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Arabic

Specialty Definition: Arab

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The word Arab is used with several meanings.

It is often used to refer to any person of the Middle East or North Africa whose mother tongue is the Arabic language. Broadly, the term refers to anyone of a people living in this area, even though such a people may have no connection to Arabia, other than having been invaded during the Arab expansion. The Berber peoples of North Africa, for example, though often called Arabs by Westerners, are connected to Arabia only by often speaking Arabic as a second language, since that remains the official language of the country in which they live as a result of the Arab expansion.

Racially, an Arab is a person of Arabic descent, whose original ancestry comes from the Arabian Peninsula. Arabs are a Semitic people, who trace their ancestry from the ancient patriarch Abraham.

Most, but not all, Arabs have embraced the religion of Islam. Many American Arabs are Christian Arabs from Syria and Lebanon.

See also: Semitic people, Ababda, Pan-Arabism, Arab League

External link

• Maps of the Arab World
• News from Arabic countries

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Arab."

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Arab music

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Arab music is characterized by an emphasis on melody and rhythm rather than harmony, thus we can see why most Arabic music is homophonic in nature, though there are a few (but significantly increasing) number of pieces which use harmony extensively.

That doesn't mean that arabic music doesn't contain polyphonic pieces, as the instrument Qanoun is based upon the idea of playing two-notes chords, but quintessentially, Arabic music is melodic.

It would be incorrect though to call it modal, for the Arabic system is more complex than that of the Greek modes. The basis of the Arabic music is the maqam, which looks like the mode, but is not quite the same. The maqam has a "tonal" note which the piece must end with (unless modulation occurs).

The maqam consists of at least two jins or sentences. A jins is either a tricord, a tetracord, or a pentacord. The tricord is three notes, the tetracord is four notes, and the pentacord is five notes. The maqam usually covers only one octave (two jins), but sometimes it covers more than one octave. Similar to the melodic minor scale, some maqams have different jins while descending or ascending. Because of the continuous innovation of jins and because most music scolars don't agree on the existing number anyways, it's hard to give an accurate number of the jins.

The main difference between the western chromatic scale and the Arabic scale is the existence of quarter notes.

The Arabic orchestra is known as the takhet, which includes, (or included at different time periods) instruments such as the 'oud, qanún, rabab, santur, tambourine.

External Links

• Arabic music
• Resource page
• Arabic musical instruments

• The maqam
• Maqam
• Maqamat

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Arab music."

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Arabia

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Arabia is a peninsula at the junction of Africa and Asia, east of Ethiopia and northern Somalia, south of Palestine and Jordan, and southwest of Iran. It is bounded on the southwest by the Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba, on the southeast by the Arabian Sea, and on the northeast by the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf. It includes Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. The term "Arabia" is often used to mean Saudi Arabia alone.

Saudi Arabia is by far the largest country. Most people live in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

See also : Arab World

Arabia is also a small suburb of Helsinki. Arabia is also a Finnish company making ceramic kitchen and bathroom utensils: see external link http://www.arabia.fi

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Arabia."

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Arabic

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

simple:Arabic Arabic can mean:

• From or related to Arabia
• From or related to the Arabs
• The Arabic language
• The Arabic alphabet, used for expressing the languages of Arabic, Farsi, Jawi, Kurdish, Panjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Urdu.

See also:

• Arabic numerals
• Arabic names
• list of Islamic terms in Arabic
• gum arabic

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Arabic."

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Arabic alphabet

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Arabic alphabet is the principal script used for writing the Arabic language.

As the alphabet of the language of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, its influence spread with that of Islam and it has been, and still is, used to write other languages without any linguistic roots in Arabic, such as Persian, and Turkish before 1928 (after which Mustafa Kemal Atatürk imposed the use of the Latin alphabet), Kashmiri, Sindhi, Urdu and Kurdish. (All of these languages, except for Turkish, have Indo-European roots).

It is often necessary to add or modify certain letters in order to adapt this alphabet to the phonology of the target languages. Certain African languages, for example Hausa, have also done this before doing a Latin transcription.

