Dagger alif


ــٰ

The dagger alif or superscript alif is written as a short vertical stroke on top of an Arabic letter. It indicates a long sound where alif is normally not written, e.g. هَٰذَا hādhā or رَحْمَٰن raḥmān. The dagger alif occurs in only a few modern words, but these include some common ones; it is seldom written, however, even in fully vocalised texts, except in the Qur'an. As Wright notes " was at first more rarely marked than the other long vowels, and hence it happens that, at a later period, after the invention of the vowel-points, it was indicated in some very common words merely by a fatḥa " Most keyboards do not have dagger alif. The word ﷲ is usually produced automatically by entering "alif lām lām hāʾ". The word consists of alif + ligature of doubled lām with a shadda and a dagger alif above lām.

With fatḥah

There are two possible ways of representing the dagger alif in modern editions of Quran. In the editions printed in the Middle East the dagger alif is written with fatḥah: الرَّحْمَٰنِ r-raḥmān. In the editions printed in South Asia the dagger alif is written without fatḥah: الرَّحْمٰنِ r-raḥmāni.