Fonts for Arabic

Last update: Wed Sep 19 17:36:35 EDT 2001

Luc Devroye (copyright)
School of Computer Science
McGill University
Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6
luc@cs.mcgill.ca
http://jeff.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc
http://jeff.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/fonts.html



Abdulamir L. Mryhij

alAlmaiha Software, Freezone, Naser City, Cairo, Egypt.
mailto:amryhij@intouch.com

Afghan-Reality

Free Pashto (Afghan) truetype font WL PashtoNaskh by Gamma Productions.

Afzal

Free font Afzal (truetype) by Tanzir Hussain. No more web page.

Ahmad Sha'ath

Arab calligrapher.

AIAP--Iranian Fonts

Download two Farsi truetype fonts, Pfont and Sepehr.

Al Fatihah: Amien World International

Free Arab font Amien.ttf by Chairul Nurdin.
mailto:chairulnurdin@geocities.com

Alagha Arabic Type

Andalus font sold by Glyph Systems of Andover, MD.
mailto:info@glyphsys.com

Alan M. Stanier

Alan M. Stanier from Essex University has created the following metafonts: ams1, cherokee, cypriote, dancers, estrangelo (ancient Syriac language), georgian, goblin, iching, itgeorgian, ogham (on ancient Irish and pictish carvings), osmanian (twentieth-century font used in Somalia), roughogham, shavian, southarabian (for various languages circa 1500BC), ugaritic (ancient cuneiform alphabet). More direct access.
mailto:alan@essex.ac.uk

Alan Wood's Unicode Resources

List of unicode fonts and font links including stuff on WGL4, Arabic, Chinese, Chinese siimplified, Ethiopic, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Yi.
mailto:alan.wood@context.co.uk

Alcitech 2000

Announcement of the alliance between Alcitech2000 (Syed Hyder's Montreal based company for developing Arabic script fonts), Tri_Vision and Nichimen.

Alex Khalil

Arabic script software list maintainer.
mailto:iskandar@eesun1.tamu.edu

Amr Haggag

Links to Arab word processors and some fonts on Amr Haggag's home page.
mailto:haggag@ceg.uiuc.edu

Apple Arabic Language Kit

Arabic kit for the Mac. Includes these Arabic fonts (typically truetype and type 1): AlBayan, Baghdad, Cairo, Geeza, Kufi, Nadeem, Thuluth; and these Persian fonts (all truetype and type 1): Amir, Ashfahan, Kamran, Mashad, NadeemFarsi, Tehran.

Apple's Arabic Language Kit

Pathetic quality from an aging company. Lots of choice though: Arabic fonts AlBayan (TrueType and Postscript), Baghdad (TrueType and Postscript), Cairo (bitmap), Geeza (TrueType and Postscript), Kufi (TrueType and Postscript), Nadeem (TrueType and Postscript), Thuluth (Postscript), Persian fonts Amir (TrueType and Postscript), Ashfahan (TrueType and Postscript), Kamran (TrueType and Postscript), Mashad (TrueType and Postscript), NadeemFarsi (TrueType and Postscript), Tehran (bitmap).
mailto:webmaster@apple.co.jp

Arabia Ware Benelux

Vendor of Mac and PC fonts for several languages and from a variety of companies. Only commercial stuff for Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Urdu, Tamazight, Turkish, Greek, Indic, Thai, Eastern European, and Korean.
mailto:awb@arabiaware.com

Arabic

Free fonts at Howard Berlin's site: Arabic. Includes Djerba, Karbala (by Shaun Astarabadi for the Digital Islamic Library Project), and Siddiqua TrueType fonts.
mailto:berlin@hopi.dtcc.edu

Arabic calligraphy

General site with links. Check also here.

Arabic FAQ

Knut S. Vikor's Arabic Macintosh page explains about the use of Arabic on Macs.
mailto:knut.vikor@smi.uib.no

Arabic font for Unicode

Mark Leishers's BDF font is 24pt/100 dpi, and has about 600 glyphs.
mailto:mleisher@crl.nmsu.edu

Arabic module for Pango

Pango is software for X/UNIX for handling/editing Arabic, Urdu and Indic texts. This page by Karl Koehler has some information and links on this free software.
mailto:koehler@or.uni-bonn.de

Arabic Type 1

Essay by Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFares about the challenges facing Arabic font designers. She teaches at the Graphic Design program of the American University of Beirut.

Arabismo

Arabic font links, with discussions in Spanish.

