Diacritical dots of Arabic script (i'jam)
Puntos diacríticos de la escritura árabe (i'jam)
- Date
- c. 690-705 · confidence medium
- Place
- Basra, Iraq
- Credited to
- Nasr ibn Asim and Yahya ibn Ya'mar, according to tradition
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Dots above or below letters to tell similarly shaped consonants apart, added to the Qur'an during the Umayyad caliphate. They made the text readable without ambiguity.
Arabic papyri with dots exist from 643; tradition credits the system to governor al-Hajjaj, so its specific origin is disputed.
What it led to
- unambiguous reading of the Qur'an
- al-Farahidi's vowel system
- classical Arabic calligraphy