Old North Arabian Unicode Block

The Unicode block "Old North Arabian" is a collection of characters used to represent the ancient scripts employed by the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula, particularly in the north, who lived from approximately the 6th century BCE to the 4th century CE. This block is a digital encoding of the Old North Arabian script, which was used for a variety of inscriptions, including commemorative, religious, and funerary texts. The script itself is consonantal and abjad in nature, similar to other Semitic scripts, composed primarily of a series of characters representing consonants with implied vowels, which in its modern representation includes 32 characters.

These characters were often inscribed on rock surfaces, in a manner similar to graffiti, and are invaluable in the study of the pre-Islamic cultures of the Arabian Peninsula. The encoding of the Old North Arabian script in Unicode facilitates digital preservation and scholarly analysis of these ancient inscriptions, allowing researchers to utilize modern technologies in deciphering, comparing, and studying these texts. The inclusion of the Old North Arabian block in Unicode not only aids linguists and historians in reconstructing the cultural and linguistic history of ancient Arabia but also broadens the understanding of the linguistic landscape prior to the widespread adoption of the Arabic script.

View a range of fonts that support the Old North Arabian block.

Below you will find all the characters that are in the Old North Arabian unicode block. Currently there are 32 characters in this block.