Arabic Fatha Isolated Form

It marks a short “a”-like vowel after a consonant. A fatha is a small mark placed over an Arabic consonant. At the end of a formal Arabic word, the standard combining fatha can also mark the accusative case—the grammatical form used for a direct object.

The history of Arabic fatha marks predates printing and computers. Arabic writing often leaves short vowels unmarked; vowel signs help readers pronounce words and recite the Qur’an. A surviving handwritten Qur’an page from the late eighth or early ninth century shows red dots marking short vowels. Other handwritten pages show experiments before the familiar stroke-shaped signs.

Fully marked Qur’an and teaching texts preserve these vowel signs; ordinary Arabic prose usually leaves short vowels unmarked. The standard combining fatha belongs to the harakat (Arabic vowel and reading marks): damma marks a short u-like vowel, kasra a short i-like vowel, tanwin adds an n-ending, shadda doubles a consonant, and sukun marks the lack of a following vowel. This isolated form is a compatibility relative, not another vowel.

Why is this fatha separated from a letter?

It is a spacing compatibility form, not the usual combining mark.

This form was kept for compatibility with older Arabic encodings and software. In ordinary Arabic text, use a base letter followed by the combining fatha. This character has spacing behavior, so it can stay apart instead of sitting above the letter you intended.

Compatibility normalization—a text-processing rule for expanding older compatibility forms—can turn it into a space followed by the combining fatha, changing the stored characters. Fonts are not required to include every old Arabic display form, so this glyph may fall back or fail to appear.