The Arabic alphabet is composed of 29 basic letters and is written from right to left. There is no difference between written and printed letters; the concepts of upper and lower case letters does not exist (thus the writing is unicase). On the other hand, most of the letters are attached to one another, even when printed, and their appearance changes as a function of whether they are preceded or followed by other letters or stand alone (that is, there is contextual variation). The Arabic alphabet is an abjad, a term describing writing in which the vowels are not explicitly written; so the reader must know the language in order to restore them. However, in editions of the Quran or in didactic works a vocalization notation in the form of diacritic marks is used. Moreover, in vocalized texts, there is a series of other diacritics of which the most modern are an indication of vowel omission (sukūn) and the doubling of consonants (šadda).

This alphabet can be traced back to the Nabataean dialect of Aramaic, itself descended from Phoenician (which, among others, gave rise to the Greek alphabet and, thence, to Latin letters, etc.). The first example of a text in the Arabic alphabet appeared in 512 A.D. It wasn't until the 7th century that marks were added above and below the letters to differentiate them, the Aramaic model having fewer phonemes than the Arabic and in the early writings a single letter might represent several phonemes.

The Arabic alphabet can be transliterated and transcribed in various ways. The preferred method in this document will be DIN-31635. It can be encoded using several character sets, including: ISO-8859-6 and Unicode, thanks to the "Arabic segment", entries U+0600 to U+06FF. However, these two sets do not indicate for each of the characters the in-context form they should take. It is left to the rendering engine to select the proper glyph to display for each character.

When one wants to encode a particular written form of a character, there are extra code points provided in Unicode which can be used to express the exact written form desired. The Arabic presentation forms A (U+FB50 to U+FDFF) and ''Arabic presentation forms B'\' (U+FE70 to U+FEFF) contain most of the characters with contextual variation as well as the extended characters appropriate for other languages. It is also possible to use zero-width joiners and non-joiners. Note that the use of these presentation forms is deprecated in Unicode, and should generally only be used within the internals of text-rendering software, or for backwards compatibility with implementations that rely on the hard-coding of glyph forms.

Finally, the Unicode encoding of Arabic is in logical order, that is, the characters are entered, and stored in computer memory, in the order that they are written and pronounced without worrying about the direction in which they will be displayed on paper or on the screen. Again, it is left to the rendering engine to present the characters in the correct direction. In this regard, if the Arabic words on this page are written left to right, it is an indication that the Unicode rendering engine used to display them is out-of-date. For more information about encoding Arabic, consult the Unicode manual available at http://www.unicode.org/

Presentation of the alphabet

The transcription and the transliteration mainly follow the DIN 31635 standard; the alternatives belonging to other standards are indicated after the oblique bar.

Notice that the superscript diacritic above the vowels can be easily replaced by a circumflex.

A transliteration from Arabic must clearly show the characters which are not pronounced or which are pronounced as others in order to avoid being ambiguous; a transcription indicates only the pronunciation. See below for more details. The phonetic transcription (somewhat simplified here) follows the conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet: for more details concerning the pronunciation of Arabic, consult the article on Arabic pronunciation.

SATTS, the Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System, is a US military standard transliteration of Arabic letters to the Latin alphabet.

