What 𐻿 means
It marks the vowel for a longer reading.
The low madda (madd means lengthening) appears beneath selected text in Qur’anic writing. It is a reading instruction, not a separate letter: the reader holds the marked vowel longer. Low qasr gives the contrasting instruction, without extra lengthening.
A 2018 Qur’an edition from Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) shows this exact low form. The date marks a printed example, not the beginning of the broader recitation practice.
The recitation idea is older than this low form
A 2021 study of Arabic manuscripts describes miniature forms of the letters mīm and dāl, named for the sounds m and d, used to mark madd, or lengthening. It discusses a copy of al-Fihrist, Ibn al-Nadim’s medieval Arabic book catalogue, dated around 987–1000 CE. These marks show an older practice of indicating length in recitation; they are not this exact low character.
Why does 𐻿 look wrong by itself?
It needs a base character to attach to. Unicode treats it as a nonspacing mark. When isolated, a font may show a dotted-circle placeholder, awkward placement, or a missing-glyph box; after the text it annotates, the renderer positions it below the line. That display issue does not change its recitation instruction.
A specialized cue in Qur’anic recitation notation, with a formal, devotional register.
Do not swap it for the raised madda in آ: that is an Arabic spelling mark, while 𐻿 guides Qur’anic recitation.
Part of the collection
Who writes 𐻿
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Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
2
Questions people ask
1Why does 𐻿 show as a box on some devices?
It is recent: Unicode added it in version 15.0 (2022), and phones and computers whose fonts are older than that have nothing to draw it with. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.
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How to type or find 𐻿
- Search it as
- low madda · madda below · madd qasr · Quran madda · Quranic recitation mark · tajweed lengthening · Arabic madda mark
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𐻿\10EFF𐻿. Other editors need their own Unicode insertion feature.Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.