History of the Arabic alphabet

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It is thought that the

The Arabic alphabet evolved either from the Nabataean,[1]^[2] or (less widely believed) directly from the Syriac.^[3] The table below shows changes undergone by the shapes of the letters from the Aramaic original to the Nabataean and Syriac forms. The Arabic script shown is that of post-Classical and Modern Arabic—notably different from 6th century Arabic script. (Arabic is placed in the middle for clarity and not to mark a time order of evolution.)

It seems that the Nabataean alphabet became the Arabic alphabet thus:

• In the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, northern Arab tribes emigrated and founded a kingdom centred around Petra, Jordan. These people (now named Nabataeans from the name of one of the tribes, Nabatu) spoke Nabataean Arabic, a Northwest Semitic language.
• In the 2nd or 1st centuries BCE,
  inscriptions (known as "monumental Nabataean") and the other, more cursive and hurriedly written and with joined letters, for writing on papyrus.^[6]
  This cursive form influenced the monumental form more and more and gradually changed into the Arabic alphabet.
• Laïla Nehmé has demonstrated the transition of scripts from the Nabataean Aramaic to the recognisably Arabic form that appears to have occurred between the third and fifth centuries CE, replacing the indigenous Arabic alphabet.^[7]

Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions

The first known recorded text in the Arabic alphabet is known as the

:

Phoenician		Aramaic	Nabataean	Arabic	Syriac	Latin
Image	Text
	𐤀‎	𐡀‎		ﺍ‎	ܐ‎	A
	𐤁‎	𐡁‎		ٮ‎	ܒ‎	B
	𐤂‎	𐡂‎		حـ‎	ܓ‎	C
	𐤃‎	𐡃‎		د‎	ܕ‎	D
	𐤄‎	𐡄‎		ه‎	ܗ‎	E
	𐤅‎	𐡅‎		ﻭ‎	ܘ‎	F
	𐤆‎	𐡆‎		ر‎	ܙ‎	Z
	𐤇‎	𐡇‎		ح‎	ܚ‎	H
	𐤈‎	𐡈‎		ط‎	ܛ‎	—
	𐤉‎	𐡉‎		ى‎	ܝ‎	I
	𐤊‎	𐡊‎		كـ‎	ܟ‎	K
	𐤋‎	𐡋‎		لـ‎	ܠ‎	L
	𐤌‎	𐡌‎		مـ‎	ܡ‎	M
	𐤍‎	𐡍‎		ں‎	ܢ‎	N
	𐤎‎	𐡎‎		—	ܣ‎	—
	𐤏‎	𐡏‎		عـ‎	ܥ‎	O
	𐤐‎	𐡐‎		ڡـ‎	ܦ‎	P
	𐤑‎	𐡑‎		ص‎	ܨ‎	—
	𐤒‎	𐡒‎		ٯ‎	ܩ‎	Q
	𐤓‎	𐡓‎		ﺭ‎	ܪ‎	R
	𐤔‎	𐡔‎		سـ‎	ܫ‎	S
	𐤕‎	𐡕‎		ٮ‎	ܬ‎	T

Many thousands of pre-Classical Arabic inscriptions are attested, in alphabets borrowed from

• Safaitic (over 13,000; almost all graffiti)^[8]
• Hismaic in the southern parts of central Arabia
• Preclassical Arabic inscriptions dating to the 1st century BC from Qaryat Al-Faw
• Nabataean alphabet
• Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet are very few, with only 5 known for certain. They mostly use no dots, making them sometimes difficult to interpret, as many letters are the same shape as other letters (they are written with rasm only)

Below are descriptions of inscriptions found in the Arabic alphabet, and the inscriptions found in the Nabataean alphabet that show the beginnings of Arabic-like features.

Cursive Nabataean writing changed into Arabic writing, likeliest between the dates of the an-Namāra inscription and the Jabal Ramm inscription. Most writing would have been on perishable materials, such as papyrus. As it was cursive, it was liable to change. The

Phonemes / letters inventory

The Nabataean alphabet was designed to write 22 phonemes, but Arabic has 28 consonant phonemes; thus, when used to write the Arabic language, 6 of its letters must each represent two phonemes:

• d also represented ð,
• ħ also represented kh %,
• ṭ also represented ẓ,
• ʕ also represented gh %,
• ṣ also represented ḍ %,
• t also represented θ.

In the cases marked %, the choice was influenced by etymology, as common Semitic kh and gh became Hebrew ħ and ʕ respectively.

As cursive Nabataean writing evolved into Arabic writing, the writing became largely joined-up. Some of the letters became the same shape as other letters, producing more ambiguities, as in the table:

Here the Arabic letters are listed in the traditional Levantine order but are written in their current forms, for simplicity. The letters which are the same shape have coloured backgrounds. The second value of the letters that represent more than one phoneme is after a comma. In these tables, ǧ is j as in English "June". In the Arabic language, the g sound seems to have changed into j in fairly late pre-Islamic times, but this seems not to have happened in those tribes who invaded Egypt and settled there.