Primary letters

Stand-alone	Initial	Medial	Final	Name	Trans.	Value
ﺀ	أ ؤ إ ئ ٵ ٶ ٸ ځ, etc.			hamza	ʾ / ’ et ‚	[ʔ]
ﺍ	—		ﺎ	ʾalif	ā / â	[aː]
ﺏ	ﺑ	ﺒ	ﺐ	bāʾ	b	[b]
ﺕ	ﺗ	ﺘ	ﺖ	tāʾ	t	[t]
ﺙ	ﺛ	ﺜ	ﺚ	ṯāʾ	ṯ / th	[θ]
ﺝ	ﺟ	ﺠ	ﺞ	ǧīm	ǧ / j / dj	[ʤ]
ﺡ	ﺣ	ﺤ	ﺢ	ḥāʾ	ḥ	[ħ]
ﺥ	ﺧ	ﺨ	ﺦ	ḫāʾ	ḫ / ẖ / kh	[x]
ﺩ	—		ﺪ	dāl	d	[d]
ﺫ	—		ﺬ	ḏāl	ḏ / dh	[ð]
ﺭ	—		ﺮ	rāʾ	r	[r]
ﺯ	—		ﺰ	zāy	z	[z]
ﺱ	ﺳ	ﺴ	ﺲ	sīn	s	[s]
ﺵ	ﺷ	ﺸ	ﺶ	šīn	š / sh	[ʃ]
ﺹ	ﺻ	ﺼ	ﺺ	ṣād	ṣ	[sˁ]
ﺽ	ﺿ	ﻀ	ﺾ	ḍād	ḍ	[dˁ], [ðˤ]
ﻁ	ﻃ	ﻄ	ﻂ	ṭāʾ	ṭ	[tˁ]
ﻅ	ﻇ	ﻈ	ﻆ	zāʾ	ẓ	[zˁ], [ðˁ]
ﻉ	ﻋ	ﻌ	ﻊ	ʿayn	ʿ / ‘	[ʔˤ]
ﻍ	ﻏ	ﻐ	ﻎ	ġayn	ġ / gh	[ɣ]
ﻑ	ﻓ	ﻔ	ﻒ	fāʾ	f	[f]
ﻕ	ﻗ	ﻘ	ﻖ	qāf	q / ḳ	[q]
ﻙ	ﻛ	ﻜ	ﻚ	kāf	k	[k]
ﻝ	ﻟ	ﻠ	ﻞ	lām	l	[l]
ﻡ	ﻣ	ﻤ	ﻢ	mīm	m	[m]
ﻥ	ﻧ	ﻨ	ﻦ	nūn	n	[n]
ﻩ	ﻫ	ﻬ	ﻪ	hāʾ	h	[h]
ﻭ	—		ﻮ	wāw	w	[w]
ﻱ	ﻳ	ﻴ	ﻲ	yāʾ	y	[j]

Letters lacking an initial or medial version are never tied to the following letter, even in a word. As to ﺀ hamza,, it has only a single graphic, since it is never tied to a preceding or following letter.

Other letters

Stand-alone	Initial	Medial	Final	Name	Trans.	Value
ﺁ	—		ﺂ	ʾalif madda	ʾā	[ʔaː]
ﺓ	—		ﺔ	tāʾ marbūṭa	h et t / Ø / h / ẗ	[a], [at]
ﻯ	—		ﻰ	ʾalif maqṣūra	ā / ỳ	[aː]
ﻻ	—		ﻼ	lām ʾalif	lā	[laː]

Arabic numerals

There are two kinds of numerals used in Arabic writing; standard Arabic numerals, and "EastArab" numerals, used in Arab writing in Iran, Pakistan and India

Standard numerals ٠ 0 ١ 1 ٢ 2 ٣ 3 ٤ 4 ٥ 5 ٦ 6 ٧ 7 ٨ 8 ٩ 9

EastArab numerals ۰ 0 ۱ 1 ۲ 2 ۳ 3 ۴ 4 ۵ 5 ۶ 6 ۷ 7 ۸ 8 ۹ 9

Ligatures

ﷺ (Sall-allahu alayhi wasallam) - ﷲ (Allah)

See also:

• Arabic numerals
• Unicode characters for the arabic alphabet
• Arabic alphabet/from the French Wikipedia
• Arabic calligraphy, considered an art form in its own right.

External links

• Arab writing and calligraphy
• Article about Arabic alphabet
• Arabic alphabet and calligraphy

This article contains major sections of text from the very detailed article Arabic alphabet/from the French Wikipedia, which has been partially translated into English. Further translation of that page, and its incorporation into the text here, is welcomed.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Arabic alphabet."

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Arabic language

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The expressions Arabic and Classical Arabic usually refer to ?al luGat ul?\\arabi:yat ulfus'X\\a: ( Literally: the pure Arabic language - اللغة العربية؛الفصحى ) which is, according to Arabic speakers, both the language of present-day media across North Africa and the Middle East (from Morocco to Iraq) and the language of the Qur'an. The expression media includes not only television, radio, newspapers and magazines, but also all written matter, including all books, documents of every kind, and reading primers for small children.

The word "Arabic", in a wide sense, can also refer to one of the many national or regional so-called "dialects", spoken daily across North Africa and the Middle East, which can sometimes differ enough to be mutually incomprehensible. These dialects are not frequently written.

It is sometimes difficult to separate concepts in Islam from concepts specific to Arab culture, from the language itself. The Qur'an is expressed in Arabic and traditionally Muslims deemed it untranslatable, though this view has changed in some circles, e.g. those advocating the Islamization of knowledge in recent decades. A list of Islamic terms in Arabic covers those terms which are too specific to translate in one phrase.

