Arabic Letter Seen Initial Form

Use س; Arabic shaping supplies the initial form.

Seen connects to the following letter in a joining run. Arabic shaping chooses the displayed form from the letter’s position, so seen can appear isolated, final, medial, or initial. A visible initial shape alone does not tell you which character was encoded.

ﺳ stores one of those shapes as a compatibility character, mainly for older text and exact glyph-level data. In a new Arabic word, use س; use this pre-shaped form only when that encoded distinction matters.

When did Arabic writing take shape?

Arabic writing developed from earlier scripts rather than appearing as a one-person invention. Nabataean, an Aramaic-derived script, was used from the 2nd century BCE to the 4th century CE and is generally considered a precursor of Arabic. The Namara inscription, an early Arabic text, was written in Nabataean.

The earliest dated inscriptions with a full set of forms that can be called Arabic appear in the late 5th century CE. Seen is the Arabic letter for /s/; its initial shape marks its place in a joining word. The encoded character ﺳ preserves that pre-shaped position for compatibility.