Arabic Raised Round Dot

In some Warsh mushafs, it marks hamza wasl.

Hamza wasl is the connecting hamza at a word’s start; it is read differently when speech joins that word to what comes before. A mushaf is a written copy of the Quran. The exact recitation cue depends on the edition and reading tradition; ࢈ is not a word or general punctuation.

where did the raised round dot come from?

The written dot tradition predates this encoded form.

Dots for vowels or hamza appear in late-eighth- or ninth-century Quranic manuscripts. That earlier practice shows a long history of written reading cues, but does not prove a direct line to this exact glyph. Northwest African Warsh and Qaloon mushafs use position and shape to distinguish recitation cues. A 2010 proposal from the King Fahd Quran Printing Complex, a publisher of Quran editions, cites published Warsh material and forms part of the character’s computer-encoding trail.

how is this different from other Quranic dots?

Compare height and attachment, not size alone.

࢈ follows an alef around mid-height. The related form ࢇ sits on the baseline. Combining signs attach to an Arabic letter: ۬ is a round dot above an alef, while ٜ is a dot below its base letter. The size of ࢈ is font-dependent, so compare position and attachment as well as shape.