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The twenty-eight Arabic letters in the abjad order on lapis, each with its number value in gold, arranged as units, tens, hundreds and a thousand, under the traditional memory words abjad hawwaz hutti kalaman sa'fas qurishat thakhadh dazagh.
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The Pattern Atlas

Abjad

No. 87 of 100 · free · 300 dpi

What you seeThe twenty-eight Arabic letters in the abjad order on lapis, each with its number value in gold, arranged as units, tens, hundreds and a thousand, under the traditional memory words abjad hawwaz hutti kalaman sa'fas qurishat thakhadh dazagh.

What it meansBefore Indian numerals spread, letters stood for numbers. In the eastern abjad order alif is one, ya is ten, qaf is a hundred and ghayn a thousand. The values were used for dates in chronograms and in astronomical tables.

Where it worksA rich, scholarly plate for a study, a library or a maths lover's wall.

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2:3 · 7200 × 10800 px4×6 · 8×12 · 12×18 · 16×24 · 20×30 · 24×36 in
3:4 · 5400 × 7200 px6×8 · 9×12 · 12×16 · 18×24 in
4:5 · 7200 × 9000 px4×5 · 8×10 · 16×20 · 24×30 in
11:14 · 3300 × 4200 px11×14 in
A-series · 7023 × 9933 pxA5 · A4 · A3 · A2 · A1

Everything is one ZIP: every shape and size, the phone wallpaper, the SVGs and a printing guide.

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All 100 prints
The twenty-eight Arabic letters in their usual order on cream tiles against rose, read from right to left and numbered. Letters that share a shape, such as ba, ta and tha, share a colour.The AlphabetNo. 88
Two panels on sage. Above, bare letter shapes beside their dotted forms, the dots in brown. Below, the letter ba with the short-vowel and reading marks: fatha, kasra, damma, sukun, shadda and tanwin, each named.Dots and VowelsNo. 89
A full palmette on terracotta: a fan of gold, blue and cream lobes rising from a green cup with curled volutes, flanked by two split half-palmettes on scrolling stems, inside a faint roundel. Tall shapes add a stem with paired leaves.PalmetteNo. 90
A repeating field on cream: rows of the cintamani motif, three blue balls each marked with a pale crescent above two red wavy lines, alternating with running gold cloud bands that curl at every crest.Cloud BandsNo. 91
A coral, cream and gold lotus seen from the front, rising on a slender stem between two long, curving serrated saz leaves in green, with small white blossoms on fine stems, on deep teal.Saz Leaf and LotusNo. 92
Three arched niches on saffron, each holding one plant: a red pomegranate split to show its seeds, a tall cypress with a flowering vine wound round it, and a slender red tulip, each labelled.Garden MotifsNo. 93
A large boteh on rose, its teardrop outline banded in gold, blue with cream beads, cream and red around a pale centre with a small gold flower, shown as a facing pair in wider shapes and one above another in the tall ones.BotehNo. 94
The corner of a carpet: a narrow outer guard stripe, a wide brown main border of rosettes and green cartouches on a scrolling vine, a narrow inner guard and the start of a blue field, with a rosette set square in the corner and each part labelled.Border AnatomyNo. 95

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