Arebica

Arebica (Bosnian: arabica) is a variant of the Arabic script used to write the Bosnian language. It was used mainly between the 15th and 19th centuries and is frequently categorized as part of Aljamiado literature. During Austro-Hungarian rule, there were unsuccessful efforts by Bosnian Muslims to grant Arebica equal status alongside Cyrillic alphabets. Apart from literature, Arebica was used in religious schools and administration, though in much less use than other scripts.

Origin
Arebica was based on the Perso-Arabic script of the Ottoman Empire, with added letters for, and , which are not found in Arabic, Persian or Turkish. Full letters were eventually introduced for all vowels (as with Kurdish Arabic script), making Arebica a true alphabet, unlike its Perso-Arabic base.

Arebica was used by the Slavic Muslims in Central Bosnia during the Ottoman rule and continued usage during the Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina. During that period, they requested that Arebica be given equal status with the Latin and Cyrillic scripts, but the request wasn't granted. The usage of the script, however, continued sporadically even after.

The final version of Arebica was devised by Mehmed Džemaludin Čaušević at the end of the 19th century. His version is called Matufovica, Matufovača or Mektebica.

Contemporary use
The first literary work to be published in Arebica since 1941 was the comic book "Hadži Šefko i hadži Mefko" in 2005, by authors Amir Al-Zubi and Meliha Čičak-Al-Zubi. The authors made slight modifications to Arebica.

The first book in Arebica with an ISBN was "Epohe fonetske misli kod Arapa i arebica" ("The Age of Phonetic Thought of Arabs and Arebica") in April 2013 in Belgrade by Aldin Mustafić, MSc. This book represents the completion of the standardization of Mehmed Džemaludin Čaušević's version, and is also a textbook for higher education.

Alphabet
The final version of Arebica alphabet was devised at the end of the 19th century by Mehmed Džemaludin Čaušević. The alphabet listed here is a new version made by Aldin Mustafić.

Notes


 * The diacritic beneath the ا appears on the letter preceding the ى.
 * Mustafić uses ڃ and ݩ instead of Hah_with_inverted_v_below.svg and ںٛ for Ć ć/Ћ ћ and Nj nj/Њ њ.
 * Mustafić uses ݗ and Al-Zubi and Čičak-Al-Zubi use ڠ instead of Hah with v below.png for Đ đ/Ђ ђ.

Ligatures
Like the standard Arabic alphabet, when ا connects to either ل or ڵ a special ligature is used instead.

Prior to standardization, the most widespread Arebica conventions were based on Ottoman Turkish conventions, and similar to contemporary aljamiado conventions adopted for Albanian and Greek. Vowels are often written using matres lectionis, with the exception of /e/, which is only represented word-finally, as <ە>. /o/ and /u/ are not distinguished. /ɲ/, /ʎ/ and /ts/ were not distinguished from /n/, /l/ and /tʃ/, respectively spelt as <ن>, <ل> and <چ>. Palatal affricates /tɕ/ and /dʑ/ are both typically spelt as <ك>, due to the Persian letter <گ> not having been widely adopted yet, while velar stops /k/ and /g/ are represented with <ق> and <غ>.