Rasm

For the measure of airline performance by the same name, see RASM.

Rasm (Arabic: رسم‎) means drawing, outline, or pattern in Arabic. When speaking of the Quran, it stands for the basic text made of the 18 letters without diacritics/i'jam.

The rasm is the oldest part of the Arabic script; it has eighteen elements:

The eighteen letters of the rasm and their values

rasm	ا‎	ٮ‎	ح‎	د‎	ر‎	س‎	ص‎	ط‎	ع‎	ڡ‎	ٯ‎	ک‎	ل‎	م‎	ں‎	ه‎	و‎	ى‎
IPA values	ʔ, aː	b, t, θ	ħ, x, d͡ʒ	d, ð	r, z	s, ʃ	sˤ, dˤ	tˤ, ðˤ	ʕ, ɣ	f	q	k	l, ɫ	m	n	h, t	w, uː	j, iː

However, in both initial and medial positions, these conflate to fifteen distinct forms, as the differences between ٮ‎, ں‎, and ى‎; and between ڡ‎ and ٯ‎ are lost.

Compare the beginning of the Qurʾān with all diacritics and with the rasm only:

بِسْمِ اللّٰ‍هِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ‎

ٮسم‌الل‍ه‌الرحمں‌الرحٮم‎

or with spaces:

ٮسم الل‍ه الر حمں الر حٮم‎

(note that spaces do not occur only between words)

Historical example

Sura 7 (Ala'araf), verses 86 & 87, of the Samarkand Qur'an, written in unadorned rasm.

The Kufic Samarkand Qur'an that was from 1869 to 1917 in St. Petersburg shows almost only the rasm.

See also

• Qira'at

External links

• Are There Scribal Errors In The Qur'an?
• Some pages from the famous St.Petersburg-Samerkand-Tashkent Koran. The fourth to seventh images are written in the Kufic script
• A page in the earliest script, known as ma'il