Arabs Internet Club

29 New Arabic truetype fonts: AbadiMT, AF_Abha, AF_Ahsa, AF_Aseer, AF_Buryidah, AF_Ed-Dammam, AF_Diwani, AF_El-Hada, AF_Hijaz, AF_Jeddah, AF_Jizan, AF_El-Kharj, AF_El-Khobar, AF_Najed, AF_Quseem, AF_Riyadh, AF_Tabook, AF_Tholoth, AF_Unizah, AkhbarMT, AkhbarMT-Bold, AlexeiCopperplateITC, Algerian, Al_KhatNormal (Al_Khat cfamily by Hisham Diab and Hassan Loutfy), Al_KhatItalic, AGA-Arabesque, AGA-ArabesqueDesktop.

ArabTex by Klaus Lagally

If you use LaTeX and want the top of the line in Arabic fonts (and free too!), get the metafont that comes with ArabTex: Professor Klaus Lagally's ArabTeX is a LaTeX extension for high-quality arabic writing. It is free. CTAN archive.
mailto:lagally@informatik.uni-stuttgart.de

ArabTex by Klaus Lagally (alternate FTP site)

CTAN site.

AramediA Group (Boston and Beirut)

George Hallak's outfit specializing in Arabic Fonts for Microsoft Arabic Windows 95 and Sakhr Windows. Glyph's Arabic Fonts (16) for Arabic Win 95, 3 in 1 package 59.00. Sakkal's Arabic & Islamic Calligraphic Designs (PC or Mac) $49.95. Sakhr's Modern Arabic True Type Font is $30.00. Sakhr's Al-Jawaher Fonts Scalable (Khuttout Tajmiliah) is $50.00. ASC's True Type Font Pack one for Ar. Win 3.x is $30.00. Programmers/Localizers/Consultants Arabization & Software Center, Arabic Educational Multimedia. Jawaher Al Horof 4.0 (Editor): Arabic Editor for Design Applications. Arabic Fonts. Arabic Keyboard Tutor. The Jawaher Fonts Program provides more than fifty different font styles with all available effects, such as bold, italics, shading and molding. The Jawaher Fonts can be operated under the programs Ustaz 3.1 and Desktop Publishing 3.0 with no special operating requirements in working under Microsoft Arabic Windows and Sakhr Windows. 68USD. Other font families: Sakhr, Kofi, Naskh, Reqaa, Akhbar, Persian.
mailto:gnhbos@aol.com

ARP's free text utilities (MS-DOS) and TTF-fonts

Two TrueType fonts: ARP Numfont replaces characters by ASCII values, and Celtic-Iberian is just that. All fonts by Anton van de Repe.
mailto:vdrepe@arp.nl

Art and Fonts by Sean (was: the Black box)

Sean BW showcases great Arab, Japanese and Chinese calligraphy. In addition, his free fonts include Thorns, Hours in the Rain, The Tomb, Vampyres Garden, and Seven Waves Sighs Salome. Very nice gothic and medieval style creations. Many caps, great historical fonts, with sources discussed. I wish the designer would divulge his name.
mailto:codeinefreak@yahoo.com

Ashurbanipal Software

About 60 free Arabic truetype fonts by Ashur Cherry at Ashurbanipal Software.
mailto:ashurbanipal@xoommail.com

Asiasoft (Liwal Group)

Sells word processing software for Arabic, Pashto, Farsi and Urdu fonts for Windows 95 and Windows NT. The 300-800 USD packages include some TrueType fonts in these languages.
mailto:asiasoft@liwal.net

Asiatype

Dari, Farsi, Pashto, Urdu fonts at Asiatype in Pakistan. Commercial.
mailto:asiatype@liwal.net

Baharestan

Free Arabic fonts Irsys, Sepehr.

Beautiful Arabic Faces

At Fontworld, Arabic and Persian faces. Type 1 for Mac and Windows. Commercial.
mailto:fontworld@aol.com

Bitstream Cyberbit

From their web page: "Bitstream® Cyberbit is our award-winning international font. Based on one of our most popular and readable type designs (Dutch 801 BT), it includes all the typographic characters for most of the world's major languages. Cyberbit is now available! The product release includes the roman weight of Dutch 801 BT, a "serif" font. (A serif font has small finishing strokes at the end of the main stems, arms, and tails of characters, while a sanserif font does not.) The font is in TrueType® format for Windows 95® and Windows NT. Future releases will provide support for "sanserif" typefaces, other platforms, other font formats, and even more languages. Bitstream Cyberbit is a work in progress. Bitstream is now distributing the roman weight of Cyberbit, free of charge, over the Internet! Remember, this release is in TrueType format for Windows 95 and Windows NT". If link does not work, try here, or here. Has Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Korean, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Thai, Vietnamese, and Latin.
mailto:info@bitstream.com