The English word algorithm is derived from the name of the inventor of algebra - an Arabic word like alchemy, alcohol, azimuth, nadir, zenith and oasis. Arabic numerals are what we use in English - but, except in some North African countries, modern Arabs generally use Hindi numerals. Spanish is the European language with the most borrowings from Arabic. See a List of the Arabic loan-words in Spanish.

Arabic is a Semitic language, closely related to the Hebrew language. Many dialects are spoken in modern Arabic states such as Egypt, Lebanon, and Morocco, but all of these countries use Modern Standard Arabic for printed media. Its function however is different from Western standard languages: it is mainly the language of the Qur'an (in its Classical form), and is not spoken in everyday life. Consequently, prestigious vernacular varieties have some of the functions that standard languages have in Western countries (see Chambers, Sociolinguistic Theory). Arabic is the language of Islam, but is also spoken by Arab Christians and Oriental Jews.

Alphabet

The Arabic alphabet derives from the eastern version of Aramaic script (the western version resembles Greek of that era), a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script; but the underlying language does not vary as much between eastern and western variants as the scripts themselves do - a situation a little like the differences between Serb and Croat). Arabic, like Hebrew, is written from right to left.

note the "â" is inbetween "a" (car) and "e" (bed).

Arabic alphabet:

Letter	Standard	Name	Typical SAMPA value
ا	âlef	alif	a
ب	bâ	ba:?	b
ت	tâ	ta:?	t
ث	thâ	Ta:?	T
ج	jîm	dZi:m	dZ
ح	h.â	X\\a:?	X\\
خ	khaa	xa:?	x
د	dâl	da:l	d
ذ	thâl	Da:l	D
ر	r'aa	ra:?	r
ز	zai	za:j	z
س	si'n	si:n	s
ش	shîn	Si:n	S
ص	s'aad	s?a:d	s?
ض	d'aad	d?a:d	d?
ط	t'â	t?a:?	t?
ظ	z'â	z?a:?	z?
ع	'ayn	?\\ajn	?\\
غ	ghaîn	Gajn	G
ف	faa	fa:?	f
ق	qâf	qa:f	q
ك	kâf	ka:f	k
ل	lâm	la:m	l
م	mîm	mi:m	m
ن	nuun	nu:n	n
ه	hâ	ha:?	h
و	waau	wa:w	w
ى	yâ	ja:?	j
ء	(hamza)	hamza	?¹

1. hamza typically occurs as a small superscript over ا, و, or ى. There are also two variants, each used in special contexts: ٱ , آ.

Arabic special characters:

Commonly-used variants:
ى	word-final variant of ا; has value of ى elsewhere
ﻻ	ligature of ل and ا
ة	teh marbuta; nominally feminine ending /at/, but the /t/ is dropped except in special cases; changes to ت when suffixes are added
ّ	shadda; marks gemination of a consonant; kasra (see below) moves to between the shadda and the geminate consonant when present; not used consistently in modern texts
Short vowels are indicated only in the Qur'an and in children's reading primers:
ْ	suku:n; marks a consonant with no following vowel
َ	fatX\\a; short /a/ vowel
ِ	kasra; short /i/ vowel
ُ	d'am:a; short /u/ vowel
tanwiin letters:
ً , ٍ , ٌ	used in combination with ا to produce the grammatical endings /an/, /in/, and /un/ respectively ( اً , اٍ , اٌ ); only اً is commonly used

Phonology

Standard Arabic has only three vowels, in long and short variants, namely /i, a, u/. Naturally, considerable allophony occurs.

Arabic consonant phonemes

		Bilabial	Inter- dental	Dental	Emphatic dental	(Alveo-) Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyn- geal	Glottal
Stops	Voiceless			t	t'		k	q		?
	Voiced	b		d	d'	dZ¹
Fricatives	Voiceless	f	T	s	s'	S	x		X	h
	Voiced		D	z	z'		G		?\\
Nasals		m		n
Laterals				l²
Rhotic (trill)				r
Semi-vowels		w			j

1. /dZ/ is /g/ for some speakers, i.e. a plosive
2. /l/ becomes [l'] only in /?alla:h/, the name of God, i.e. Allah.

/'/ is used to indicate velarization and pharyngalization (=emphatic consonants; usually transcribed as dotted consonants). The other symbols are SAMPA.

