What is a Warsh Orthography?

While developing a font intended for use in West Africa it was important to support the Warsh (Warš) orthography (or reading tradition) for the Arabic script. It was somewhat of a challenge to figure out what exactly that would mean. There is not much written on Warsh. Is it character selection, alternate rendering or perhaps style of characters? It seems that all of these are involved in a Warsh orthography.

Different or Same Characters?

In the chart below we see how Warsh behavior contrasts with two other orthographic traditions - Hafs and Al-Duri. Hafs is the most common orthographic tradition for Modern Standard Arabic. Al-Duri is used in Sudan, Central Africa and some regions of Nigeria.

Warsh, Hafs, and Al-Duri letters compared

For the Hafs and Al-Duri orthographies it is a simple matter of choosing a different character. For example, the Hafs “feh” requires a nukta dot above and the Al-Duri “feh” requires a nukta dot below, but the four forms are consistent. The issue becomes more complex with Warsh. For some characters (kaf, imala e and “ii” final) it is a simple matter of using another codepoint. In the Warsh orthography the isolate and final “feh”, “qaf”, and “noon” must be dotless. These are now supported in Unicode at U+08BB ࢻ ARABIC LETTER AFRICAN FEH, U+08BC ࢼ ARABIC LETTER AFRICAN QAF, and U+08BD ࢽ ARABIC LETTER AFRICAN NOON.

It is interesting to note that the “imala e” (U+065C ◌ٜ ARABIC VOWEL SIGN DOT BELOW) is sometimes referred to as a “warsh dot”.

Positioning

Another aspect of Warsh is that the hamza on U+0623 أ ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH HAMZA ABOVE and U+0625 إ ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH HAMZA BELOW actually touch the alef. This kind of behavior can be programmed into the font. However, characters in the range of U+0870..U+0882 were added to Unicode. This range supports a variety of characters such as fatha, kasra, and hamza touching above, below, or beside an alef. These character provide the needed support for Warsh.

Shadda plus kasra positioning

U+0650 ◌ِ ARABIC KASRA normally appears below the consonant. However, when there is a U+0651 ◌ّ ARABIC SHADDA plus a kasra, the kasra normally moves above the consonant (and below the shadda).

kasra moves above the consonant in the context of a shadda

There are a number of languages which do not use this behavior, the kasra remains below the consonant even in the context of a shadda. The Warsh orthography follows this alternate behavior.

kasra remains below the consonant even in the context of a shadda

This kind of behavior should be programmed into the font.

Are there other aspects of a Warsh orthography?

I’m sure there are other aspects of what it means to support a Warsh orthography in a font. I would be interested in hearing what they are.