Arabic alphabet
| Arabic Alphabet |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Type |
Impure abjad
|
| Languages | Arabic |
|
Time period
|
356 AD to the present |
|
Parent systems
|
|
| Direction | Right-to-left |
| ISO 15924 | Arab, 160 |
|
Unicode alias
|
Arabic |
|
|
The Arabic alphabet (Arabic: الأَبْجَدِيَّة العَرَبِيَّة al-abjadīyah al-ʻarabīyah or الحُرُوف العَرَبِيَّة al-ḥurūf al-ʻarabīyah) or Arabic abjadiyah is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an impure abjad.
The basic Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters. Adaptations of the Arabic script for other languages added and removed some letters, as for Kurdish, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Sindhi, Urdu, Malay, Pashto, and Malayalam (Arabi Malayalam), all of which have additional letters as shown below. There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms.
Many letters look similar but are distinguished from one another by dots (i‘jām) 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 transliterated as b and t have the same basic shape, but b has one dot below, ب, and t has two dots above, ت.
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