Boutros International

Boutros calligraphic Arabic fonts (sold by Glyph Systems) are fonts designed by "Boutros International" a group of experts headed by Mourad and Arlette Boutros. These beautiful TrueType Fonts are designed to work in Microsoft's Arabic Windows versions 3.1 / 95 / 98 / NT as well as on the Mac OS with an Arabic Language Kit. These fonts include Boutros Decorative Kufic, Boutros Display, Boutros Koufic, Boutros MB Naskh, Boutros Modern, Boutros New Koufic Modern, Boutros Simplified Naskh, Boutros Asifa, Boutros Farah, Boutros Farasha, Boutros Fares, Boutros Najm. See also here.
mailto:info@glyphsys.com

Catmando

Himalb: free Arabic truetype font.

Chinese Desktop Publishing

Commercial Persian, Arabic and Hebrew language kits.

Classical Text Editor (CTE)

A project by Stefan Hagel at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, CTE is a universal (Windows, Mac) text editor for many languages. It has a battery of fonts for various languages, such as Hebrew and Arab.
mailto:Stefan.Hagel@oeaw.ac.at

CLGraph

Arab calligraphy pages with particular sections on the Koufi, Duwani and Tughraa scripts.

CLGraph

Arab calligraphy pages with particular sections on the Koufi, Duwani and Tughraa scripts.

Computer Corporation

Company marketing Urdu language software and text editors. No fonts, as far as I can tell.
mailto:computercorp@hotmail.com

ComStar: Arabic Kit for the Mac

Arabic/Farsi kit (commercial).
mailto:chinabus@gy.com

ComStar: List of Links

List of Arabic font links at ComStar.
mailto:info@gy.com

Cosmorama

Esoteric fonts and special symbols by Kenneth Hirst. Includes shareware and full version ($$) fonts such as Astro, Alchemy, AmericanIndian dingbats, arabic, Flowchart, SpecialPi, Sequoyah (for Cherokee), CircleBullets, ArrowBullets, Siddiqua (Arabic: Laser Printing Solutions. P.O. Box 5362, Irvine, CA 92716). Some of his fonts. Alternate URL.
mailto:kenneth_hirst@compuserve.com

Dari/Farsi fonts

At the Dari Corner, find several free Dari/Farsi fonts for contemporary Dari Afghan writing: Forouzan, Khorshid.

DariSoft

Commercial Dari, Pashto, Arabic and Urdu fonts. Company based in New Farm, Queensland, Australia.
mailto:darisoft@hotmail.com

DecoType

Thomas Milo (DecoType, Amsterdam) is a specialist in Arabic, Turkic and Slavic linguistics and develops Arabic font technology. He has worked on the MS Arabic fonts. His company's beautiful fonts sell for 125 USD: P.O. Box 55518, 1007 NA Amsterdam, The Netherlands. I heard Thomas talk about Arabic fonts at the 1998 RIDT in Saint-Malo: a masterful performance, entertaining and insightful from start to finish. DecoType contributes fonts and Arabic Calligraphy applications to Microsoft Office Arabic Edition; to Adobe PageMaker Middle East DecoType provides a special interface for Calligraphic typesetting; to the MacOS 9 it contributes Arabic fonts. Bio at ATypI.
mailto:tmilo@decotype.com

Delta Computer Homepage

Font vendor: has OCRA and B, APL, LetterGothic, Courier, Script, Arabic, Katakana, Korean, and Russian fonts.
mailto:jsealy@deltacomputer.com

Digitek

Baha Yaaqob or Taoufiq: 7631 Leesburg Pike, Suite B, Falls Church, VA 22043-2520, USA.
mailto:digitek326@aol.com

Diman

Cyrillic, Greek, Arab, Hebrew and Turkish fonts. Free.

Djerba

Free rectangular-looking "simplified" Arabic font by Peter Wiegel.
mailto:100552.3444@compuserve.com

Eastern Language Systems of Vazhe Negar

Vazhe Negar is a registered trade mark of Eastern Languages (UK-based). Contact Habib Yosri.
mailto:info@easternlanguages.com

Ecological Linguistic

Arabic Type 1 fonts: P.O. Box 15156, Washington, D.C., 20003
mailto:ecoling@applelink.apple.com

Fareed Abd Raheem Al-Ali

Kuwaiti calligrapher.

