Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet (Arabic: الْأَبْجَدِيَّة الْعَرَبِيَّة, al-abjadīyah al-ʿarabīyah IPA: [ʔælʔæbʒædijːæ-lʕɑrɑbijːæ] or الْحُرُوف الْعَرَبِيَّة, al-ḥurūf l-ʿarabīyah), or Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing Arabic. It is written from right to left in a cursive style and includes 28 letters. Most letters have contextual letterforms.

Arabic alphabet

Script type	Abjad
Time period	4th century CE to the present[1]
Direction	right-to-left script
Languages	Arabic
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Nabataean Arabic script Arabic alphabet
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Arab (160), Arabic
Unicode
Unicode alias	Arabic
Unicode range	U+0600–U+06FF Arabic, U+0750–U+077F Arabic Supplement, U+0870-U+089F Arabic Extended-B, U+08A0–U+08FF Arabic Extended-A, U+FB50–U+FDFF Arabic Presentation Forms-A, U+FE70–U+FEFF Arabic Presentation Forms-B, U+10EC0-U+10EFF Arabic Extended-C, U+1EE00–U+1EEFF Arabic Mathematical Alphabetic Symbols
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Arabic alphabet
Arabic script
History Transliteration Diacritics Hamza Numerals Numeration
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History of the alphabet

Egyptian hieroglyphs 32nd c. BCE

Hieratic 32nd c. BCE
- Demotic 7th c. BCE
  - Meroitic 3rd c. BCE
Proto-Sinaitic 19th c. BCE
- Ugaritic 15th c. BCE
- Epigraphic South Arabian 9th c. BCE
  - Geʽez 5–6th c. BCE
- Phoenician 12th c. BCE
  - Paleo-Hebrew 10th c. BCE
    - Samaritan 6th c. BCE
  - Aramaic 8th c. BCE
    - Kharosthi 3rd c. BCE
    - Brahmi 3rd c. BCE
      - Brahmic family (see)
        E.g. Tibetan 7th c. CE
        
        Devanagari 10th c. CE
        Canadian syllabics 1840
    - Hebrew 3rd c. BCE
      - Square Aramaic Alphabet 2007
    - Pahlavi 3rd c. BCE
      - Avestan 4th c. CE
    - Palmyrene 2nd c. BCE
    - Nabataean 2nd c. BCE
      - Arabic 4th c. CE
        N'Ko 1949 CE
    - Syriac 2nd c. BCE
      - Sogdian 2nd c. BCE
        Orkhon (old Turkic) 6th c. CE
        Old Hungarian c. 650 CE
        
        Old Uyghur
        Mongolian 1204 CE
    - Mandaic 2nd c. CE
  - Greek 8th c. BCE
    - Etruscan 8th c. BCE
      - Latin 7th c. BCE
        Cherokee (syllabary; letter forms only) c. 1820 CE
        Vai (syllabary) c. 1832 CE
        
        Deseret 1854 CE
        
        Osage 2006 CE
      - Runic 2nd c. CE
      - Ogham (origin uncertain) 4th c. CE
    - Coptic 3rd c. CE
    - Gothic 3rd c. CE
    - Armenian 405 CE
    - Caucasian Albanian (origin uncertain) c. 420 CE
    - Georgian (origin uncertain) c. 430 CE
    - Glagolitic 862 CE
    - Cyrillic c. 940 CE
      - Old Permic 1372 CE
  - Paleohispanic (semi-syllabic) 7th c. BCE
  - Libyco-Berber 3rd c. BCE
    - Tifinagh

Adlam (slight influence from Arabic) 1989 CE

Hangul 1443 CE

Thaana c. 18 CE (derived from Eastern Arabic numerals and Brahmi numerals)

The Arabic alphabet is considered an abjad, meaning it only uses consonants, but it is now considered an "impure abjad".[2] As with other impure abjads, such as the Hebrew alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel diacritics.

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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Arabic alphabet, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.