Samaritan Letter Shan

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What does Samaritan Shan mean?

It is a Samaritan letter for the “sh” sound.

Within a Samaritan word, its alphabetic role corresponds to Hebrew shin (ש), but the two letters belong to different scripts. An older sound that scholars write as *ś also shifted toward “sh” in Samaritan; Jewish reading traditions generally merged that older sound toward “s.”

How did the Samaritan alphabet develop?

It grew from older scripts; its early stages are debated.

Proposals trace its development from Paleo-Hebrew in the late Hasmonaean period or place its emergence in the first century CE. Distinctively Samaritan features are visible by the third century CE. Silver coins from Samaria in the fourth century BCE use a mixed writing tradition; Mount Gerizim inscriptions from the third and second centuries BCE provide related Paleo-Hebrew evidence, not proof that this exact alphabet was already fixed.

The Samaritan script descends from Phoenician through Paleo-Hebrew, an older Hebrew writing system; Jewish square Hebrew followed an Aramaic route. Samaritan letters were used for Samaritan-language texts, especially Torah manuscripts, prayers, commentary, and liturgy. In the 10th/11th century, Arabic became an everyday language in the community while Samaritan letters marked some passages as more sacred. From the beginning of the 13th century, Arabic translations of the Torah and prayers were also written in Samaritan letters for that sacred register.