Farhad Abdolian

"Persian font", a Monotype truetype font with both Arabic and Latin characters, modified by Seema Consulting/Farhad Abdolian.
mailto:farhad@algonet.se

Farhan

Offers free, fully working Urdu windows software. It is a complete DTP system with abiltity to use True Type fonts, paste graphics from any windows program, spell check, OLE 2.0.
mailto:comcrop@hd1.vsnl.net.in

Farsi font

A free Farsi truetype font.

Farsi Fonts

Sepehr truetype font family.

Farsi Info

Jasmin truetype font, copyright Farsi Info.
mailto:info@farsiinfo.de

Farsi (Persian)

Free fonts at Howard Berlin's site.
mailto:berlin@hopi.dtcc.edu

FarsiTEX

Farsi TEX program and fonts. Page by Hassan Abolhassani. 1MB worth of zipped Farsi fonts.
mailto:ahassan@cit.ics.saitama-u.ac.jp

FarsiTeX fonts

FarsiTeX fonts in a 1MB zipped font file.

Fax-away Urdu website

Free Urdu TT font by Adil Rehan, Karachi, Pakistan.
mailto:adil@safeer.com

Fereydoon Moshiri

Sepehr truetype fonts.

Fonts in Cyberspace-Non Roman Fonts

Pick up several Windows and Mac fonts here.

fonts.themes.org (Arabic Fonts)

Some Arabic BDF fonts ("mulearabic").
mailto:feedback@themes.org

Fontworld

Quality-crafted multiple language fonts. Based in New York and run by Israel Seldowitz, they sell Arabic, Russian, Greek, Vietnamese, Hebrew, Baltic and Central European faces.
mailto:fontworld@aol.com

Fontworld (Arabic)

Arabic Pagemaker. Includes four Arabic fonts plus a special calligraphy Arabic font supporting over 300 ligatures. Also available is Adobe Arabic PhotoShop. Also makes many Arabic and Persian fonts in PostScript, and does custom work.
mailto:fontworld@aol.com

Freelang

French site for various non-Latin language fonts.

Ftp-Server Rechenzentrum Uni Heidelberg

University of Heidelberg archive with well-documented fonts and font software. Has copies of SmartFont (Windows font previwer), TTFPlus (16-bit font management), TipoMaker (typebook maker), JobSpecific16 v2.01 (Postscript font assigner), Softy. Siddiqua (Arab truetype font by Laser Printing Solutions, Irvine, CA). About ten morse code fonts.
mailto:ftp-admin@ftp.urz.uni-heidelberg.de

Gamma Productions

Arabic Type 1 fonts.
mailto:72567.1343@compuserve.com

geckil.com

Arabic font links.

Georg Popp

Munich-based designer of Sindbad, a dingbat font of ornaments found in Oman.
mailto:oman@cube.net

Globatec

Free Arabic truetype font called Globatec.
mailto:mail@globatec.com

Glyph Systems

Font vendor. Custom font design in most languages. MS Arabic Windows distributor in US: additional fonts for $79. P.O. Box 134, Andover, MA 01810, USA. Also sells Hebrew fonts. Seels for Agfa, Alagha Associates, Arthur Baker Designs, ITC, Maverick Designs, Boutros International, and Sakkal Designs. Headed by Steve Reef. For 89USD, get 16 beautiful Arabic fonts: ITC Boutros Rokaa, Koufi, Ousbough, Arabic Borders, Diwani, Architect, ITC Boutros Modern Kufic, AGA Andalus (some of these in multiple weights). For 72USD, get 13 Hebrew fonts (some in multiple weights): Khadeysh, Ktav, Rashi, and Mesorati. The latter fonts, plus Diwani and Architect, are original fonts by Glyph Systems.
mailto:info@glyphsys.com

Haig Der Ohanian

Torontonian who sells two Armenian fonts at 15 USD a piece. Also, four Arabic fonts.
mailto:deroh@interlog.com

Hassan Massoudy

Arabic calligraphy like you've never seen before.
mailto:hassan.massoudy@wanadoo.fr

Hawzah

Free Farsi font Noor.ttf.
mailto:NOOR@noornet.net

Hieroglyphische Links

Hieroglyphic and Arabic font links.

High quality Arabic fonts

About 100 (seemingly free) TrueType fonts including the following Arabic families: Traditional_Arabic, Simplified_Arabic, Arabic_Transparent, all from Agfa; AkhbarMT; Andalus (by Mohammed Alagha); the DecoType Classic Naskh Family of Fonts by Thomas Milo; the DecoType Classic Thuluth Family of Fonts by thomas Milo; MonotypeKoufi; MudirMT.