When a letter was at the end of a word, it often developed an end loop, and as a result most Arabic letters have two or more shapes.

• b and n and t became the same.
• y became the same as b and n and t except at the ends of words.
• j and ħ became the same.
• z and r became the same.
• s and sh became the same.

After all this, there were only 17 letters that were different in shape. One letter-shape represented 5 phonemes (b t th n and sometimes y), one represented 3 phonemes (j ħ kh), and 5 each represented 2 phonemes. Compare the Hebrew alphabet, as in the table:

.

Early Islamic changes

The Arabic alphabet is first attested in its classical form in the 7th century. See PERF 558 for the first surviving Islamic Arabic writing.

The Quran was transcribed in Kufic script at first, which was then developed along with the Meccan and Medini [ar] scripts, according to Ibn an-Nadim in Al-Fihrist.^[11]

In the 7th century, probably in the early years of

The first surviving document that definitely uses these dots is also the first surviving Arabic

The alphabet then had 28 letters, and so could be used to write the numbers 1 to 10, then 20 to 100, then 200 to 900, then 1000 (see Abjad numerals). In this numerical order, the new letters were put at the end of the alphabet. This produced this order: alif (1), b (2), j (3), d (4), h (5), w (6), z (7), H (8), T (9), y (10), k (20), l (30), m (40), n (50), s (60), ayn (70), f (80), S (90), q (100), r (200), sh (300), t (400), th (500), dh (600), kh (700), D (800), Z (900), gh (1000).

The lack of vowel signs in Arabic writing created more ambiguities: for example, in Classical Arabic ktb could be kataba = "he wrote", kutiba = "it was written" or kutub="books". Later, vowel signs and

All administrative texts were previously recorded by

Qur'anic spelling and the form of Classical Arabic

that was phonemically and orthographically standardized later. These include:

• tā' marbūta: This arose because, in many dialects, the -at ending of feminine nouns (
  tā' marbūta) was lenited over time and was often pronounced as -ah and written as h. This pronunciation eventually became standard, and so to avoid altering Quranic spelling, the dots of t were written over the h.^{[citation needed}
  ]
• y (alif maksura ى) used to spell ā at the ends of some words: This arose because ā arising from contraction where single y dropped out between vowels was in some dialects pronounced at the ends of words with the tongue further forward than for other ā vowels, and as a result in the Qu'ran it was written as y.^{[clarification needed][citation needed]}
• ā not written as alif in some words: The Arabic spelling of Allāh was decided before the Arabs started using alif to spell ā. In other cases (for example the first ā in hāðā = "this"), it may be that some dialects pronounced those vowels short.
• hamza: Originally alif was used to spell the glottal stop. But Meccans did not pronounce the glottal stop^{[citation needed]}, replacing it with w, y or nothing, lengthening an adjacent vowel, or, intervocalically, dropping the glottal stop and contracting the vowels. Thus, Arabic grammarians invented the hamza diacritic sign and used it to mark the glottal stop.

Reorganization of the alphabet

Less than a century later, Arab grammarians reorganized the alphabet, for reasons of teaching, putting letters next to other letters which were nearly the same shape. This produced a new order which was not the same as the numeric order, which became less important over time because it was being competed with by the

Indian numerals and sometimes by the Greek numerals

.

The Arabic grammarians of North Africa changed the new letters, which explains the differences between the alphabets of the East and the Maghreb.

The old alphabetical order, as in the other alphabets shown here, is known as the

Abjadi order

. If the letters are arranged by their numeric order, the Levantine order is restored:

Arabic		Hebrew		Syriac		Greek		Value
ʾalif	ا	ʾālep̄	א	ʾālap̄	ܐ	alpha	Α	1
bāʾ	ب	bēṯ	ב	bēṯ	ܒ	bēta	Β	2
ǧīm	ج	gimel	ג	gāmal	ܓ	gamma	Γ	3
dāl	د	dāleṯ	ד	dālaṯ	ܕ	delta	Δ	4
hāʾ	ه	hē	ה	hē	ܗ	epsilon	Ε	5
wāw	و	wāw	ו	wāw	ܘ	wau	Ϝ	6
zāy	ز	zayin	ז	zayn	ܙ	zēta	Ζ	7
ḥāʾ	ح	ḥēṯ	ח	ḥēṯ	ܚ	ēta	Η	8

(Note: here "numeric order" means the traditional values when these letters were used as numbers. See Arabic numerals, Greek numerals and Hebrew numerals for more details)
This order is much the oldest. The first written records of the Arabic alphabet show why the order was changed.

Abbasid standardizations

Arabic script reached a climax in aesthetics and geographic spread under the Abbasid Caliphate.^[11] In this period, Ibn al-Bawwab and Ibn Muqla had the most influence on the standardization of Arabic script.^[11] They were associated with al-khatt al-mansūb (الخط المنسوب), or "proportioned script."^[15][16]

Adapting the Arabic alphabet for other languages

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Non-Standard Arabic Consonant Phonemes/Graphemes

Language family	Austron.		Dravid	Turkic				Indic			Iranian				Germanic
Language/script	Jawi	Pegon	Arwi	Azeri	Ottoman	Tatar	Uyghur	Sindhi	Punjabi	Urdu	Persian	Balochi	Pashto*	Kurdish	Afrikaans
/t͡ʃ/	چ ‎
/ʒ/	∅			ژ ‎
/p/	ڤ ‎		ڣ ‎	پ ‎
/g/	ݢ‎	ؼ‎	ࢴ ‎	ق ‎	گ‎
/v/	ۏ ‎		و ‎			ۋ ‎		و ‎				∅		ڤ ‎
/ŋ/	ڠ ‎		ࢳ ‎	∅	ڭ ‎			ڱ‎	ن ‎		∅				ڠ ‎
/ɲ/	ڽ ‎	ۑ ‎	ݧ‎	∅				ڃ ‎	ن ‎		∅
/ɳ/	∅		ڹ ‎	∅				ڻ ‎	ݨ‎	ن ‎	∅		ڼ‎	∅

When the Arabic alphabet spread to countries which used other languages, extra letters had to be invented to spell non-Arabic sounds. Usually the alteration was three dots above like ژ, ڠ‎ and څ‎ or below like چ and پ.

• Brahmi
  )
• This book
  Tatars living in Poland
  .
• There are broadly two standards for Pashto orthography, the Afghan orthography in Afghanistan and the Peshawar orthography in Pakistan where /g/ is represented by ګ‎ instead of the Afghani گ‎.

Decline in use by non-Arabic states

Since the early 20th century, as the

Cyrillic or Latin alphabet, and local adaptations of the Arabic alphabet were abandoned. In many cases, the writing of a language in Arabic script has become restricted to classical texts and traditional purposes (as in the Turkic States of Central Asia, or Hausa and others in West Africa), while in others, the Arabic alphabet is used alongside the Latin one (as with Jawi in Brunei

).

Area used	Arabic spelling system	New spelling system	Date	Ordered by
Some constituent republics in the Soviet Union, especially Muslim States	Persian-based spelling system, later Ottoman Turkish alphabet with alterations	Cyrillic	1920s (to Janalif ) 1930s (to Cyrillic)	USSR government
Bosnia and Herzegovina	Ottoman Turkish alphabet	Gaj's Latin alphabet	1870s-1918
Brunei Indonesia Malaysia Philippines (Mindanao) Thailand (Pattani)	Jawi (still widely used in Brunei and Patani) and Pegon script	Latin alphabet and Thai script	19th century	European ( Dutch and Spanish) colonial administrations
Turkey	Ottoman Turkish alphabet	Turkish alphabet (Latin system with alterations)	1928	Republic of Turkey government after the fall of the Ottoman Empire

See also

• Abjad
• Levantine order
• Writing

References

1. ISBN 9781555407100
   .
2. ISBN 9780863568817
   .
3. ISBN 0803291671
   .
4. ^ "Nabataean abjad". www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 2017-03-08.
5. ^ Naveh, Joseph. "Nabatean Language, Script and Inscriptions" (PDF).
6. ISBN 9781860645082
   .
7. ^ Rose, Christopher; al-Jallad, Ahmad (27 April 2016). "Episode 82: What Writing Can Tell Us About the Arabs before Islam". University of Texas, Austin. Retrieved 2 June 2017.
8. ^ Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2015). An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions. Leiden: Brill., 11-14
9. ^ "CuratorsEye.com". curatorseye.com.
10. doi:10.1093/jss/fgl003. Archived from the original on 2006-09-27. Retrieved 2022-04-22. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help
    )
11. ^
    OCLC 191880956
    .
12. ^ Yūsofī, Ḡolām-Ḥosayn (December 15, 1990). "CALLIGRAPHY".
13. ^ "Ibn Muqlah | Islamic calligrapher". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2021-04-12.
14. ISBN 978-0-520-21086-8
    .
15. ^ Hallikan, 'Abu-l-'Abbas Sams-al-din 'Ahmad ibn Muhammad Ibn (1843). Kitab Wafayat Ala'yan. Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary Transl. by (Guillaume) B(aro)n Mac-Guckin de Slane. Vol 1-3. Benjamin Duprat.
16. ^ "في يوم اللغة العربية، الخط العربي حضارة تركت معالمها على أطراف الصين وحتى غرب أفريقيا". أخبار الأمم المتحدة (in Arabic). 2020-12-17. Retrieved 2021-04-12.
17. ISBN 0-19-285344-9

External links

• A brief history of the Arabic script with emphasis on diacritical points, vowel markers and alphabet arrangements