or consonants and a few vowels, so most Arabic alphabets are abjads, with the versions used for some languages, such as Kurdish dialect of Sorani, Uyghur, Mandarin, and Serbo-Croatian, being alphabets. It is the basis for the tradition of Arabic calligraphy.
As of Unicode 15.1, the following ranges encode Arabic characters:
Letter construction[edit]
Most languages that use alphabets based on the Arabic alphabet use the same base shapes. Most additional letters in languages that use alphabets based on the Arabic alphabet are built by adding (or removing) diacritics to existing Arabic letters. Some stylistic variants in Arabic have distinct meanings in other languages. For example, variant forms of kāf ك ک ڪ are used in some languages and sometimes have specific usages. In Urdu and some neighbouring languages, the letter Hā has diverged into two forms ھ dō-čašmī hē and ہ ہـ ـہـ ـہ gōl hē,[45] while a variant form of ي yā referred to as baṛī yē ے is used at the end of some words.[45]