Evolution of early arabic calligraphy (9th - 11th century). The Basmala was taken as an exemple, from kufic Qur’an manuscripts. (1) Early 9th century. script with no dots or diacritic marks Image:Basmala_kufi.svg; (2) and (3)9th - 10th century under the Abbasid dynasty, Abu al-Aswad's system established red dots with each arrangement or position indicating a different short vowel. Later, a second black dots system was used to differentiate between letters like "fāʼ" and "qāf" Image:Kufi.jpg Image:Kufi.jpg; (4) 11th century, In Al Farāhídi's system (the system we know today), dots were changed into shapes resembling the letters to transcribe the corresponding long vowels [1]
Arabic script evolution
