U+0627 "ا" Arabic Letter Alef Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
ا
U+0627 "ا" Arabic Letter Alef is the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, functioning primarily as a long vowel representing the sound /aː/ and as a support for the glottal stop diacritics hamza (ء) or maddah (آ). As one of the most common graphemes in Arabic script, it is written as a vertical stroke and appears in initial, medial, and final forms depending on its connection to adjacent letters. In addition to its phonetic role, Alef serves a crucial orthographic function by carrying these diacritical marks to indicate specific pronunciations, and it is also used in Persian, Urdu, and other languages that employ the Arabic-based writing system.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+0627 |
| Version Added | 1.1 |
| Name | Arabic Letter Alef |
| Block | Arabic |
| General Category | Other Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Arabic Letter |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ا |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ا |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xD8 0xA7 |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x0627 |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x00000627 |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u0627 |