The dagger alif ( ) or superscript alif is written as a short vertical stroke on top of an
Arabic letter. It indicates a long sound where an
alif
Alif may refer to:
Languages
* Alif (ا) in the Arabic alphabet#Alif, Arabic alphabet, equivalent to aleph, the first letter of many Semitic alphabets
** Dagger alif, superscript alif in Arabic alphabet
* Alif, the first letter of the Urdu alpha ...
is normally not written, e.g. or . The dagger alif occurs in only a few modern words, but these include some common ones; it is seldom written, however, even in fully vocalised texts, except in the
Qur'an
The Quran, also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation directly from God ('' Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which consist of individual verses ('). Besides ...
.
[ As ]Wright
Wright is an occupational surname originating in England and Scotland. The term 'Wright' comes from the circa 700 AD Old English word 'wryhta' or 'wyrhta', meaning worker or shaper of wood. Later it became any occupational worker (for example, a ...
notes " lifwas at first more rarely marked than the other long vowels, and hence it happens that, at a later period, after the invention of the vowel-points, it was indicated in some very common words merely by a fatḥa .e. the dagger alif.[ Most keyboards do not have the dagger alif. The word () is usually produced automatically by entering "";
or in Arabic "ا ل ل ه".
The word consists of alif + ]ligature Ligature may refer to:
Language
* Ligature (writing), a combination of two or more letters into a single symbol (typography and calligraphy)
* Ligature (grammar), a morpheme that links two words
Medicine
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture us ...
of doubled with a shadda
Shaddah ( , , also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ) is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, indicating a geminated consonant. It is functionally equivalent to writing a consonant twice in the orthograp ...
and a dagger alif above .
With fatḥah
There are two possible ways of representing the dagger alif in modern editions of Quran. In the editions printed in the Middle East the dagger alif is written with '' fatḥah'': . In the editions printed in South Asia (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) the dagger alif is written without ''fatḥah'': .
See also
* Arabic diacritics
The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include consonant pointing known as (, ), and supplementary diacritics known as (, ). The latter include the vowel marks termed (, ; , ', ).
The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where all ...
References