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The Abjad numerals are a decimal numeral system which was used in the Arabic-speaking world prior to the use of the Hindu-Arabic numerals from the 8th century, and in parallel with the latter until Modern times. In the Abjad system, the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet are assigned numerical values, based on the Abjadi order.
For example, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, alif, is used to represent 1; the second letter, , is used to represent 2, etc. Individual letters also represented 10's and 100's: for 10, for 20, for 100, etc.
The word "abjad" ( ') itself derives from the beginning of the order of the letters in the proto-Canaanite alphabet, Phoenician, Aramaic alphabet and Hebrew. The Old Arabic alphabet, thought to be derived from Aramaic by way of the Nabateans, also followed this pattern: aleph, beth, gimel, and daleth. These older alphabets contained only 22 letters, stopping at taw (= 400 in the Abjad system). The Arabic numerical system continues at this point with unique Arabic letters not found in the older versions: = 500, etc. In modern Arabic, the word ' means "alphabet" in general.
Abjadi order
The Abjad order of the Arabic alphabet (or two slightly variant orders) was devised by matching an Arabic letter of the fully consonant-dotted 28-letter Arabic alphabet to each of the 22 letters of the Aramaic alphabet (in their old Phoenician alphabetic order) — leaving six remaining Arabic letters at the end. The Abjadi order is not a simple historically-continuous preservation of the earlier north Semitic alphabetic order, since it contains a position corresponding to the Aramaic letter samekh/semkat , yet no letter of the Arabic alphabet historically derives from . Loss of samekh was compensated by the split of shin into two independent Arabic letters, and .
The most common Abjad sequence is:
- .
Another Abjad sequence (probably older, now mainly confined to the Maghreb), is:
which can be vocalized as:
Modern dictionaries &c NEVER use any of the above orders to order things alphabetically; this less traditional order is used instead:
Uses of the Abjad system
In early Islamic times, these numbers were used by mathematicans. In modern Arabic, they are primarily used for numbering small quantities, such as items in a list. They are also used to assign numerical values to Arabic words for purposes of numerology.
Example: The common Islamic phrase بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم bi-smi-llaahi r-rahmaani r-rahiim ("in the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate" – see Basmala) would have a nominal value of 786 (from a letter-by-letter cumulative value of 2+60+40 + 1+30+30+5 + 1+30+200+8+40+50 + 1+30+200+8+10+40), where the word Allah alone has the value 66.
Hebrew numerals based on letters of the Hebrew alphabet are equivalent to the Abjad numerals up through 400. The counting system using the Hebrew alphabet is known as Gematria and figures highly in Kabalistic texts and numerlogy. The Greek Language also has a similar historic system of letters-as-numbers called isopsephy.
Letter values
| ā/' ا | 1 | y/ī ي | 10 | q ق | 100 |
| b ب | 2 | k ك | 20 | r ر | 200 |
| j ج | 3 | l ل | 30 | sh ش | 300 |
| d د | 4 | m م | 40 | t ت | 400 |
| h ه | 5 | n ن | 50 | th ث | 500 |
| w/ū و | 6 | s س | 60 | kh خ | 600 |
| z ز | 7 | ` ع | 70 | dh ذ | 700 |
| H ح | 8 | f ف | 80 | D ض | 800 |
| T ط | 9 | S ص | 90 | Z ظ | 900 |
| gh غ | 1000 |
(A few of the numerical values would be different when the alternative order of the abjad is used — see Abjadi order above.)
References
See also
"Abjad numerals"