Chorasmian Letter Kaph

It is the kaph letter of the Chorasmian script.

Chorasmian, also called Khwarezmian, was an Eastern Iranian language spoken in Central Asia around the Amu Darya delta. Its script evolved from Imperial Aramaic. On local coins, the shift from barely readable Greek to Aramaic writing began in the middle of the 1st century CE; surviving Old Chorasmian coins and documents on wood or parchment date to around the end of the 2nd century CE.

Chorasmian writing is attested from the 2nd through the 8th or 9th centuries CE on coins, wooden and parchment documents, silver vessels, and ossuaries—containers for human remains. These objects preserve names, dates, and funerary statements. Its cursive form developed from a nonjoining inscriptional form and is the one represented in Unicode. From the 11th through the 14th centuries, Chorasmian appears mainly in modified Arabic script, including glosses (brief explanations added beside another text) and legal documents. Other related historical scripts include Parthian, Pahlavi (used for Middle Persian), and Old Sogdian, all linked to Imperial Aramaic.

Why does 𐾻 change shape in words?

Its written shape can change as letters connect.

The Unicode encoding represents Chorasmian's cursive script. In running text, a shaping engine selects connected forms from neighboring letters; a font without Chorasmian support may show a missing-glyph box.

Chorasmian usually runs from right to left. Some inscriptions are vertical: their lines read downward, moving across the page from left to right.