Rasm

In the early Arabic manuscripts that survive today (physical manuscripts dated 7th and 8th centuries AD), one finds dots but "putting dots was in no case compulsory".[1] Some manuscripts have no dots at all, while others add dots only sparingly and only in phrase contexts where the scribe thinks the omission of dotting on a word would leave the meaning ambiguous.

Rasm means 'drawing', 'outline', or 'pattern' in Arabic. When speaking of the Qur'an, it stands for the basic text made of the 18 letters without the Arabic diacritics which mark vowels (tashkīl) and disambiguate consonants (i‘jām).

The Rasm is the oldest part of the Arabic script; it has 18 elements, excluding the ligature of lām and alif. When isolated and in the final position, the 18 letters are visually distinct. However, in the initial and medial positions, certain letters that are distinct otherwise are not differentiated visually. This results in only 15 visually distinct glyphs each in the initial and medial positions.

At the time when the i‘jām was optional, letters deliberately lacking the points of i‘jām: ⟨ح⟩ /ħ/, ⟨د⟩ /d/, ⟨ر⟩ /r/, ⟨س⟩ /s/, ⟨ص⟩ /sˤ/, ⟨ط⟩ /tˤ/, ⟨ع⟩ /ʕ/, ⟨ل⟩ /l/, ⟨ه⟩ /h/ — could be marked with a small v-shaped sign above or below the letter, or a semicircle, or a miniature of the letter itself (e.g. a small س to indicate that the letter in question is س and not ش), or one or several subscript dots, or a superscript hamza, or a superscript stroke.[2] These signs, collectively known as ‘alāmātu-l-ihmāl, are still occasionally used in modern Arabic calligraphy, either for their original purpose (i.e. marking letters without i‘jām), or often as purely decorative space-fillers. The small ک above the kāf in its final and isolated forms ⟨ك  ـك⟩ was originally ‘alāmatu-l-ihmāl, but became a permanent part of the letter. Previously this sign could also appear above the medial form of kāf, instead of the stroke on its ascender.[3]

Among which Kufic Blue Qur'an and Samarkand Qurʾan. The latter is written almost entirely in Kufic rasm: Surah Al-Aʿaraf (7), Ayahs 86 & 87, of the Samarkand Qur'an:

Compare the Basmala (Arabic: بَسْمَلَة‎), the beginning verse of the Qurʾān with all diacritics and with the rasm only. Note that when rasm is written with spaces, spaces do not only occur between words. Within a word, spaces also appear between adjacent letters that are not connected, and this type of rasm is old and not used lately.

Rasm with spaces [c]	‍ ٮسم‌‌ ا ل‍ل‍ه ا لر حمں‌ ا لر حىم
Rasm only [c]	ٮسم ال‍ل‍ه الرحمں الرحىم
Iʿjām and all diacritics [c]	بِسْمِ ٱللَّٰهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
Basmala Unicode character U+FDFD	﷽
Transliteration	bi-smi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīmi

• Kufic
• Abjad numerals
• History of the Arabic alphabet
• Qiraʾat
• Modern Arabic mathematical notation
• Book Pahlavi, an Iranian script with similar graphemic convergence.

• Some pages from the famous Saint 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