In the dialects there are more phonemes, one occurs in the Maghreb as well in the written language mostly for names: /v/.

Vowels and consonants can be (phonologically) short or long.

Grammar

Like many Semitic languages the grammar is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself. The consonants k t b together indicating 'write', q r ? indicate 'read', ? k l indicate 'eat'. The pattern of vowels and affixes gives the exact meaning. The simplest form of the verb is the perfect, third person masculine singular: kataba 'he wrote', qara?a 'he read'. From this the other persons and numbers form:

• katabtu I wrote
• katabta you (masc.) wrote
• katabti you (fem.) wrote
• katabat she wrote
• katabna we wrote
• katabu: they (masc.) wrote
• etc., there also being dual forms

The imperfect has a different shape and different affixes:

• jaktubu he is writing
• taktubu she is writing; you (masc.) are writing
• taktubi:na you (fem.) are writing
• ?aktubu I am writing, etc.

Derived verbs are variations on the shape of the primary kataba stem, such as kattaba, ka:taba, inkataba, takattaba, etc., with senses such as intensive, reflexive, and causative, though the exact meaning varies from verb to verb and needs to be recorded in a lexicon.

In Arabic, a word is classified as one of three: a noun, a verb, and a preposition. There are simply no separate categories for adjectives, adverbs, etc.; all are fulfilled by either a noun or a verb, or in some cases, a preposition. For example, to say in Arabic the sentense "the man ran slowly", one would say in Arabic a sentense whose word-for-word translation is "the man ran with slowness", or "the man ran (with) a slowness". Similarily, the Arabic word for "quick" would be treated as a noun, thus it is more properly translated not as the English word "quick", but as the English phrase "quick one".

This concept of using nouns and verbs to fulfill other linguistic functions is different from other languages, such as English, where usually there are words dedicated to fulfilling these functions. Note, though, that in English, this method is sometimes used with respect to adjectives, as in "the city hall", "the town meeting", etc.

Besides these rules, there are a number of other grammar and literary rules that dictate such things as what position in the sentense is the most proper for a certain word, advanced grammatical rules, word morphology, etc. These rules are known collectively in Arabic as al naX\\u (Arabic النحو), which means "the orientation", as it is viewed as the science that defines the proper orientation (rules) of the Arabic language.

Like many Semitic languages, Arabic has a dual grammatical number.

Calligraphy

In the beginnings of Islam, the Qur'an was mostly recorded in the memory of those who memorized the entire text; they were known as the Huffaz. After witnessing the unreliability of such a form of transmission, mostly because of the untimely death of many of those Huffaz in battle, it was decided to record it in written form and compile it into one book instead of several pieces.

Given its sacred nature to Muslims, as the Qur'an is considered the word of Allah, the book would be made with great attention to quality and readability. Given Islam's taboo against pictural representation, however, drawings could not be used to enjolivate the book, as was done in the Christian world. Thus, the art of calligraphy became very important in the Muslim world, and today it is still a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. The aesthetic of their art, which allows for the teaching of the Qur'an, is a unifying aspect of Islam.

After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.

The first of those to gain popularity was known as the Kufic script; it was angular, made of square and short horizontal strokes, long verticals, and bold, compact circles. It would be the main script used to copy the Qur'an for three centuries; its static aspect made it suitable for monumental inscriptions, too. It would develop many serifs, small decorations added to each character.

More often used for casual writing was the cursive Naskh script, with rounder letters and thin lines; with refinement of its writing techniques it would come to be preferred to Kufic for copying the Qur'an. Most children are taught the Naskh font first, and at a later stage they are introduced to the Req'a font. Almost all printed material in Arabic is in Naskh so, to avoid confusion, children are taught to write in the same script. It is also clearer and easier to decipher.

In the 13th century, the Thuluth would take on the ornamental role formerly associated with the Kufic script. Thuluth meaning "one third", it is based on the principle that one third of each letter slides downward. As such it has a strong cursive aspect and is usually written in ample curves.

As Islam extended farther east, it converted the Persians, who took to using Arabic script for their own language. They contributed to Arabic calligraphy the Taliq and Nastaliq styles. The later is extremely cursive, with exaggeratedly long horizontal strokes; one of its peculiarities is that vertical strokes lean to the right rather than (as more commonly) to the left, making Nastaliq writing particularly well flowing.

