Arabic Letter E Isolated Form

It is the isolated shape of Pashto’s /e/ letter.

The Pashto e glyph ﯤ is a presentation shape associated with ې (U+06D0), commonly called pasta ye or majhula ye in Pashto teaching. The underlying letter marks the /e/ vowel; this exact character fixes its isolated display shape. In running text, use the base letter so the writing system can choose the shape that fits its position.

Why did Pashto add this letter?

Pashto adapted Arabic-derived writing to represent its own sounds.

The Pashto letter e comes from a writing tradition documented in Khayr al-bayān, a mid-sixteenth-century treatise by Bāyazīd Anṣārī. Its introduction explains how to write Afghan sounds and lists the alphabet. Later writers, including Akhūnd Darweza and Khushāl Khan Khattak, discussed or proposed changes; Pashto spelling developed through writing practice over time.

Arabic-derived spelling needed extra letters for sounds Arabic does not distinguish. Pashto ې represents /e/; majhula ye means “unknown ye,” reflecting that /e/ was not an Arabic sound. A 2010 account describes earlier yeh spellings as ambiguous among /j/, /iː/, and /e/, before later conventions distinguished /e/ with vertical dots. As of 2026, Afghan and Peshawar conventions still differ in some yeh choices. Pakistani Pashto writing may also use Urdu ے in roles where Afghan spelling uses another yeh.

Why does this glyph fail in normal text?

FBE4 fixes one shape instead of letting text choose it.

U+FBE4 versus U+06D0: FBE4 is one of four positional presentation forms associated with U+06D0. Older encodings sometimes stored isolated, final, initial, and medial shapes separately; modern Arabic-script text normally uses contextual shaping to select a shape from the base letter. FBE4 can stay visibly unjoined inside a word, so use ې when the letter needs to connect with neighboring text.

A font may also show a missing-glyph box or substitute another shape if it lacks extended Arabic coverage. That is a font-support issue, not a change in the letter’s sound.