Howard Berlin's foreign font archive

Dr. HumBug, Delaware Technical & Community College. Foreign fonts archive. A fantastic site with nearly all foreign (non-roman) scripts represented.
mailto:berlin@hopi.dtcc.edu

Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFares

Huda is collecting information for a resource book on typographers specializing in Arabic.
mailto:mailto:smitsy@compuserve.com

ICB fonts

Iqraa: Free Arabic truetype font by ICB Fonts.
mailto:sedki@vt.edu

Imoir.org

The following truetype fonts from Siansoft: Titr-s-Bold (Persian, 1993), Traffic-s-Bold (Persian, 1993), Traffic-s (Persian, 1993), Zar-s (Persian, 1995), Zar-Bold (Latin&Persian, 1997), Zar-Normal (Latin&Persian, 1997). Plus Monotype's PersianFont, and Bitstream's Zurich-Black-Extended-BT and Zurich-Extended-BT.

Iran Vision Fonts

Two free truetype fonts, iranVision1, IranVision2.

iranet

A free mixed Farsi/Roman font based on Times. Truetype.

Iranian Cultural and Information Center

Farsi fonts and editors.

Iransys

Download Iransys.

IRNA

Ten Arabic truetype fonts called Irnafont: COMPBLD, Comp_3, Froz_1, Naz_bld, Nazan, Nazan_s, Tradi, Yaghot_bld, Yekta, Yekta_bld.

ISC: Web Fonts

Free ParsNegarII fonts for all platforms, and in Persian, arabic and Urdu flavors. ISC stands for International Systems Consultancy. Also, a Kurdish and Assyrian web font.

Islamic Calligraphy with Mohamed Zakariya

Mohamed Zakariya gives us an Islamic calligraphy lesson.

Islamic Downloads Archive

Great site with the following free Arabic truetype fonts: MCS-Jeddah, MCS-Hijon, MCS-Modern-E, MCS-Diwany, MCS-Islamic-Art, MCS-Basmalah, MCS-Mix, Islamic font (four dingbats), Al-Kharashi, Andalus (by Mohammed Alagha), Baloon, mamloky.

Islamic Downloads Archive

Jaghbub Font Package

On the Arabic Mac site in Norway kept by Knut S. Vikor. Three fonts for transcription of Arabic, Jaghbub, Koufra and Bairut.
mailto:knut.vikor@smi.uib.no

Jamal Enterprise (Badrul Vajihuddin)

50 TrueType fonts: P.O. Box 8061, Fremont CA 94537-8061, USA.
mailto:badrul@netcom.com

jasarat.com

Free Urdu.ttf, made by Adil Rehan, Karachi, Pakistan.
mailto:adil@safeer.com

Karbala font

Free Arabic font developed by Ahlul Bayt for the Digital Islamic Library Project (DILP).

Katuwa Suryaya 2000

SyriacWriter 2000 comes with Syriac, English, Persian, and Arabic fonts.

Knut S. Vikør: Arabic Macintosh site

Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Bergen, Norway. Fantastic page on Arabic fonts and font software.
mailto:knut.vikor@smi.uib.no

Konouz

Arabic font links.

Kurdish Virtual library

Kurdish/Arabic/Farsi font links.

LangBox International Arabic Support for UNIX

Arabic support for UNIX (commercial product), including some font solutions. Code set and font set include the following: Codeset ISO 8859-6, ASMO 449 plus, ASMO 708, Fontset iso-8859-6-8, Fontset iso-8859-6-16.
mailto:sales@gulfusa.com

LaserSindhi fonts from Linguist's Software

TrueType and Type 1 fonts for Macintosh computers. Four fonts, 100 USD. Sindhi is spoken in Pakistan, where it is written in the Arabic script with the addition of several letters to accommodate special sounds. Sindhi is also one of the constitutional languages of India.

Layout

From Lebanon: sellers of ArabicXT, Kalimat, and Zakhrafat. They also sell a CD-ROM (v1.1) with 150 Arabic fonts.
mailto:Layout@dm.net.lb

leb.net

FTP archive of Arab files, including arabtex and arabfont.

