Talk:Abjad numerals

Allah = 37 claim

What does "consecutive repeating letters count as single" mean? Consonants with shadda are certainly only counted once, but in Allah there are actually two letters Lam, not only a shadda. You can only get 37 by omitting one of the Lam's (which is a real actual letter) and counting the diacritic alif (which is not a letter, merely a diacritic). Who does reduction of words to numerical values in this manner, and what evidence do you have for it? There's plenty of evidence that many people sum بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم to 786. AnonMoos 15:30, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Questions

• Is this written with the most significant digit on the left or the right?
• Is there a representation of zero?
• Is there a representation for fractions?

-- Beland 04:02, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I think you have a misunderstanding of what Abjad numerals are, and what they're used for. They're letters of the ordinary Arabic alphabet given numerical interpretations in several particular specific contexts, such as:

1) Labelling a sequence of items (such as subsection headings) from 1-28, using single letters listed in one of the Abjad orders given on the article page.

2) Somewhat archaically on astrolabes and in a few other mostly-historical contexts, always to represent positive integers (most often positive integers less than 2,000).

3) To sum the letters in a word for mystical-religious-occult numerological analysis.

That's about it. For a cultural analogue think Roman numerals (MDCLXVI), but without the rule that writing lesser before bigger means subtraction (therefore making the order of writing the symbols somewhat unimportant). Roman numerals don't have a representation for zero or fractions... AnonMoos 09:05, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

2019

According to Arabic Wikipedia, abjad numerals are written in descending order; for example, 156 is written as قنو. Thousands are written as follows: بغ for 2000, جغ for 3000, and طغ for 9000. One million is written as غغ. For example, 1377 is written as اغشعز. —Jencie Nasino (talk) 01:35, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

If used as originally intended (for integers 1 to 1,999), then there may be a customary default order of writing the letters, but this order is completely irrelevant to the numerical interpretation of the letters. Extensions beyond 2,000 are much less well known, and really a separate system or sub-system (like extensions of Roman numerals beyond 9,999). In the ordinary system, 1,377 would be غشعز (or just as likely غ ش ع ز ), with any alternate ordering giving the same value. AnonMoos (talk) 03:00, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

If the smaller number is first the number is multipled with the next number like بغ is 2000 while غب is 1002.--SharabSalam (talk) 03:11, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Hisab al-Jummal

The Abjad numbers are also used to assign numerical values to Arabic words for purposes of gematria/isopsephy & numerology which is referred to in Arabic as Hisab al-Jummal. - Brad Watson, Miami, FL 75.74.156.102 (talk) 15:41, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Your edits to the article were not too useful, since you replaced a valid working link to "isopsephy" with an invalid non-working link (see the red color in your remarks above?). AnonMoos (talk) 17:36, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Levantine order

"Levantine order" redirects to this article, however, the focus of this article is not Levantine; there is only a brief mention that Hebrew has a different order at the very end of the article. If "Levantine order" is to redirect here, would it be better to either expand on the the Levantine order within this article (which I'm not sure would actually fit that well in this article's context), or — I think better — have a separate article called "Levantine order" which expands on the orders used in the Levant (such as by the Ugaritic and Hebrew ordering)? — al-Shimoni (talk) 01:48, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Not sure what "Levantine order" means, or if it's an accepted scholarly term, but if it refers to non-Arabic alphabets, then this article doesn't cover it... AnonMoos (talk) 05:48, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Chronograms

In Ottoman fountains (çeșme) in Istanbul there are often Osmanli poems that are apparently chronograms dating the fountain. Explaining them and including some pictures would be a good addition. --Error (talk) 01:59, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Maybe, if the analysis and explanation needed isn't too lengthy and convoluted... AnonMoos (talk) 05:42, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Links recently added in table

They don't do much harm, but in many cases they won't do much good either, since they link to basic articles about letters of the alphabet etc., instead of to discussion of the use of such letters in IPA or Semitological transcription conventions... AnonMoos (talk) 16:34, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Question about hamzah