The Diwani script is a cursive style of Arabic calligraphy developed during the reign of the early Ottoman Turks (16th-early 17th century). It was invented by Housam Roumi and reached its height of popularity under Süleyman I the Magnificent (1520-66). As decorative as it was communicative, Diwani was distinguished by the complexity of the line within the letter and the close juxtaposition of the letters within the word.

A variation of the Diwani, the Diwani Al Jali, is characterized by its abundance of diacritical and ornamental marks.

Finally, the most commonly used script for everyday use is Riq'a. Simple and easy to write, its movements are small, without much amplitude. It is the one most commonly seen. It's also considered a step up from the Naskh script, and as children get older they are taught this script in school.

The traditional instrument of the Arabic calligrapher is the qalam, a pen made of dried reed; the ink is often in color, and chosen such that its intensity can vary greatly, so that the greater strokes of the compositions can be very dynamic in their effect.

Indeed, Arabic calligraphy hasn't fallen out of use as in the western world. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition that is often indecipherable. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy.

Arabic Script

Arabic script is not used solely for writing Arabic. The script, while still inherently Arabic, has been modified to fit the other languages it is used with. There are phonemes that Arabic doesn't have, but yet Farsi or Malay or Urdu may contain, especially since those three languages are not related to Arabic. For example, the Arabic language lacks a "P" sounding letter, so many languages add their own "P" in the script, yet the symbol used may differ between languages.

Arabic script is currently used for:

• Dari and Pashto in Afghanistan
• Farsi (Persian) in Iran
• Urdu and Kashmiri in Pakistan
• Punjabi in Pakistan, where it is known as Shahmukhi

In the past, it has also been used to represent other languages:

• Azeri (Azerbaijani)
• Hausa, known as Ajami
• Malay, known as Jawi. This is still popular in Brunei
• Sanskrit has also been written in Arabic script, though it is more well known as using the Devanagari script - the same script used for writing Hindi
• Somali
• Swahili
• Turkish was written in Arabic script until Atatürk declared the change to Roman script. This form of Turkish is now known as Ottoman and is held by many Turks to be a completely different language. This seems however to be politically motivated and does not hold up linguistically
• Turkmen in Turkmenistan

External links

Web references and examples:

• 6 links
• E2 article
• Free online resources for learners
• http://www.ethnologue.com/show_iso639.asp?code=ara
  

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Arabic language."

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Arabic numerals

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Arabic numerals are, by far, the most common form of symbolism used to represent numbers. The Arabic numeral system is a positional base 10 numeral system with 10 distinct glyphs representing the 10 digits. The leftward most digit of a number has the greatest value; this is the most logical arrangement if the number is read from right to left, which is how Arabic is read. However, for those accustomed to reading from left to right, it is less than ideal. In a more developed form, the Arabic numeral system also utilizes a decimal marker (usually a decimal point or a decimal comma) which separates the ones place from the tenths place, and is a symbol for "these digits repeat ad infinitum." In modern usage, this latter symbol is usually a vinculum. Historically, however, there has been much variation. In this more developed form, the Arabic numeral system can symbolize any rational number using only 12 glyphs.

The Arabic numeral system has utilized many different sets of glyphs. These glyph sets can be divided into two main families—namely the West Arabic numerals, and the East Arabic numerals. East Arabic numerals—which were developed primarily in what is now Iraq—are shown in the picture below as "Arabic-Indic." "East Arabic-Indic" are a variety of East Arabic numerals. West Arabic numerals—which were developed in Spain and the Maghreb—are shown in the picture, labelled "European." Early varieties of West Arabic numerals often use the symbol "4" to represent the number five with some other symbol to represent five (often a loop), or had the glyph of the four digit rotated 0.5π radian clockwise.

In Japan, Arabic numerals and the Roman alphabet are both used under the name of "romaji." So, if a number is written in Arabic numerals, they would say "it is written in romaji" (as opposed to native Japanese numerals). This translates as "Roman characters," and may sound confusing for those who know "Roman numerals."

History

The Arabic numeral system is considered one of the most significant developments in mathematics, and, ergo, several theories have been advanced about its origin. These theories include

• the idea that it originated in China.
• the idea that it was invented by Al-Khwarizmi.
• the idea that it originated in the ancient Middle East and that the Arabic numeral system was simply an westward transmission of the Indian numeral system.