Linguist's Software

LaserArabic and Farsi commercial fonts. Gene Sorensen: P.O.Box 580, Edmonds, WA 98020-0580, USA. Four fonts: Lateefi, Kitabi, Nargisi, Sarmast.
mailto:fonts@linguistsoftware.com

Linotype

Arabic faces in the Linotype library: AlHarf AlJadid (Ismet Chanbour, 1985), Hassan (H. Sidahmed, 1993), Hisham (Ahmed Maged, 1993), Karim (Tim Holloway, 1994), Lotus (Linotype staff, 1978), Maged (Linotype staff, 1956, 1987), Mariam (Ismet Chanbour, 1992), Mofid Mahdi (Mofid Mahdi, 1985), Nazanin (linotype staff, 1978), Qadi (linotype staff, 1985), Vakout (linotype staff, 1911).

Linotype Arabic types

Commercial Arabic fonts at Linotype: Ahmed, Al Harf Al Jadid, Hassan, Hisham, Karim, Lotus, Maged, Mariam, Mofid Mahdi, Nazanin, Qadi, Yakout.
mailto:info@fonts.de

Linotype-Hell

Some good Arabic fonts in Type1 format (some of them designed by Walter Tracy). Large type foundry: 425 Oser Avenue, Hauppauge, NY 11788 9890, USA. Other links: Linotype-Hell AG, Linotype-Hell UK, Linotype-Hell Japan and Linotype-Hell North America. Check also this link.
mailto:info@linotype.com

Loai Gammo

Was working with Al-Alamiah and might have access to their (Sakhr) fonts.
mailto:louay@rosebud.turing.toronto.edu

Lyubov Kuznetsova

Moscow-based designer of the Type Directors Club 1999 award-winning design PT Kufi Arabic (1997), available from ParaType. Also did Literaturnaya there, around 1940. Specializes in Arabic type. Designer of the Latin/Cyrillic face Academy (1989) (a modern version based on ideas of Berthram G. Goodhue and Morris Fuller Benton). CV ast bukvaraz.

Mac OS Farsi text encoding

Mac OS text encoding: Arabic

MacOS versions of IRNA fonts

About ten Mac versions of the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) fonts are downloadable from this site maintained by George Maschke.

Mazar Fonts

Free Farsi truetype fonts: BadrMazar, CompsetMazar, DivaniMazar, FerdosiMazar, GrandKufiMazar, HusseiniMazar, KoodakMazar, LotusMazar, MajalleMazar, MajallaCondensedMazar, MajiidMazar, MajiidShadedMazar, MashghMazar, MitraBoldMazar, MitraMazar, MudirMazar, NajahMazar, NasimMazar, NaskhMazar, NazaninMazar, RagheMazar, ReyhanMazar, ShafighMazar, SiavashMazar, SinaMazar, TawfighMazar, TawfigOutlineMazar, ThulthMazar, TitrMazar, TraficMazar. These fonts, which have a copyright notice of Glyph Systems and Monotype, 1993, require special software as they make heavy use of the GSUB tables for ligatures.

Mirza Ali

Farsi and Arab font links.

Monotype Non-Latin Fonts

Monotype sells fonts for the following languages: Amharic, Aksara Kaganga, Arabic, Armenian, Balinese, Burmese, Cambodian, Chinese, Coptic, Devanagari (Hindi/Marathi), Farsi, Georgian, Glagolitic, Gujerathi, Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Hebrew, Japanese, Javanese, Jawi, Kannada, Korean, Laotian, Lontarak, Malayalam, Old Bulgarian, Oriya, Pushto, Sindhi, Sinhalese, Surat Pustaha, Syriac, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Urdu, Vietnamese.
mailto:Tech@monotype.com

Monotype Non-Latin Fonts

Monotype markets some Arabic fonts.

Monotype Typography Inc.

A major type foundry, set up in 1887 by Tolbert Lanston. Some very good Arabic fonts in Type 1 format. Some of the fonts are: Akhbar normal and bold, Boutros Kufic light and medium, Boutros Setting light, medium and bold, Kufi bold, Ladhkar Ghazal normal and bold, Mudir, Naskh normal and bold, Zohar normal and bold. Agfa took over Monotype in 1998 to form Agfa-Monotype. Monotype history.
mailto:sales@agfamonotype.com

MT WorldType arabic

Info on Arabic fonts at Monotype, which sells many fonts. Interesting calligraphic design: Noori Nastaliq typeface and ligature system was designed by Mr. Mirza Jamil T.I. Because of its calligraphic nature, Noori Nastaliq is not available as a standard font for the common hardware platforms. The addressing of this font requires specially customized software and ligature access tables.

