The Arabic alphabet is a derivative of the Nabataean alphabet or (less widely believed) directly from the Syriac alphabet which are both derived from the Aramaic alphabet, which descended from the Phoenician alphabet. Main article: History of the Arabic alphabet It is also the basis for the tradition of Arabic calligraphy. With the religion's spread, it came to be used as the primary script for many language families, leading to the addition of new letters and other symbols, with some versions, such as Kurdish, Uyghur and old Bosnian being abugidas or true alphabets. The script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Quran, the holy book of Islam. In most cases, the letters transcribe consonants or consonants and a few vowels, so most Arabic alphabets are abjads. The Arabic script is written from right to left in a cursive style, in which most of the letters are written in slightly different forms according to whether they stand alone or are joined to a following or preceding letter.
It is the second- most widely used writing system in the world by the number of countries using it and the third by the number of users, after the Latin and Chinese scripts. Additionally, prior to the language reform in 1928, it was the writing system of Turkish. Until the 16th century, it was also used to write some texts in Spanish. The Arabic script is a writing system used for writing Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa, such as Persian ( Farsi/ Dari), Uyghur, Kurdish, Punjabi, Sindhi, Balti, Balochi, Pashto, Lurish, Urdu, Kashmiri, Rohingya, Somali and Mandinka, among others. For the distinction between, / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).