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TheArabic alphabet is thought to be traced back to aNabataean variation of theAramaic alphabet, known asNabataean Aramaic. This script itself descends from thePhoenician alphabet, an ancestral alphabet that additionally gave rise to theArmenian,Cyrillic,Devanagari,Greek,Hebrew andLatin alphabets. Nabataean Aramaic evolved intoNabataean Arabic, so-called because it represents a transitional phase between the known recognizably Aramaic and Arabic scripts. Nabataean Arabic was succeeded byPaleo-Arabic, termed as such because it dates to the pre-Islamic period in the fifth and sixth centuries CE, but is also recognizable in light of the Arabic script as expressed during the Islamic era. Finally, the standardization of the Arabic alphabet during the Islamic era led to the emergence ofclassical Arabic. The phase of the Arabic alphabet today is known asModern Standard Arabic, although classical Arabic survives as a "high" variety as part of adiglossia.

There were different theories about the origin of the Arabic alphabet as attested in Arabic writings, The Musnad theory is that it can be traced back toAncient North Arabian scripts which are derived fromancient South Arabian script (Arabic:خَطّ الْمُسْنَدḵaṭṭ al-musnad), this hypothesis have been discussed by the Arabic scholarsIbn Jinni andIbn Khaldun.^[1] Ahmed Sharaf Al-Din has argued that the relationship between the Arabic alphabet and the Nabataeans is only due to the influence of the latter after its emergence (from Ancient South Arabian script).^[2] Arabic has a one-to-one correspondence with ancient South Arabian script except for the letter𐩯 (reconstructedProto-Semitics³).

While the modern Nabatean theory is that the Arabic alphabet can be traced back to theNabataean script. A transitional phase, between the Nabataean Aramaic script and a subsequent, recognizably Arabic script, is known asNabataean Arabic. The pre-Islamic phase of the script as it existed in the fifth and sixth centuries, once it had become recognizably similar to the script as it came to be known in the Islamic era, is known asPaleo-Arabic.^[3]

The Arabic alphabet evolved either from the Nabataean,^[4][5] or (less widely believed) directly from theSyriac alphabet.^[6] The phases of the Arabic script, prior to the Islamic period, can be categorized as follows:

• Nabataean Aramaic: In the 2nd or 1st centuries BCE,^[7][8] the first known records of the Nabataean alphabet were written in the Aramaic language (which was the language of communication and trade), but included some Arabic language features: the Nabataeans did not write the language which they spoke. They wrote in a form of the Aramaic alphabet, which continued to evolve; it separated into two forms: one intended forinscriptions (known as "monumental Nabataean") and the other, more cursive and hurriedly written and with joined letters, for writing onpapyrus.^[9] This cursive form influenced the monumental form more and more and gradually changed into the Arabic alphabet.
• Nabataeo-Arabic: Starting in the third century, and until the mid-fifth century, the Nabataean Aramaic alphabet evolved into what is known as Nabataeo-Arabic. This alphabet has received this name because it contains a mixture of features from the prior Aramaic script, in addition to a number of notable features from the later fully developed Arabic script.^[3]
• Paleo-Arabic: A pre-Islamic phase of the Arabic alphabet, roughly having reached the standardized form of Arabic from the Islamic era, but having already been expressed from the late fifth to the sixth century.^[3]

The first known recorded text in the Arabic alphabet is known as theZabad inscription, composed in 512. It is a trilingual dedication inGreek,Syriac andArabic found at the village of Zabad in northwesternSyria. The version of the Arabic alphabet used includes only 21 letters, of which only 15 are different, being used to note 28phonemes:

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, mainly written in the following scripts:

• Safaitic (over 13,000; almost all graffiti)^[10]
• Hismaic in the southern parts of central Arabia
• Nabataean inscriptions inAramaic, written in theNabataean alphabet
• Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in theArabic alphabet are few. They mostly use no dots, making them sometimes difficult to interpret, as many letters are the same shape as other letters (they are written withrasm 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.