Although these theories contain varying amounts of truth, each is exaggerated in its thesis. Nevertheless, very few historians debate the Arabic numeral system was influenced by Indian mathematics.

Somewhat speculatively, the origin of a base-10 positional number system used in India can be traced to China. Because the Chinese Hua Ma system (see Chinese numerals) is also a positional base-10 system, Hau Ma numerals—or some numeral system similar to it—may have been the inspiration for the base-10 positional numeral system that evolved in India. This hypothesis is made stronger by the fact that years from 0400 to 0700, during which a positional base-10 system emerged in India, were also the period during which the number of Buddhist pilgrims traveling between China and India peaked. What is certain is that by the time of Bhasakara I (i.e., the seventh century AD) a base 10 numeral system with 9 glyphs was being used in India. This numeral system had reached the Middle East by 0670. Significantly, however, this numeral system lacked a zero digit. Muslim mathematicians working in what is now Iraq were familiar with the Babylonian numeral system, which used the zero digit between nonzero digits (although not after nonzero digits). Furthermore, by 0874, the latest Muslim mathematicians were using a base 10 positional numeral system, with the zero digit used both between and after nonzero digits. Mathematicians in India took the same step at essentially the same time (by 0876 at the latest). The two groups apparently derived analogous numeral systems independently. In the early twelfth century AD, Arab mathematicians in North Africa extended the Arabic numeral system to include decimals.

Fibonacci, an Italian mathematician who had lived in North Africa, introduced the Arabic numeral system to Europe and promoted it with his book Liber Abaci, which was published in 1202. It should be noted that in the Muslim World—until modern times—the Arabic numeral system was used only by mathematicians. Muslim scientists used the Babylonian numeral system, and merchants used a numeral system similar to the Greek numeral system and the Hebrew numeral system. Therefore, it was not until Fibonacci that the Arabic numeral system was used by a large population.

See also: Numeral system, Armenian numerals, Babylonian numerals, Chinese numerals, Greek numerals, Hebrew numerals, Indian numerals, Japanese numerals, Maya numerals, Roman numerals, Thai numerals.

External links

• Unicode reference glyphs for Arabic (See code U+0660-U+0669, U+06F0-U+06F9)
• Unicode reference glyphs for Devanagari (See code U+0966-U+096F)
• Unicode reference glyphs for Tamil (See code U+0BE6-U+0BEF)

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Arabic numerals."

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Modern Usage: Arabic

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Commercial Usage: Arabic

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Image Slideshow: Arabic

Photos: Arabic More pictures...

Illustrations: Arabic More pictures...

Computer Images: Arabic More pictures...

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Photo Album: Arabic

Thumbnail	Description & Credit	Thumbnail	Description & Credit
	Portrait of the author - Daniel Schwenter, scholar; a mathematician and linguist familiar with Greek, Latin, Arabic, etc. "Geometriae practicae novae et auctae tractatus I[-IV] ..." by Schwenter, Daniel, 1585-1636. Vol II, page 1. Published posthumously in 1641. Credit: Treasures of the Library.		[La diarrea puede matar a tus hijos] [images reversed arabic language]. Credit: National Library of Medicine.
	Arabic school, learning the Koran, Egypt. Credit: Library of Congress.		Sheet of Arabic calligraphy with a colored marbled border. Credit: Library of Congress.
	Arabic title] Pas de frontieres pour la Croix Rouge. Credit: Library of Congress.		Poster showing circular coin with the words Palestine, 1927 written in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. Credit: Library of Congress.
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits.

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Digital Photo Gallery: Arabic
 

"Arabic tiles" by Ivan Raszl Commentary: "These tiles cover some walls of Beit Al Koran (House of Koran)."	"Óbidos castle" by Luis Alves Commentary: "This castle was extensively restored after suffering severe damage in the 1755 earthquake, the mutitowered complex-one of the finest medieval castles in Portugal- displays both Arabic and Manueline elements. Parts of the castle have been used has a Hotel"
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers.

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Sounds Captioned with "Arabic".

Play	Caption
	High trills on a string instrument playing in an Arabic manner.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Non-Fiction Usage: Arabic

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Usage Frequency: Arabic

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Expressions: Arabic

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Arabic

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Modern Translation: Arabic