Ajami (Arabic:عجمي,ʿajamī) orAjamiyya (عجمية,ʿajamiyyah), is a variety ofArabic-derived scripts used for writingAfrican languages such asSonghai,Mandé,Fula,Hausa andSwahili, although multiple other languages are also written using the script, includingMooré,Wolof,Kanuri, andYoruba. They are adaptations of the Arabic script to write sounds not found inStandard Arabic. Rather than adding new letters, modifications usually consist of additional dots or lines added to pre-existing letters.^[1]

The word Ajami comes from an Arab word meaning mute, referring to populations that didn't speak Arabic, hence the term Ajami script was used for foreign, non-Arab scripts. It generally referred to the use of Arabic script for non-Arabic languages.

In Arabic tradition and in general scholarly research, the word Ajami has specifically referred to the literary traditions in Sub-Saharan Africa, which were further removed from the trade networks of the Mediterannean. Hence,Perso-Arabic,Aljamiado,Jawi andPegon, among others, do not fall under the umbrella of Ajami alphabets.

African languages were first written in Ajami scripts between the 10th and the 12th centuries.^[1] It likely was originally created with the intent of promotingIslam inWest Africa.^[2] The first languages written in the script were likely oldTaseelhit or medievalAmazigh,Kanuri, orSonghay.^[1]

The oldest surviving usage of Ajami comes from 13th century tomb inscriptions in modern-dayNiger, where Arabic inscriptions often contained individual Songhay words in titles or names, like in the example below where the Songhay word is highlighted.^[3]

Hāđā al-qabr al-wazīr Muħammad Ariyawẓammu Kawkaw bin Būbakar "This is the tomb of Muhammad Ariyawpraise-named Kawkaw son of Boubacar."FatimaKayna bint... "Little Fatima, daughter of..."

The older examples of Ajami are all notes taken by scribes in the margins of books written primarily in Arabic.^[1] Later, Fulfulde, Hausa, Wolof and Mandinke would use the script, with full books and poetry written in Ajami, and vast literary traditions emerging.^[1][4] By the 17th century, the script was being used to publish religious texts and poetry.^[4]Fulani poetry from the Futa Jallon region in Guinea was written in Ajami from the middle of the 18th century.^[4]

During the pre-colonial period, Qur'anic schools taught Muslim children Arabic and, by extension, Ajami.^[2] After Western colonization, aLatin orthography for Hausa was adopted and the Ajami script declined in popularity.^[4] Some anti-colonial groups and movements continued to use Ajami.^[5] An Islamic revival in the 19th century led to a wave of Ajami written works.^[1]

Ajami remains in widespread use among Islamic circles^[4] but exists indigraphia among the broader populace. Ajami is used ceremonially and for specific purposes, such as for local herbal preparations in theJula language.^[6] In some areas of Ghana, Ajami is still seen in newspapers, advertisements, and daily life.^[7]

In the 8th or 9th centuries, around the same time as West Africa, the coasts of Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique started to gain Muslim settlements, which brought Arabic writing into East Africa.^[8] While these city states had been Muslim for centuries, it was only in the early 17th century that Swahili Ajami was first written. Hamziya is the oldest book written entirely in Swahili. TheComoro islands also became Muslim at around the same time and had extensive contact with Swahili traders, hence Swahili Ajami and its orthography migrated to the Comorian Ajami. For centuries, Swahili was written with no modification from the original Arabic alphabet, and was indistinguishable from Arabic in appearance.^[9]

After contact and later colonisation, the Latin alphabet greatly diminished the use of Swahili Ajami and the other East African languages with adopted Swahili conventions.^[8] However in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries there were movements for the "Swahilization" of the script, and standards were adopted. While the Swahili dialects inLamu andZanzibar were the basis of Swahili heritage for centuries, scholars inMombasa and even inBarawa were the first to suggest reforms, such as Mwalimu Sikujua, resulting in many competing standards between cities.^[8][9]