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

The Quran was transcribed inKufic script at first, which was then developed along with theMeccan andMedini [ar] scripts, according toIbn an-Nadim inAl-Fihrist.^[13]

In the 7th century, probably in the early years ofIslam while writing down theQur'an, scribes realized that working out which of the ambiguous letters a particular letter was from context was laborious and not always possible, so a proper remedy was required. Writings in the Nabataean and Syriac alphabets already had sporadic examples of dots being used to distinguish letters which had become identical, for example as in the table on the right. By analogy with this, a system of dots was added^{[by whom?]}to the Arabic alphabet to make enough different letters forClassical Arabic's 28 phonemes. Sometimes the resulting new letters were put in alphabetical order after their un-dotted originals, and sometimes at the end.

The first surviving document that definitely uses these dots is also the first surviving Arabicpapyrus (PERF 558), dated April, 643. The dots did not become obligatory until much later. Important texts like theQur'an were frequentlymemorized; this practice, which survives even today, probably arose partly to avoid the great ambiguity of the script, and partly due to the scarcity of books in times whenprinting was unheard-of in the area and every copy of every book had to be written by hand.

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 (seeAbjad 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, inClassical Arabicktb could bekataba = "he wrote",kutiba = "it was written" orkutub="books".Later, vowel signs andhamzas were added, beginning some time in the last half of the 6th century, at about the same time as the first invention of Syriac andHebrew vocalization. Initially, this was done using a system of red dots, said to have been commissioned byHajjaj ibn Yusuf, theUmayyad governor ofIraq, according to traditional accounts^{[citation needed]}: a dot above =a, a dot below =i, a dot on the line =u, and doubled dots givingtanwin. However, this was cumbersome and easily confusable with the letter-distinguishing dots, so about 100 years later, the modern system was adopted. The system was finalized around 786 byal-Farahidi.

All administrative texts were previously recorded byPersian scribes inMiddle Persian usingPahlavi script, but many of the initial orthographic alterations to the Arabic alphabet might have been proposed and implemented by the same scribes.^[14]

When new signs were added to the Arabic alphabet, they took the alphabetical order value of the letter which they were an alternative for:tā' marbūta (see also below) took the value of ordinaryt, and not ofh. In the same way, the many diacritics do not have any value: for example, a doubled consonant indicated byshadda does not count as a letter separate from the single one.

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

• t⟨ت⟩ also representedṯ⟨ث⟩.
• ħ⟨ح⟩ also representedḵ⟨خ⟩,
• d⟨د⟩ also representedḏ⟨ذ⟩,
• ṣ⟨ص⟩ also representedḍ⟨ض⟩,
• ṭ⟨ط⟩ also representedẓ⟨ظ⟩,
• ʕ⟨ع⟩ also representedḡ⟨غ⟩,

And even though the four letter pairs (b and t), (ħ and j), (r and z), (s and š) had different shapes in the Nabatean alphabet, they have similar shapes in Arabic:

• b⟨ب⟩ andt⟨ت⟩ have the same shape, in addition to the aforementionedṯ⟨ث⟩.
• ħ⟨ح⟩ andj⟨ج⟩ have the same shape, in addition to the aforementionedḵ⟨خ⟩.
• r⟨ر⟩ andz⟨ز⟩ have the same shape.
• s⟨س⟩ andš⟨ش⟩ have the same shape.

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 onephoneme is after a comma. In these tables,ǧ isj as in English "June".In the Arabic language, theg sound seems to have changed intoj in fairly late pre-Islamic times, but this seems not to have happened in those tribes who invadedEgypt 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, so for exampley⟨ي⟩ andn⟨ن⟩ have different shapes at the end of the words (⟨ـي⟩,⟨ـن⟩) but they have the same linked initial and medial shapes (⟨يـ⟩,⟨نـ⟩) asb,t, andṯ (⟨بـ⟩,⟨تـ⟩ and⟨ثـ⟩), the same goes forq⟨ق⟩ andf⟨ف⟩ which have the same linked initial and medial shapes (⟨قـ⟩,⟨فـ⟩) and are only differentiated by the dots.