The article 9 (number) mentions the Baháʼí use of 9 because the sum of the letters in بهاء bahāʼ is supposed to total 9. But I can only see it adding up to 8. The only way to make it 9 is if you count the hamzah all on its own as a 1. Can anyone verify that hamzah is supposed to be a 1 in this system? I doubt if hamzah can really be considered a letter or not. Hopefully if this question is clarified the answer could be included in this article. Don't know if I'm the only one who's ever wondered about this. Johanna-Hypatia (talk) 16:31, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't see your comment before. Hamza as a diacritic doesn't have any influence, as far as I know, but that word has a relatively uncommon non-diacritic in-line use of hamza, which might be different... AnonMoos (talk) 05:14, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Gematria, Isopsephy and Abjad numerals/hisab al-jummal

Gematria (Hebrew & English), isopsephy (Greek) and Abjad numerals/hisab al-jummal (Arabic) are closely related and are now being studied together by some linguists as an important aspect of linguistic science. - Brad Watson, Miami 71.196.11.183 (talk) 17:27, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Actually, they're part of cultural history and religious hermeneutics, and they're studied mainly by scholars of religion or the history of religion. Certain aspects of the abjad orderings are of linguistic interest, not really the numerical values... AnonMoos (talk) 05:25, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Wrong. There's much analysis currently going on of the Qur'an through Abjad numerals/Hisab al-Jummal - google that. 73.85.205.93 (talk) 15:28, 23 May 2018 (UTC) Muffi

tā' marbūṭa

What is the numerical representation of tā' marbūṭa (ة)? Is it doesn't count at all even in 'idaafa as ordinary tā'? or it is treated as ha' (ه) in all forms? Thanks. -- Heydari (talk) 08:44, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't know for sure; the issue only arises in numerological analysis of words or phrases, not in starting with a number and choosing one letter from each column. The word "caliph" خليفة would be 725 one way and 1120 the other way, but all I turned up with some quick Google searching is [1], which may not be entirely reliable. (I also discovered that you get completely different results searching for "Caliph" and "Calif" ...) -- AnonMoos (talk) 07:52, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Tāʾ Marbūṭah is treated as a regular Tāʾ. Similarly, the letter ʾAlif Maqsūrah (ى) is treated as a regular Yāʾ. The variants of ʾAlif Hamzah (أ, ؤ, ئ, ء) are all treated as a regular ʾAlif. — LissanX (talk) 07:24, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Correction?

in the final paragraph, someone claims there is no Greek letter equivalent to samekh ס ص, but the Greek xi Ξ is directly copied from the Phoenician samkha without its central vertical. I don't know what the OP was trying to refer to, because i don't know enough about Greek numerals, but verification is in order. 76.121.97.156 (talk) 20:03, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

The Phoenician sibilants were kind of muddled in the transition to Greek: Sigma seems to have the name of Samekh, but the shape and alphabetic position of Shin, etc. Anyway, that part of the article is basically explaining that there's no Greek letter among the 24 in the Classical Ionic alphabet which has the numerical value of 90 (and it mentions Tsade, not Samekh). It's all rather tangential to the main subject of this article, anyway... AnonMoos (talk) 11:29, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Template development

I'm developing an {{isopsephy}} template, including functionally for multiple languages. I isolate each letter to corollate it with its number. Arabic is trickier than the other languages because a letter changes depending on its position in the word. Default, the encoding shows each letter in its isolated form. Is this ok?

{{isopsephy|lang=ar|بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم}}

(

م‎

40

+

ي‎

10

+

ح‎

8

+

ر‎

200

+

ل‎

30

+

ا‎

1

)

289

+

(

ن‎

50

+

م‎

40

+

ح‎

8

+

ر‎

200

+

ل‎

30

+

ا‎

1

)

329

+

(

ه‎

5

+

ل‎

30

+

ل‎

30

+

ا‎

1

)

66

+

(

م‎

40

+

س‎

60

+

ب‎

2

)

102

=

786

Eievie (talk) 22:37, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but you'd want to make sure that the connected phrase was also displayed somewhere in the vicinity... AnonMoos (talk) 21:22, 15 April 2024 (UTC)