Meaning
The Arabic letter numerals were reckoned in two orders. Most letters have the same value in both; six do not. Three of them, sin, sad and shin, stand in the part of the alphabet Arabic shares with the older Semitic scripts, and three, dad, za' and ghayn, are among the six letters Arabic added. In the western order used in North Africa and al-Andalus, sin is 300, sad 60, shin 1000, dad 90, za' 800 and ghayn 900; in the eastern order the same letters are 60, 90, 300, 800, 900 and 1000.
Some accounts take the western order to be the older of the two; the eastern became the more widely used, and calculators such as abjadcalc show it first. Our chart does the same and keeps the western order behind "more ciphers", so a value from a western source can be checked.
How it is counted
سلام, salam, "peace": س 300 + ل 30 + ا 1 + م 40 = 371.
كتاب, kitab, "book": ك 20 + ت 400 + ا 1 + ب 2 = 423.
شمس, shams, "sun": ش 1000 + م 40 + س 300 = 1,340.
Kitab, "book", has none of the six letters and scores the same in both orders; salam, with its sin, and shams, "sun", with shin and sin, do not.
The basmala in this order
The basmala's value in this order is 1,026, against 786 in the eastern. Writing 786 in its place is a South Asian custom, and it uses the eastern order; we know of no such custom in the western order.
The western mnemonic
The western order has its own form of the mnemonic, ending differently because the six letters stand in a different sequence: abujadin hawazin hutiya kalman sa'fad qurisat thakhudh zaghush. The words follow the eastern ones and part from them where the six letters stand: sa'fad for sa'fas, qurisat for qarashat, and a different last word.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- abjadcalc
- Gives both orders, the eastern by default sourced
- Mnemonic
- A western form of the abjad words, ending with the six letters in their own order sourced
- The basmala
- 1,026 in this order, against 786 in the eastern sourced
How the schools read it
- Western scribes
- The letter numerals in their own order, in North Africa and al-Andalus.
- abjadcalc
- Offers both orders, eastern first.
- EsoTerrier
- Behind "more ciphers", beside the eastern order.
Claims about it
-
The basmala's value is 786 everywhere.
disputedWhat the record shows: Only in the eastern order. In the western order it is 1,026; the custom of writing 786 for it is South Asian.
