Rasm

Early written Arabic used only rasm (in black). Later Arabic added i‘jām diacritics (examples in red) so that homographic consonants, for example these five letters ـبـ ـتـ ـثـ ـنـ ـيـ, could be distinguished. Short vowels are indicated by harakat diacritics (examples in blue) which is used in the Qur'an but not in most written Arabic.

Rasm (Arabic: رَسْم [ræsm]) is an Arabic writing script often used in the early centuries of Classical Arabic literature (7th century – early 11th century AD). Essentially it is the same as today's Arabic script except for the big difference that the Arabic diacritics are omitted. These diacritics include i'jam (إِعْجَام, ʾiʿjām), consonant pointing, and tashkil (تَشْكِيل, taškīl), supplementary diacritics. The latter include the ḥarakāt (حَرَكَات) short vowel marks—singular: ḥarakah (حَرَكَة). As an example, in rasm, the five distinct letters ـبـ ـتـ ـثـ ـنـ ـيـ are indistinguishable because all the dots are omitted. Rasm is also known as Arabic skeleton script.


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