The dagger alif or superscript alif ( ar, ألف خنجرية ) is written as a short vertical stroke on top of an Arabic letter. It indicates a long sound where alif is normally not written, e.g. or . The dagger alif occurs in only a few modern words, but these include some common ones; it is seldom written, however, even in fully vocalised texts, except in the Qur'an. As Wright notes "

lif Lithium fluoride is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula LiF. It is a colorless solid, that transitions to white with decreasing crystal size. Although odorless, lithium fluoride has a bitter-saline taste. Its structure is analogous to ...

was at first more rarely marked than the other long vowels, and hence it happens that, at a later period, after the invention of the vowel-points, it was indicated in some very common words merely by a fatḥa .e. the dagger alif. Most keyboards do not have dagger alif. The word () is usually produced automatically by entering "". The word consists of alif +

ligature Ligature may refer to: * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure ** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry * Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...

of doubled with a

shadda Shaddah ( ar, شَدّة ' , " ign ofemphasis", also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ' "emphasis") is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, indicating a geminated consonant. It is functionally equivalent t ...

and a dagger alif above .

With fatḥah

There are two possible ways of representing the dagger alif in modern editions of Quran. In the editions printed in the Middle East the dagger alif is written with ''

fatḥah The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include: consonant pointing known as (), and supplementary diacritics known as (). The latter include the vowel marks termed (; singular: , '). The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where sh ...

'': . In the editions printed in South Asia (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) the dagger alif is written without ''fatḥah'': .

References

Arabic diacritics Arabic words and phrases Quranic orthography Phonetic guides {{arabic-script-stub

With fatḥah

See also

References