Qalam · A Visual Guide to Arabic Typography

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Arabic typography, on its own terms.

A way in for designers who want to work with Arabic text thoughtfully.

Slide me out of the pocket!Meet your guides!

Qalam GuideQLM-001

Salem

سالم

Mechanics Guide

Curious and practical. Always asks “how does it work?” and grounds ideas in real design situations.

Qalam GuideQLM-002

Hala

هلا

Anatomy Observer

Clear and observant. Notices details and patterns. Helps you see what you missed.

Qalam GuideQLM-003

Simsim

سمسم

Script Spotter

Light and sharp. Gives you memorable cues to tell script styles apart. No lectures.

How Arabic Works

كيف يعمل الخط العربي

Direction, numbers, diacritics, and spacing. The fundamental mechanics of Arabic text.

Anatomy

التشريح

Teeth, bowls, connections, and proportions. The structural components of Arabic letterforms.

Script Styles

أنماط الخطوط

From Naskh to Diwani. The major Arabic script traditions, each with its own rules and character.

How Arabic Works

RTL

من اليمين إلى اليسار

I'm curious why I read from right to left.

I read Arabic from right to left, and that one fact reshapes everything around me, alignment, navigation, the order things show up in. It isn't a visual flip; it's a system. Once I started seeing it that way, layout decisions stopped surprising me.

Numbers in Arabic Text

الأرقام في النص العربي

I keep wondering why numbers go the other way.

When I'm reading an Arabic sentence, the words flow right-to-left, but the numbers inside them quietly read left-to-right. I had to slow down and watch this happen. Once I noticed it, I started seeing why dates, phone numbers, and prices break in surprising ways.

Diacritics

التشكيل

I'm curious about those small marks above the letters.

I keep noticing small marks sitting above and below Arabic letters. I learned they're called تشكيل, they spell out the vowels and tell me how to pronounce a word. They aren't decoration; they're a whole second layer of typography I have to make room for.

Contextual Letterforms

الأشكال السياقية

I want to understand why letters keep changing shape.

I noticed the same Arabic letter looks different depending on where it sits in a word, isolated, at the start, in the middle, at the end. At first that was confusing. Then I realized this is exactly how Arabic stays connected and flowing, and it's the main reason it doesn't behave like Latin.

Dot Placement

مواضع النقاط

I'm trying to tell these letters apart by their dots.

Arabic has 28 letters but only about 18 base shapes, and at first I couldn't tell them apart. Then I realized: it's the dots above and below doing the work. ب, ت, ث are the same skeleton with one dot below, two dots above, three dots above. Move a dot, change the meaning.

Ligatures

المركبات

I'm curious about letters that decide to merge.

Sometimes I see two Arabic letters fuse into a single shape, a ligature. The most famous one is لا (lam-alef), and I'm actually not allowed to write it as two separate letters; that would be a typographic error. Once I started looking, I noticed good Arabic fonts are full of these little merges.

Bidirectional Text

النص ثنائي الاتجاه

I'm figuring out how Arabic and Latin share a line.

I keep running into lines where Arabic and English sit next to each other, URLs, brand names, code snippets. The text doesn't just flow one way anymore. Punctuation jumps sides, parentheses flip, and it took me a while to realize there's an actual algorithm (the Unicode Bidi Algorithm) deciding all of it.

Kashida

الكشيدة

I'm curious how Arabic stretches to fit the line.

I noticed Arabic words can grow longer without changing what they say, by stretching the connecting stroke between letters. That stretch is called a kashida (ـ), or tatweel. I use it to balance a line, but I had to learn the hard way: stretch the wrong join and the word looks broken.

Anatomy

Arabic Anatomy Guide

دليل تشريح الخط العربي

Let me show you what I notice in a letter.

I look at Arabic letters the way calligraphers and type designers do, by their parts. Teeth, bowls, baselines, tails, the bare skeleton hiding under the dots. Each card here picks one part and shows you where it lives, so you can name what you're seeing instead of just feeling it.

