The Ancient North Arabian scripts Ancient North Arabian is the name given to a group of scripts belonging to the South Semitic script family, which also includes the Ancient South Arabian alphabets (musnad and zabūr) and the vocalized alphabets used in Ethiopia for Geʿez, Amharic, etc. The Ancient North Arabian scripts were used both in the oases (Dadanitic, Dumaitic, Taymanitic,) and by the nomads (Hismaic, Safaitic, Thamudic B, C, D, and possibly Southern Thamudic). There are tens of thousands of inscriptions and graffiti in these scripts which were used in the period roughly between the sixth century BC and the fourth century AD. See the descriptions of the individual scripts below

The Ancient South Arabian script (Old South Arabian 𐩣𐩯𐩬𐩵 ms3nd; modern Arabic: الْمُسْنَد musnad) branched from the Proto-Sinaitic script in about the 9th century BCE. It was used for writing the Old South Arabian languages Sabaic, Qatabanic, Hadramautic, Minaean, and Hasaitic, and the Ethiopic language Ge'ez in Dʿmt. The earliest inscriptions in the script date to the 9th century BCE in Yemen. There are no letters for vowels, which are marked by matres lectionis. Its mature form was reached around 800 BCE, and its use continued until the 6th century CE, including Ancient North Arabian inscriptions in variants of the alphabet, when it was displaced by the Arabic alphabet In Ethiopia and Eritrea, it evolved later into the Ge'ez script, which, with added symbols throughout the centuries, has been used to write Amharic, Tigrinya and Tigre, as well as other languages (including various Semitic, Cushitic, and Nilo-Saharan languages).

Historical Background Old South Arabian Script (OSA) was used before the Islamic era not only in the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula, but actually in the entire Peninsula. In addition, samples of OSA have been found as far as Uruk in Mesopotamia, Delos in Greece, and Giza in Egypt. Archaeological finds show that as far back as the 8th century BCE, OSA was used in trade, religious writing, and in civil records. Following the spread of Islam in Yemen, the decline of OSA began in the 7th century CE as it was gradually supplanted by Arabic script. OSA was typically known by the name of the then-dominant peoples in the Southern Peninsula. At various times, it was known as Sabaean, Qatabani, or Hadramite, among others. Although it was used for a variety of languages, OSA is most strongly associated with Sabaean. Many Peninsular languages borrowed OSA before introducing further changes of their own. Prime examples are the Thamudic, Safaitic, and Lihyanite scripts which eventually developed into independent scripts. The westward migration of the Sabaean people into the Horn of Africa introduced the South Arabian consonantal alphabet into the region. The transplanted script formed the roots of the Geez script of Ethiopia, which, in time and under presumably external influences, developed into a rich syllabary unlike any other Semitic script in history. Even a cursory examination of the letter forms of Modern Ethiopic writing reveal a striking similarity to South Arabian Script. OSA inscriptions typically reveal a dominant right-to-left directionality, although there are also many cases of alternating directions, known as boustrophedon writing. Figure 1 is a fine example of this style of writing. OSA inscriptions were discovered early in the 19th century. Soon thereafter, two orientalists, Gesenius and Rödiger, made great strides towards deciphering the script. Styles of Writing Old South Arabian inscriptions have survived primarily on stone, ceramic, and metallic surfaces. Hundreds of artifacts have been found and, to this day, continue to be discovered. