Arwi أروي‎
Arwi written in Arabic Script
Script type	Abjad
Time period	Present
Status	Religious Uses
Direction	Right-to-left script
Region	India, Sri Lanka
Languages	Tamil
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Syriac Nabataean Arabic Arwi
Sister systems	Arabi Malayalam
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Arab (160), ​Arabic
Unicode
Unicode alias	Arabic
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Arwi (أَرْوِيُّ‎ ʾArwīyyᵘ) or Arabu-Tamil (Tamil: அரபுத்தமிழ் Araputtamiḻ) is an Arabic-influenced dialect of the Tamil language written with an extension of the Arabic alphabet, with extensive lexical and phonetic influences from the Arabic language. Arwi has been used extensively by the Muslims of the Tamil Nadu state of India and Sri Lanka.

History

Arwi was an outcome of the cultural synthesis between seafaring Arabs and Tamil-speaking Muslims of Tamil Nadu. This language was enriched, promoted and developed in Kayalpattinam. It had a rich body of work in jurisprudence, Sufism, law, medicine and sexology, of which little has been preserved. It was used as a bridge language for Tamil Muslims to learn Arabic.^[1] The patrons of Arwi seem to have been the Nawab of the Carnatic, they were Islamic and were part of the Mughal Empire. Many hadith manuscripts have been found. Most of the fiqh books, particularly those of Imaam Abu Hanifa and Imaam Shaafi, have been found in Arwi.

There was also a translation of the Bible into Arwi in 1926.

Arwi still has a place among the more Arwi Muslim and Sri Lankan Moor families.

Script

The Arwi alphabet is the Arabic alphabet, with thirteen additional letters used to represent the Tamil vowels e and o and several Tamil consonants that could not be mapped to Arabic sounds.^[2]

Vowels

Consonants