Adding dots (إِعْجَامiʻjām) is an essential part of the Arabic alphabet since there are 18 letters that are differentiated by shape (without dots). One letter-shape represented 3 phonemes (b t ṯ), another one represented 3 phonemes (j ħ kh), and 6 shapes each represented 2 phonemes, below are the shapes of letters dotless and with dots:

Notes:

1. The dotless shapes⟨ٮ‎⟩,⟨ڡ‎⟩,⟨ٯ⟩ and⟨ں⟩ are never used in Arabic.
2. Two additional letters that appear only word-final are the dotless⟨ى⟩ ("ألف مقصورةalif maqṣūrah") which is used for/aː/ in some words (instead of⟨ا⟩), and the dotted⟨ة⟩ ("تاء مربوطةtāʾ marbūṭah") which indicates/h/ (or/t/ inconstruct state) at the end of feminine nouns and adjectives as inرِسَالَة/ri.saː.lah/ "message" which becomesرِسَالَة/ri.saː.lat/ in the construct state as inرسالة الملكة/ri.saː.latal.ma.li.kah/ "the queen's message", it also appears in some masculine nouns, e.g.حمزة/ħam.zah/.

Some features of the Arabic alphabet arose because of differences betweenQur'anic spelling and the form ofClassical 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 ash. This pronunciation eventually became standard, and so to avoid altering Quranic spelling, the dots oft were written over theh.^{[citation needed]}
• y (alif maksura ى) used to spellā at the ends of some words: This arose becauseā arising fromcontraction where singley dropped out between vowels was in some dialects pronounced at the ends of words with the tongue further forward than for otherā vowels, and as a result in the Qu'ran it was written asy.^{[clarification needed][citation needed]}
• ā not written asalif in some words: The Arabic spelling ofAllāh was decided before the Arabs started usingalif to spellā. In other cases (for example the firstā inhāðā = "this"), it may be that some dialects pronounced those vowels short.
• hamza: Originallyalif was used to spell theglottal stop. But Meccans did not pronounce the glottal stop^{[citation needed]}, replacing it withw,y or nothing, lengthening an adjacent vowel, or, intervocalically, dropping the glottal stop and contracting the vowels. Thus, Arabic grammarians invented thehamzadiacritic sign and used it to mark the glottal stop.

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 theIndian numerals and sometimes by theGreek numerals.

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

The old alphabetical order, as in the other alphabets shown here, is known as theLevantine orAbjadi order. If the letters are arranged by their numeric order, the Levantine order is restored:

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

Arabic script reached a climax in aesthetics and geographic spread under theAbbasid Caliphate.^[13] In this period,Ibn al-Bawwab andIbn Muqla had the most influence on the standardization of Arabic script.^[13] They were associated withal-khatt al-mansūb (الخط المنسوب), or "proportioned script."^[17][18]

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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 likeژ,ڠ‎, ڭ‎‎ andڅ‎ or below likeچ, ؼ‎‎ andپ.

• Urdu:retroflex sounds: as the corresponding dentals but with a small letter ط above. (This problem in adapting a Semitic alphabet to write Indian languages also arose long before this: seeBrahmi)
• This book^[19] shows an example ofch (Polishcz) being written asڛ‎ in an Arabic-PolishbilingualQuran for MuslimTatars living inPoland.
• There are broadly two standards for Pashto orthography, the Afghan orthography in Afghanistan and the Peshawar orthography in Pakistan where/g/ is represented byګ‎ instead of the Afghaniگ‎.

Since the early 20th century, as theOttoman Empire collapsed and European influence increased, many non-Arab Islamic areas began using theCyrillic orLatin 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 theTurkic States ofCentral Asia, orHausa and others inWest Africa), while in others, the Arabic alphabet is used alongside the Latin one (as withJawi inBrunei).

• Abjad
• Levantine order
• Writing

• Nehmé, Laila (2020)."The religious landscape of Northwest Arabia as reflected in the Nabataean, Nabataeo-Arabic, and pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions".Semitica et Classica.13:127–154.doi:10.1484/J.SEC.5.122984.

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

• Arabic script
• Palaeography
• History of writing

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