Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:35, 16 April 2020

Rasm (Template:Lang-ar) 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 dots and dashes (the i‘jām pointing) are omitted. In rasm, the five distinct letters ـبـ ـتـ ـثـ ـنـ ـيـ are indistinguishable because all the dots are omitted. It is also known as Arabic skeleton script.

History

In the early Arabic manuscripts that survive today (physical manuscripts dated 7th and 8th centuries AD), one finds dots but "putting dots was in no case compulsory". Some manuscripts have no dots at all, while others add dots only sparingly and only in phrase contexts where the scribe thinks the omission of dotting on a word would leave the meaning ambiguous.

Rasm means 'drawing', 'outline', or 'pattern' in Arabic. When speaking of the Qur'an, it stands for the basic text made of the 18 letters without the Arabic diacritics which mark vowels (tashkīl) and disambiguate consonants (i‘jām).

Letters

The rasm is the oldest part of the Arabic script; it has 18 elements, excluding the ligature of lām and alif. When isolated and in the final position, the 18 letters are visually distinct. However, in the initial and medial positions, certain letters that are distinct otherwise are not differentiated visually. This results in only 15 visually distinct glyphs each in the initial and medial positions.

• ^a. The character shown for nūn – Template:Lang-ur – does not display as Rasm style at the medial and initial positions in most fonts. The dot should be absent in all four positional forms, and the initial and medial forms should join with following character. In other words the initial and medial forms should look exactly like those of a Template:Lang-ar dotless bāʾ or Template:Lang-ar alef maksura while the isolated and final forms should look like those of a dotless version of Template:Lang-ar nūn.
• ^b. There is no hamzah in rasm writing, including hamzah-on-the-line (i.e., hamzah between letters).
• ^c. In Arabic swash kaf Template:Lang-ar is used interchangeably with standard kaf Template:Lang-ar as a stylistic variant , but it has a separate meaning in other languages such as Sindhi.

At the time when the i‘jām was optional, letters deliberately lacking the points of i‘jām: ⟨ح⟩ /ħ/, ⟨د⟩ /d/, ⟨ر⟩ /r/, ⟨س⟩ /s/, ⟨ص⟩ /sˤ/, ⟨ط⟩ /tˤ/, ⟨ع⟩ /ʕ/, ⟨ل⟩ /l/, ⟨ه⟩ /h/ — could be marked with a small v-shaped sign above or below the letter, or a semicircle, or a miniature of the letter itself (e.g. a small س to indicate that the letter in question is س and not ش), or one or several subscript dots, or a superscript hamza, or a superscript stroke. These signs, collectively known as ‘alāmātu-l-ihmāl, are still occasionally used in modern Arabic calligraphy, either for their original purpose (i.e. marking letters without i‘jām), or often as purely decorative space-fillers. The small ک above the kāf in its final and isolated forms ⟨ك  ـك⟩ was originally ‘alāmatu-l-ihmāl, but became a permanent part of the letter. Previously this sign could also appear above the medial form of kāf, instead of the stroke on its ascender.

Historical example

The Kufic Samarkand Qurʾan is written almost entirely in Kufic rasm: Surah Al-Aʿaraf (7), Ayahs 86 & 87, of the Samarkand Qur'an:

Digital examples

Compare the Basmala (Template:Lang-ar), the beginning verse of the Qurʾān with all diacritics and with the rasm only. Note that when rasm is written with spaces, spaces do not only occur between words. Within a word, spaces also appear between adjacent letters that are not connected, and this type of rasm is old and not used lately.

Rasm with spaces	‍ ٮسم‌‌ ا ل‍ل‍ه ا لر حمں‌ ا لر حىم
Rasm only	ٮسم ال‍ل‍ه الرحمں الرحىم
Iʿjām and all diacritics	بِسْمِ ٱللَّٰهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
Basmala Unicode character U+FDFD	﷽

^c. The sentence may not display correctly in some fonts. It appears as it should if the full Arabic character set from the Arial font is installed; or one of the SIL International fonts Scheherazade or Lateef; or Katibeh.

See also

• Kufic
• Abjad numerals
• History of the Arabic alphabet
• Qiraʾat
• Modern Arabic mathematical notation
• Book Pahlavi, an Iranian script with similar graphemic convergence.

References

1. "What Are Those Few Dots for? Thoughts on the Orthography of the Qurra Papyri (709–710), the Khurasan Parchments (755–777) and the Inscription of the Jerusalem Dome of the Rock (692)", by Andreas Kaplony, year 2008 in journal Arabica volume 55 pages 91–101.
2. "Urdu Alphabet". www.user.uni-hannover.de. Retrieved 28 March 2020.
3. Gacek, Adam (2009). "Unpointed letters". Arabic Manuscripts: A Vademecum for Readers. BRILL. p. 286. ISBN 90-04-17036-7.
4. Gacek, Adam (1989). "Technical Practices and Recommendations Recorded by Classical and Post-Classical Arabic Scholars Concerning the Copying and Correction of Manuscripts" (PDF). In Déroche, François (ed.). Les manuscrits du Moyen-Orient: essais de codicologie et de paléographie. Actes du colloque d'Istanbul (Istanbul 26–29 mai 1986). p. 57 (§8. Diacritical marks and vowelisation).
5. "Arabic Fonts". software.sil.org. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
6. "Google Fonts: Scheherazade". Google Fonts.
7. "Google Fonts: Lateef". Google Fonts.
8. "Google Fonts: Katibeh". Google Fonts.

External links

• Some pages from the famous Saint Petersburg-Samerkand-Tashkent Koran. The fourth to seventh images are written in the Kufic script
• A page in the earliest script, known as ma'il

• Quranic orthography
• Arabic words and phrases