Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Laleh Bakhtiyar, Encyclopaedia of 

Islamic Law: A Compendium of the Major Schools (Chi-

cago: ABC International Group, 1996); Azim Nanji, 

“Ethics and Taxation: The Perspective of Islamic Tradi-

tion.” Journal of Religious Ethics 13 (1985): 161–178.

alphabet

Since Islam is a religion found in many differ-

ent cultures, its followers speak many different 

languages, which are written in several alphabets. 

The most important of these is the Arabic alpha-

bet, consisting of 28 letters written as a script 

from right to left. This means that there is no 

separate printed form for individual Arabic let-

ters, as there is in English; it also means that the 

shape of the letter can be affected by its position 

at the beginning, middle, or end of the word. All 

the letters are consonants, but three of them can 

also represent long vowels: a¯, ı¯, and u¯. There are 

no letters for the short vowels (a, i, and u); they 

are either not written, or they are represented by 

optional markings called diacritics written above 

and below the consonants. Historically, the Arabic 

alphabet evolved from ancient Semitic scripts that 

were used by people living in northern Arabia 

and s

yria

. It gained widespread use only after the 

appearance of Islam in the seventh century, how-

ever. Nearly all of the most authoritative Islamic 

religious texts, including the Quran, were origi-

nally written in the Arabic cursive script.

Through the centuries, as Islamic religion and 

civilization spread to new lands, native peoples 

began to adopt the Arabic language and use its 

alphabet to write their own languages. Not all of 

these people were Muslims; Middle Eastern Jews 

and Christians adopted both the Arabic language 

and alphabet. By the 10th century, Arabic letters 

were adapted to write the Persian language and 

then related dialects such as Kurdish and Pashto, 

as well as the Turkic languages. To do this, addi-

tional consonants were required to represent 

sounds occurring in those languages but that do 

not occur in Arabic (for example, p as in pony, 

ch as in chair, and g as in game). Urdu, which is 

today the official language of p

akistan

, is based on 

a Persianized form of the Arabic alphabet. Arabic 

letters have also been used to write languages spo-

ken in medieval Spain, Africa, and Southeast Asia. 

Alongside the Roman alphabet, which is used to 

write English and other Western languages, the 

Arabic alphabet is one of the most widely used 

in the world today. t

Urkey

, one of the largest 

Muslim countries in the Middle East, switched 

from the Arabic alphabet to the Roman in 1928, 

when its government was being reconstituted 

along strongly secular lines. However, the Arabic 

alphabet is still widely used in Arab countries, and 

(in its Persianized form) in i

ran

,  a

Fghanistan

,

and Pakistan. Moreover, it has been successfully 

adapted for print media (newspapers, magazines, 

books, etc.) and the internet, so it continues to 

play an important role in the communication of 

religious and secular information, knowledge, and 

opinions in the modern world.

The Arabic alphabet is especially important in 

Islam because it was used for writing the words 

Muslims believe God revealed to m

Uhammad

 in 

the seventh century. Most Muslims attempt to 

learn the Arabic letters so that they can read the 

q

Uran

. Some 29 suras in the Quran begin with