It is thought that the Arabic alphabet is a derivative of the Nabataean variation of the Aramaic alphabet, which descended from the Phoenician alphabet, which among others also gave rise to the Hebrew alphabet and

The Arabic alphabet is first attested in its classical form in the 7th century. See PERF 558 for the first surviving Islamic Arabic writing.
The Quran was transcribed in Kufic script at first, which was then developed along with the Meccan

Arabic script reached a climax in aesthetics and geographic spread under the Abbasid Caliphate. In this period, Ibn al-Bawwab

Since the early 20th century, as the Ottoman Empire collapsed and European influence increased, many non-Arab Islamic areas began using

The Arabic alphabet evolved either from the Nabataean, or (less widely believed) directly from the Syriac. The table below shows changes undergone by the shapes of the letters from the

Less than a century later, Arab grammarians reorganized the alphabet, for reasons of teaching, putting letters next to other letters which were nearly the same shape. This produced a

When the Arabic alphabet spread to countries which used other languages, extra letters had to be invented to spell non-Arabic sounds. Usually the alteration was three dots above or