page_title: Arabic alphabet
section_title: Ligatures
hierarchical_section_title: Arabic alphabet / Consonants / Letter forms / Ligatures
caption_attribution_description: English: Revision from colored (rainbow) word to only black
context_page_description: The Arabic alphabet, 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.
  The Arabic alphabet is considered an abjad, meaning it only uses consonants, but it is now considered an "impure abjad". As with other impure abjads, such as the Hebrew alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel diacritics.
context_section_description: The use of ligature in Arabic is common. There is one compulsory ligature, that for lām ل + alif ا, which exists in two forms. All other ligatures, of which there are many, are optional.
  A more complex ligature that combines as many as seven distinct components is commonly used to represent the word Allāh.
  The only ligature within the primary range of Arabic script in Unicode (U+06xx) is lām + alif. This is the only one compulsory for fonts and word-processing. Other ranges are for compatibility to older standards and contain other ligatures, which are optional.
  lām + alif
  لا
  Note: Unicode also has in its Presentation Form B FExx range a code for this ligature. If your browser and font are configured correctly for Arabic, the ligature displayed above should be identical to this one, U+FEFB ARABIC LIGATURE LAM WITH ALEF ISOLATED FORM:
  ﻻ
  U+0640 ARABIC TATWEEL + lām + alif
  ـلا
  Note: Unicode also has in its Presentation Form B U+FExx range a code for this ligature. If your browser and font are configured correctly for Arabic, the ligature displayed above should be identical to this one:
  U+FEFC ARABIC LIGATURE LAM WITH ALEF FINAL FORM
  ﻼ
  Another ligature in the Unicode Presentation Form A range U+FB50 to U+FDxx is the special code for glyph for the ligature Allāh ("God"), U+FDF2 ARABIC LIGATURE ALLAH ISOLATED FORM:
  ﷲ
  This is a work-around for the shortcomings of most text processors, which are incapable of displaying the correct vowel marks for the word Allāh in Koran. Because Arabic script is used to write other texts rather than Koran only, rendering lām + lām + hā’ as the previous ligature is considered faulty: If one of a number of fonts (Noto Naskh Arabic, mry_KacstQurn, KacstOne, DejaVu Sans, Harmattan, Scheherazade, Lateef, Iranian Sans) is installed on a computer (Iranian Sans is supported by Wikimedia web-fonts), the word will appear without diacritics.
  lām + lām + hā’ = LILLĀH (meaning "to Allāh [only to Allah])
  لله  or   لله 
  alif + lām + lām + hā’ = ALLĀH (the Islamic name for "God")
  الله  or   الله 
  alif + lām + lām + U+0651 ARABIC SHADDA + U+0670 ARABIC LETTER SUPERSCRIPT ALEF + hā’
   اللّٰه   (DejaVu Sans and KacstOne don't show the added superscript Alef)
  An attempt to show them on the faulty fonts without automatically adding the gemination mark and the superscript alif, although may not display as desired on all browsers, is by adding the U+200d (Zero width joiner) after the first or second lām
  (alif +) lām + lām + U+200d ZERO WIDTH JOINER + hā’
  الل‍ه   ‎   لل‍ه
caption: Components of a ligature for "Allah": 
  1. alif
  2. hamzat waṣl (ْهَمْزَة وَصْل)
  3. lām
  4. lām
  5. shadda (شَدَّة) 
  6. dagger alif (أَلِفْ خَنْجَریَّة) 
  7. hāʾ
exif: {}