Simplified Arabic (called Yakout since 1967) is a simplified Arabic

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mod ...

that allowed

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

text to be composed using a

Linotype machine The Linotype machine ( ) is a "line casting" machine used in printing; manufactured and sold by the former Mergenthaler Linotype Company and related It was a hot metal typesetting system that cast lines of metal type for individual uses. Lin ...

. It was first announced in 1959 as ''Mrowa-Linotype Simplified Arabic''. The font was developed by

Kamel Mrowa Kamel Mrowa (in Arabic كامل مروّه, also spelled Mroue or Mroueh, pronounced Kaamel Mruwweh) (1915 - 16 May 1966) was a Lebanese publisher, journalist, writer and ideologue. He was the founder of the Lebanese Arabic daily ''Al-Hayat'' (Ar ...

, Nabih Jaroudi, and Linotype & Machinery Ltd. staff under the guidance of

Walter Tracy Walter Valentine Tracy RDI (14 February 1914 – 28 April 1995) was an English type designer, typographer and writer. Biography Walter Tracy was born in Islington, London and attended Shoreditch Secondary school. At the age of fourteen he wa ...

. The Simplified Arabic font reduced the number of characters necessary to compose Arabic, allowing it to fit into the Linotype machine's single 90-channel magazine. The font became one of the most widely used typefaces for composing Arabic newspapers.

History

In 1954, Kamel Mrowa contacted the British company Linotype & Machinery Ltd. (L&M), formed by the merger of the Linotype Company Limited (registered in 1889) and the Machinery Trust Limited (registered in 1893), with the idea of developing a new, simplified Arabic typeface. His idea took inspiration from Arabic typewriters, which, by overlapping the letters, condensed the four forms of each letter Arabic letter (isolated, initial, medial, and final) into two (isolated-final and initial-medial). Kamel Mrowa, the lettering artist of ''

Al-Hayat Al-Hayat ( ar, الحياة meaning "Life") was a London-based, pan-Arab newspaper owned by Saudi Prince Khalid bin Sultan, that had a circulation estimated over 200,000. It was the newspaper of record for the Arab diaspora and the preferred v ...

'' Nabih Jaroudi, and staff of Linotype & Machinery Ltd. under the leadership and guidance of

collaborated on the project. Intertype's Abridged Arabic typeface, released 1960-1961, was adapted from Simplified Arabic. Hrant Gabeyah suggested the name Yakout, after the 13th century calligrapher

Yaqut al-Musta'simi Yaqut al-Musta'simi (Persian: یاقوت مستعصمی)(Arabic: ياقوت المستعصمي) (also Yakut-i Musta'simi) (died 1298) was a well-known Calligraphy, calligrapher and secretary of the Al-Musta'sim, last Abbasid caliph. Life and wo ...

. It was one of the first Arabic fonts to be converted to the

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...

file format.{{Cite book , last=Nemeth , first=Titus , url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/993752295 , title=Arabic type-making in the machine age : the influence of technology on the form of Arabic type, 1908-1993 , date=2017 , isbn=978-90-04-34930-8 , location=Leiden , pages=459–462 , oclc=993752295 In the 1970s and 80s,

Compugraphic Compugraphic Corporation, commonly called cg, was an American producer of typesetting systems and phototypesetting equipment, based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, just a few miles from where it was founded. This company is distinct from Compugraph ...

plagiarized Simplified Arabic as well as

Traditional Arabic Traditional Arabic is an Arabic naskh-based typeface first developed by Monotype as Series 589 in the spring of 1956. It featured a system of interlocking sorts to allow for the diacritics to properly display over the letters they modify. Whereas ...

; they had both become ubiquitous. When the Belgian Agfa-Gevaert Corporation came to control Compugraphics, it licensed the font it plagiarized to

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

for use in

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. Simplified Arabic, in barely modified forms, was then used as Arabic complements for both

Times New Roman Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration wit ...

and

Arial Arial (also called Arial MT) is a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts in the neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 3.1 on, some other Microsoft software appli ...

, which were then included as

TrueType TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating sy ...

fonts for the core fonts for the Web

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

References

Arabic typefaces Newspaper and magazine typefaces