Arabic Letter Alef

It usually spells a long “aa” vowel. In باب (“door”), alif stretches the vowel between the two b sounds. At the start of certain words, such as the article ال (“the”), plain alif carries hamzat al-waṣl, the “connecting” start: a short vowel you pronounce when the word opens speech and drop when another word comes before it.

The marks in أ, إ, آ and ٱ create different spellings; they are not decoration. If you see ا by itself, the surrounding word tells you its role.

Where did Arabic alif come from?

Arabic alif developed through Nabataean writing. The Nabataeans, whose kingdom centred on Petra, wrote a form of Aramaic, and Arabic script grew out of their letters. That line links alif historically to Phoenician 𐤀 and Hebrew א. The Namārah inscription, a funerary text from 328 CE, is an early landmark of written Arabic; inscriptions around Ḥimā in Arabia from the late fifth century CE show early Arabic letter forms.

Alif also matters beyond spelling. Arabic calligraphers use it as a reference for the proportions of other letters. A 1992 study of the Sufi thinker Ibn ʿArabi describes his mystical reading of alif as a symbol of origin and unity; that is an interpretation, not the letter's everyday meaning in a word.