Abjad numerals · Hisab al-jummal
What are abjad numerals?
28 letters, 1 to 1000
They are the Arabic alphabet used as numbers. Each of the 28 letters has a value from 1 to 1000, taken in the old letter order alif, bā’, jīm, dāl, which gives the system its name. They were the everyday numerals before Arabic digits took over. Today they number lists and outlines, date buildings and poems through chronograms, and turn phrases into numbers, like 786 for the Bismillah.
Total
786
The values
Abjad hawwaz, the order that counts
The name is the first four letters, alif, bā’, jīm, dāl, a-b-j-d, in the old Semitic order that Arabic shares with Hebrew and Phoenician. In modern Arabic, abjadīyah simply means alphabet. Linguists also use “abjad” for any script that writes only consonants.
The order is not the dictionary order. Arabic dictionaries use the newer hijā’ī order, which groups letters by shape, and those positions never carry number values. The values follow the old order, remembered as eight nonsense words: abjad hawwaz ḥuṭṭī kalaman sa‘faṣ qarashat thakhadh ḍaẓagh.
Arabic goes past 400. The older alphabets had 22 letters and stopped at taw, 400, which is where Hebrew letter values end. Arabic has six more letters, so it continues: thā’ 500, khā’ 600, dhāl 700, ḍād 800, ẓā’ 900 and ghayn 1000.
West and east differ. The Maghrebi table, used in North Africa and thought to be the older one, gives six letters other values: ṣād 60, ḍād 90, sīn 300, ẓā’ 800, ghayn 900 and shīn 1000. Tap the western button in the counter and the board changes.
How it is written
Largest first, right to left
Like Roman numerals, abjad has no zero and no fractions. A number is written largest letter first, which in Arabic means from the right: 786 is ذفو, 700 + 80 + 6. Putting a smaller letter first multiplies instead of adding, so بغ is 2,000 and غب is 1,002.
Digits took over. Before the Hindu-Arabic digits, abjad letters served every kind of arithmetic. Arabic-speaking countries in the east now write digits as ٠ ١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩, with the lowest digit on the right, while North Africa mostly uses the 0 to 9 of Western Europe. The letters survive for numbering lists and outlines, the way English uses a, b, c.
Chronograms: a date inside a phrase
A chronogram is a phrase whose letters add up to a year. The tomb of the poet Hafez in Shiraz is engraved with the Persian خاک مصلی, “dust of Musalla,” which comes to 791, an Islamic year equal to AD 1389 or 1390. Ahmad Raza Khan took the name المختار, al-Mukhtar, whose letters give 1272, the Hijri year of his birth. Both check out in the counter above.
786 and the Bismillah
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم, “In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,” has 19 written letters, and with the eastern values they add up to 786. The name الله alone is 66. The number has taken on meaning in folk practice, and many South Asian Muslims write “786” as a short form of the phrase online. The number itself does not appear in the Quran or the Hadith, and with the western table the same letters give 1026.
The “Code 19” claim
Rashad Khalifa claimed the Quran hides a pattern built on 19, starting from the Bismillah’s 19 letters and the verse “Over it is nineteen.” Critics pointed out that the pattern needed two verses at the end of Sura 9 removed and a letter respelled: with the verses kept, the word Allah appears 2,699 times, not a multiple of 19. The writer Martin Gardner called the most plausible explanation that Khalifa “deceived himself by unconscious fudging.” Most Muslims reject the theory.
Real vs legend
Abjad, sorted
| Claim | Status |
|---|---|
| Arabic letters have number values from 1 to 1000. | Real · 28 letters |
| “Abjad” comes from alif, bā’, jīm, dāl. | Real · a-b-j-d |
| The dictionary order carries the values. | No · only the abjad order does |
| Every region uses the same values. | Partly · six letters differ in the west |
| The Bismillah adds up to 786. | Real · eastern values, 1026 western |
| 786 appears in the Quran or Hadith. | No |
| Chronograms hide real dates. | Real · Hafez 791, al-Mukhtar 1272 |
| Code 19 proves who wrote the Quran. | Legend · needs verses removed |
How letters are counted here: vowel marks are ignored, ة is counted as ه (5), ى and ئ as ي (10), ؤ as و (6), and أ إ آ ء as ا (1). Persian ک and ی count as kāf and yā’. The sources on this page do not settle ة, so a total with ة may differ elsewhere. For Hebrew, Greek and English words, use the gematria calculator.
Questions
Abjad numerals
What are abjad numbers?
A system that gives each of the 28 Arabic letters a value, from 1 for alif to 1000 for ghayn. It is also called ḥisāb al-jummal. A word’s abjad number is the sum of its letters.
How do I calculate the abjad number?
Look up each written letter in the abjad table and add them. الله is 1 + 30 + 30 + 5 = 66. Say which table you use, because the eastern and western tables differ for six letters.
What is 1, 2, 3 in Arabic?
As digits, Arabic in the east writes ١ ٢ ٣, and 0 to 9 as ٠ ١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩. As abjad letters, 1 to 10 are ا ب ج د ه و ز ح ط ي.
What is abjad numerology?
Reading meaning into the letter totals of Arabic words, as in the 786 for the Bismillah or the chronograms that hide a year in a phrase. The adding is exact; the meaning is tradition.
What is abjad in Islam?
A folk and literary practice, not scripture. 786 has significance in folk Islam, but the number does not appear in the Quran or the Hadith.
Why is it called abjad?
After its first four letters in the old order, alif, bā’, jīm, dāl, the same a-b-g-d start as Hebrew and Phoenician.
Sources
Where this comes from
- Abjad numerals, values, both tables, mnemonic, writing rules, 786: Wikipedia.
- Abjad, the name and the script type: Wikipedia.
- Arabic alphabet, hijā’ī order without values: Wikipedia.
- Eastern Arabic numerals: Wikipedia.
- Chronogram, Hafez’s tomb and al-Mukhtar: Wikipedia.
- Basmala, 786 in folk practice: Wikipedia.
- Quran code (Code 19), claims and criticism: Wikipedia.
- Rashad Khalifa: Wikipedia.
- Martin Gardner, “The Numerology of Dr. Rashad Khalifa,” Skeptical Inquirer 21(5), 1997: PDF.
- Unicode Character Database, Arabic letters: unicode.org.
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The 28 letters in abjad order with both tables, on one print.