Multilingual Macintosh Resources: Arabic

Andreas Prilop's Arabic font links.
mailto:prilop@altavista.net

Music of the Ancient Near East

Richard Dumbrill's page. Find a free font Akkadian-1, and a commercial family, RD-Akkadian (cuneiform signs). Plus RD-Times Scholar (commercial). Furthermore, custom font design for Syriac, Ugaritic, Hittite cuneiforms, South Arabian, Phoenician.
mailto:ricdum@aol.com

Neda Rayaneh Download Center

Persian font Sepehr (by Monotype).
mailto:svahid@neda.net

Official Home of Gerdsooz

Ahmed Alavi and Mahyar Rahmatian offer various free formats of the Farsi font Gerdsooz.
mailto:aaalavi@ingr.com

Orient

Cyrillic and Arabic truetype fonts: WL-ArabicNaskh (Gamma Productions, 1995), Diacritics (by ParaGraph, a nice Cyrillic font), SymbolMT, TimesNRCyrMT, TimesNRCyrMT-Inclined.

ParaType

The main digital type foundry from Russia. It also develops and distributes font oriented and localization software. Products include FastFont, a simple TrueType builder, ParaNoise, a builder for PostScript fonts with random contours, FontLab, a universal font editor and ScanFont, a font editor with scanning module. Random, customized fonts. Multilingual fonts including, Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, Georgian and Hebrew fonts for Macintosh and Windows. Catalog. Contact Maxim Zhukov. In the ParaType Store, you can buy Academy, Pragmatica, Newton, Courier, Futura, Petersburg, Jakob, ITC Studio Script, ITC Zapf Chancery, Karolla, Inform, Hafiz (Arabic), Kolheti (Georgian), Benzion (Hebrew). Most are Unicode fonts. Free ParaType fonts include Courier Cyrillic, Pushkin (handwriting font), and a complete font set for Cyrillic (KOI8, DOS, ISO8859-5 and Mac encodings). Type designers: Vladimir Yefimov, Tagir Safaev, Lyubov Kuznetsova, Manvel Schmavonyan, Alexander Tarbeer.
mailto:fonts@paratype.com

ParsNegar

Free Win95,Win3 utility for right-to-left scripts, contextual analysis.

Persian Calligraphy by Yadolah Kaboly-Khansari

Gorgeous Nastalique writing.

Persian Fonts

About ten free Farsi truetype fonts: Nasim (by Aidin Tavakkol, Rostam, Sepehr and Yekta (Monotype), and WEB_Yazd (from The Apadana Farsi WEB Fonts Collection by John Yaralian). Also, Web Rostam, Web Thulth, Web Trafic, Iran System Navid.

Persian Internet Tools

Two free Farsi truetype fonts, Khorshid and Forouzan, developed by Eastern Language Design for the Iran-e-azad Organization.

Persian internet Tools

Some Persian fonts can be downloaded here: Forouzan, and Khorshid, both by Eastern Languages design (1996). PC and Mac.

Phontografics

100-font Swedish archive. Has an Arabic shareware font section. In the Asian font section, grab Arakawa (katakana), and a few far-from-complete Chinese fonts.
mailto:eyeball@kurir.net

Quran Standard

The Quran Standard truetype font, by Micro Systems International (1994).

R.H. Ansari

Archive with the following Arabic truetype fonts: AGA-Arabesque (nice Arabic ornaments and calligraphic sets made in 1994 by MAK Alagha, Applied Graphic Arts), Akhbar-MT-Bold, Akhbar-MT, DecoType-Naskh, DecoType-Naskh-Special, DecoType-Naskh-Variants, DecoType-Naskh-Swashes, DecoType-Thuluth, DecoType-Naskh-Extensions (all DecoType fonts by Thomas Milo), Monotype-Koufi-Bold, Mudir-MT, Quran-Standard, Quran-Madina (all Quran fonts by Micro Systems International, 1994), Simplified-Arabic-Backslanted-Bold-Italic (Agfa, 1993), Traditional-Arabic-Backslanted-Bold-Italic (Agfa, 1990), Urdu (by Adil Rehan from Karachi, 1997).

Rumi Gallery Persian Calligraphy

Iranian calligrapher Ali Rouhfar at work.
mailto:alrou@juno.com

Sakhr Software

Font package: Al-Khatout Al-Haditha ($30) offers 53 true type fonts, plus shading, shadow, and outlined styles. For more information, contact Digitek at 180033sakhr or fax 7038830137.

