Arabic Letter Tah Final Form

It is the final form of Arabic ṭāʾ, the letter ط.

Ṭāʾ represents the emphatic /ṭ/ sound: a “heavy” t-like consonant. Arabic grammatical tradition grouped it with ṣād, ḍād, and ẓāʾ as emphatic consonants. The letter belongs to a script tradition that developed through contact among languages: Aramaic and Arabic were both used in the Nabataean kingdom and late-antique Northwest Arabia.

Nabataean script developed from Aramaic and was widely used from the second century BCE. It is generally considered a precursor to Arabic script. The Namara inscription, from the fourth century CE, is one of the oldest Arabic texts written in Nabataean script. The final shape belongs to connected Arabic writing; this separate encoded character was made for compatibility with older character sets.

Should I use ﻂ in Arabic text?

No. Use ط and let the text shaper supply its final glyph.

Arabic letters change shape according to their position and connections in a word. A shaping engine selects the initial, medial, or final glyph from the base letter and its neighbors, so ordinary text does not need a separate code point for each shape.

Use ﻂ for legacy data or a deliberate shaping test. NFKC and NFKD normalization may convert it to ط, so its exact code-point identity may not survive those operations.