The Ajami for the Comorian dialects however followed a completely different path from Swahili and the rest of Africa. In 1960 the standardisation of Comorian Ajami was undertaken bySaid Kamar-Eddine, who had a different philosophy when it came to the writing system. He paid attention to the trends that were happening in Central Asia, specifically the Irani and Iraqi Kurdistan movement, where they ditched the abjad system and decided to represent vowels as characters, creating a full alphabet. Hence while Swahili added diacritics to represent a wider array of vowels, diacritics were ditched entirely in Comoros.^[10]

Today the most accepted form of Swahili Ajami is by Mu'allim Sheikh Yahya Ali Omar, based on Mombasa since it has historically been a crossgrounds for all dialects of Swahili.^[8]

While Ajami refers to a widespread, diverse practice, there are many universal similarities in West Africa. This is not the case in Ajami written for Comorian and Swahili scripts. This is mainly because of Islam in West Africa coming from the North AfricanMaliki school, which authored texts in theMaghrebi script. Some universal features of Ajami include the following:^[3]

• Qāf ق is written with only one dot instead of two (ڧ)
• Fā' ف is written with the dot placed below (ڢ)
• Nūn ن is often written without the dot word in its final form (ں)
• Shaddah ـّ (the gemination marker) is written as a v-sign instead of a w-sign ᵛ
• Tashkil, writing out the vowel diacritics, is done in all contexts

As for some common yet not universal similarities, some Ajami conventions, like the ones written for Kanuri,^[11] Soninke^[12] and Susu,^[13] adopted the Warsh orthography forImala. Imala is the fronting of the /aː/ toward /iː/, which in many Qur'anic recitations tends to approximate an [e].^[11] The Warsh orthography marks this for certain words using an alif with a filled dot below (approximately ا̩ ), which was appropriated to a subscript dot diacritic for the vowel in Kanuri and Susu.

It was also important in some contexts to distinguish characters that were used in an Arabic or Ajami context. In Wolof and Pulaar Ajami in the Senegalese/Guinean area for example, it was standard to write three dots in a noticeably smaller configuration to signify that the letter should be read in its non-Arabic equivalent.^[3]

A summary of the different alphabets of Ajami in some languages can be found below, however with several of the intricacies omitted. For example many characters are used only for loanwords in some Ajami scripts, which have been removed from the table.

• Wolofal script
• Wadaad's writing
• Fula alphabets#Arabic (Ajami) alphabet
• Swahili Ajami
• Mandinka language#Orthography
• Maore dialect#Maore Arabic Alphabet
• Susu language#Orthography
• Aljamiado
• Jawi script
• Perso-Arabic script
• Timbuktu Manuscripts
• Arwi

• Bonate, Liazzat JK. "The use of the Arabic script in northern Mozambique."Tydskrif vir letterkunde 45, no. 1 (2008): 133–142.
• Dobronravine, Nikolai, and John E. Philips. "Hausa ajami literature and script: Colonial innovations and post-colonial myths in northern Nigeria."Sudanic Africa 15 (2004): 85–110.
• Hegyi, O. (1979). "Minority and restricted uses of the Arabic alphabet: the aljamiado phenomenon".Journal of the American Oriental Society.99 (2):262–269.doi:10.2307/602662.ISSN 0003-0279.JSTOR 602662.S2CID 163610376.
• Lüpke, Friederike. "Language planning in West Africa-who writes the script?."Language documentation and description 2 (2004): 90–107.
• Mumin, Meikal. "The Arabic Script in Africa: Understudied Literacy." InThe Arabic Script in Africa, pp. 41–76. Brill, 2014.
• Naim, Mohammed C. "Arabic Orthography and Some Non-Semitic Languages."Islam and its Cultural Divergence. Ed. Girdhari L. Tikku. University of Illinois Press: Chicago (1971).
• Ngom, Fallou. "Ajami scripts in the Senegalese speech community."Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 10 (2010): 1–23.
• Robinson, David. "Fulfulde literature in Arabic script."History in Africa 9 (1982): 251–261.

• "Notes on sub-Saharan languages written in Arabic script".A-label: African Languages Between the Lines.a research blog associated with the Ajami Lab at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at the Universität Hamburg
• PanAfrican L10n page on Arabic script and "Ajami"
• Omniglot page on Hausa Ajami Script

• Arabic alphabets
• Writing systems of Africa

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Pages with plain IPA
• Articles containing Arabic-language text