Tooth

السِّن

I keep noticing this little vertical peak.

I see a small pointed peak that rises off the baseline and drops back down, that's a tooth (سن). Once I started counting them, I realized they're what gives Arabic its visible rhythm: a row of teeth is a beat the eye can follow across a word.

Tarwees (Serif)

الترويس

I noticed Arabic has its own kind of finishing strokes.

I kept seeing little caps and shoulders at the tops of strokes in classical Arabic, and I learned they have a name: tarwees (ترويس). They behave like Latin serifs, they anchor a stroke and hint at the pen that drew it. They're loudest in Naskh and Thuluth.

Bowl / Eye (ʿAyn)

العين

I'm watching how letters hold their inner space.

I notice the curved, enclosed pockets inside letters like ع, ص, and ق, those are bowls. They're the Arabic equivalent of a Latin counter, and I can tell a font's character by how open or how tight it makes them. Squeeze a bowl too small at text size and the letter quietly disappears.

Rasm (Skeleton)

الرسم

I see the bones of every letter underneath the dots.

If I peel the dots and marks off, I'm left with the rasm (رسم), about 18 base shapes that build all 28 Arabic letters. Once I could see the skeleton, the alphabet stopped feeling like 28 separate things and started looking like a few families wearing different dots.

Nuqta (Dot Unit)

النقطة

I notice this dot is doing more than you think.

I watch a calligrapher press the qalam once and leave a small diamond, a nuqta. To me it isn't just punctuation; it's the unit. Every proportion in classical Arabic, the height of an alef, the curve of a waw, is measured in nuqtas stacked end to end. Change the pen, you change the whole script.

Script Styles

Naskh

النسخ

I'm the script you've been reading without noticing.

I'm Naskh, round, even, easy to follow. If you've ever read an Arabic book, newspaper, or website, you were probably reading me. I was built for clarity at small sizes during the Abbasid era, and most modern Arabic text fonts still copy my logic, even when they pretend to be brand-new.

Ruqʿah

الرقعة

I'm the script you actually write with your hand.

I'm Ruqʿah, the everyday handwriting script. Short verticals, compressed shapes, no extra flourishes. If Naskh is the printed book, I'm the note you scribble in the margin. Most Arabs write a version of me without thinking about it.

Thuluth

الثُّلث

I'm the loud script on every old mosque wall.

I'm Thuluth, tall, sweeping, monumental. You've seen me on Qur'anic headings and inscriptions, where the writing has to carry weight as well as words. I'm not built for paragraphs; I'm built to hold a wall. I came out of the Abbasid era when calligraphy became governed by proportion, and Ibn Muqla helped set my rules.

Nastaʿliq

النستعليق

I lean, that's how you'll spot me.

I'm Nastaʿliq, the Persian poet's script. My baseline doesn't sit flat; it tilts, so my words seem to cascade down and to the left. If you see Arabic letters that look like they're falling gracefully across the line, that's me. I was made to carry mood as well as meaning, which is why I live mostly in poetry and literary manuscripts.

Diwani

الديواني

I'm the script that tangles itself for kings.

I'm Diwani, born in the Ottoman court for official decrees. My letters interweave, my baseline dances, my spacing closes up tight. I look ornamental even when I'm doing serious work, which is why you mostly see me on invitations, certificates, and decorative headings today.

Kufi

الكوفي

I'm all corners. No curves.

I'm Kufi, the oldest of the major Arabic scripts, and the most geometric. Strong horizontals, sharp angles, no cursive flow. I was built to be carved into stone and tiled into mosques, which is why I still feel architectural even when you put me on a screen.

Maghrebi

المغربي

I came up the long way, around North Africa.

I'm Maghrebi, the script that grew up in North Africa and al-Andalus, on a parallel track from the eastern styles. My curves swing wider, my dots sit in unexpected places, and even my letter shapes can surprise an eastern reader. I'm proof that Arabic isn't one look; it's a family with regional accents.