LAST UPDATED: 1 month ago
An Arabic keyboard helps a lot if you want to write in Arabic. Nevertheless, not all Arabic letters and symbols that you may need are on an Arabic keyboard. Especially, the dagger aleph or superscript aleph (Arabic: ألف خنجرية – aleph khanjarīyah) above certain letters (لٰكِنَّ) is missing.
Case and mood markers, if they are to stand alone, are difficult to display. And also Persian letters with three dots are not on it. Not to speak of abbreviations like pbuh (ﷺ), which Muslims use when talking about the Prophet.
The good news is that most standard fonts (Arial, DejaVu Sans, Noto Sans) recognize these characters. They can be inserted with so-called unicodes.
What is a Unicode?
The Unicode Standard provides a unique number for every character, no matter what platform, device, application or language.
Your computer or phone can only process numbers. It stores letters and other characters by assigning a number for each one. Before Unicode, there were dozens of different systems which were used to assign these numbers. They are called character encoding. You may know that term from your browser or email program.
Special Arabic characters and signs (Unicode)
In the following table you see the most important and most common special characters of Arabic that are not listed on your keyboard: letters with dagger aleph, the abbreviation for the Islamic calendar (Hijri date), isolated tashkeel symbols, the most used Islamic eulogy, etc.
How to use it: Mark and copy the sign you need and paste it in any program such as Microsoft Word or LibreOffice or your email program. You can also sort the table or search for a certain letter or term.
| Unicode | character | description |
|---|---|---|
| U+060D | ؍ | date separator |
| U+061B | ؛ | semicolon |
| U+061F | ؟ | question mark |
| U+066E | ٮ | ba' (ب) dotless |
| U+066F | ٯ | qaf (ق) dotless |
| U+0671 | ٱ | aleph wasla (ألق وصل) |
| U+0674 | ٴ | hamza (همزة) high |
| U+06AF | گ | gaf (Persian letter pronounced as g in girl) |
| U+06BA | ں | nun (ن) dotless |
| U+06BE | ھ | ha' (ه), isolated, used to mark Islamic Hijri dates. |
| U+06C8 | ۈ | waw (و) with dagger aleph (ألف خنجرية) |
| U+FB56 | ﭖ | peh, a Persian letter, sometimes used to mark “p” |
| U+FB58 | ﭘ | peh, initial form |
| U+FB59 | ﭙ | peh, middle |
| U+FE77 | ﹷ | fatha (فتحة), isolated |
| U+FE79 | ﹹ | damma (ضمة), isolated |
| U+FE7B | ﹻ | kasra (كسرة), isolated |
| U+FE71 | ﹱ | fatha (فتحة), tanween (تنوين) |
| U+FE7D | ﹽ | shadda (شدة), isolated |
| U+FE7F | ﹿ | sukuun (سكون), isolated |
| U+FDFA | ﷺ | Used after mentioning the name of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad: صَلَّى ٱللّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ – blessings of God be upon him and grant him peace (pbuh) |
| U+FC5B | ﱛ | dhal with dagger aleph (ألف خنجرية) |
| U+FC5C | ﱜ | ra' with dagger aleph (ألف خنجرية) |
| U+FCD9 | ﳙ | ha' with dagger aleph (ألف خنجرية) |
| U+FC5D | ﱝ | aleph maqsura (ألف مقصورة) |
| U+FDF2 | ﷲ | Allah (الله) |
| U+FC63 | ﱣ | shadda (شدة) with dagger aleph (ألف خنجرية) |
You can download the full list of Arabic Unicode characters from the unicode.org website.
Arabic vowel (diacritical) signs – shortcuts for the keyboard
If you have an Arabic keyboard, you can produce the most important vowel signs with a shortcut:
 | SHIFT + x | | SHIFT + tilde key or ^ (very top left) |
| SHIFT + e | | SHIFT + r |
| SHIFT + q | | SHIFT +w |
| SHIFT + a | | SHIFT +s |
