U+10F30 "𐼰" Sogdian Letter Aleph Unicode Character

U+10F30 "𐼰" Sogdian Letter Aleph is the first letter of the Sogdian alphabet, an ancient script used primarily from the 4th to the 10th centuries CE to write the Sogdian language, an Eastern Iranian language of Central Asia. As the equivalent of the Semitic letter Aleph, it originally represented a glottal stop or served as a carrier for vowels, particularly the long vowel /aː/, and its inclusion in Unicode supports the digital study and preservation of Sogdian texts, which are crucial for understanding the history of the Silk Road, Manichaean religious literature, and early Buddhist translations.