Mandaic Letter As

It spells the s consonant inside a word. Mandaic is an Eastern Aramaic language written from right to left; this letter contributes one sound within a word.

The Mandaic script began taking shape around the second century CE for Classical Mandaic, the Mandaeans’ language of worship. The earliest surviving Mandaic magical texts, written on lead and in bowls, date to the third or fourth centuries CE; some were protective incantations meant to ward off harm. In Mandaean tradition, the alphabet and its writing were treated as sacred.

From the 7th–8th centuries onward, religious literature was written in Classical Mandaic. Neo-Mandaic, a later form of the language, also appears in personal letters and manuscript colophons—the short notes at a manuscript’s end. Mandaic follows the letter order of other Aramaic scripts such as Syriac, and scholarship links its forms with Late-Parthian, Elymaean, and Characene writing traditions.

Why does ࡎ join in text?

Because it joins on both sides in right-to-left text.

Mandaic letters take their connections from neighboring letters. ࡎ is dual-joining, meaning it can connect on either side. When rendered in an app without Mandaic font support, it may appear as a square even though the text contains the character.