Sakkal Design

Arab calligraphy pages by Mamoun Sakkal. Recommended visit. Has particularly nice description of the cursive styles like Naskh, Thuluth, Muhaqqaq, Nastaliq, and riq'a. Mamoun Sakkal's company touches on every aspect of Arab calligraphy and design. Calligraphy and font services. DecoType Professional Naskh (31 truetupe fonts, available in Word 6.0 for Windows).

Shahrvand Font

A two-weight TrueType Arab font family called Shahrvand, by Eastern Languages. Free.

Shariati

A free Farsi truetype font.

siamakr

Two Kurdish truetype fonts: Kurdish web by International Systems Consultancy (1998) and K-Dylan-Apo traditional Arabic by Medine-Samht (1993).

SouthArabian

From Essex University, Alan M. Stanier's metafont for South Arabian. % This font was used for several languages in Southern Arabia in the second millenium BC.
mailto:alan@essex.ac.uk

Southern Software Inc. (SSi)

SSi sells foreign fonts for Arabic, Urdu, Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, Baltic, Burmese, Cherokee, Cyrillic, Cree, Simplified Chinese, Ethiopian, Inuktitut, Gaelic, IPA, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Mayan. Farsi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Syriac, South Arabian, Tamil, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Ugaritic, and Vietnamese. Plus musical dingbats. Of course, they did not make a single of these fonts themselves.
mailto:pking@flnet.com

Summer Institute of Linguistics

Nastaliq font for QuickDraw GX. Available as shareware from Jonathan Kew. It allows Arabic, Urdu, and similar languages to be written using the elegant Nastaliq style of calligraphy. URW write-up.
mailto:no.spam@here.please

Taexna Studio

Ablikim Sulayman's page in which you can download his Taexna truetype font for the Uyghur language.
mailto:taexna@yahoo.com

The Arabic Fonts HomePage for Arabic MS Windows

Links to Arabic fonts.
mailto:fonts@unizah.net

The Arabic Macintosh

Arabic on the Mac, demystified by Knut S. Vikør.
mailto:knut.vikor@smi.uib.no

The Universal Word Software

c/o Unipro Inc., 45 River Drive South, #105, Jersey City, NJ 07310, USA.
mailto:uniproinc@aol.com

Tooraj Enyati

Creator of the beautiful Pars Ziba font (free).
mailto:tooraj@rdt.monash.edu.au

Unicode BDF fonts

Mark Leisher at the Computing Research Lab of New Mexico State University has developed a set of (free) proportional, 12pt, 100dpi BDF (bitmap) fonts primarily for use with dense technical papers on the Web and with X11. The fonts contain about 4050 glyphs so far, including approximately 450 for coverage of the contextual forms needed for the Unicode Arabic blocks, U+0600-U+06FF. Finished are a Devanagari Unicode BDF font, and an Arabic Unicode BDF font. Quite a bit of Unicode is supported, except for the following major blocks: 1. The Hangul block. 2. The Han block (Hanja,Hanzi,Kanji,Chu Han). 3. The Indic scripts. 4. The Tibetan script.
mailto:mleisher@crl.nmsu.edu

Unicode chart for Arabic

Urdu Channel

Syed Adnan Ahmed's page on Urdu word processing (Sadaf word processor). Download the free Kaatib font.
mailto:urdu@online.no

URDU Khat-e-Naqsh

Urdu font Khat-e-Naqsh for Mac, PC and Unix.

Urdu Page by Shehzad

Urdu word processing site by Shehzad Ashiq Ali of Ashiq Enterprises in Lahore, Pakistan. Has the fonts UrduNaqsh (truetype, Nastalique and ordinary version, made in 1999). PC, Mac and UNIX versions of these fonts, all created by Shehzad himself.

Urdu Web

One free Urdu font, Umair I. Installation instructions.

Urdu.ttf

Free Urdu truetype font by Adil Rehan, Karachi, Pakistan.
mailto:adil@safeer.com

Vlad Atanasiu

Two free Times New Roman fonts for the transliteration of Arabic.
mailto:atanasiu@mailexcite.com

Wics

Sidus Micro Technology from Dubai, UAE, is involved in OpenType font development, for Arabic and other languages. Contact: Waiel H. Ali.
mailto:wics@hotmail.com

Windows archive

Has arabttf and baghdad2.

xnsh

New Arabic font for ArabTeX, translated to type 1 format by Taco Hoekwater.
mailto:taco.hoekwater@wkap.nl

Yamada Hindi-Urdu WWW Guide

Yamada Language Center, University of Oregon: page with links for Hindi and Urdu fonts.
mailto:ylc@darkwing.uoregon.edu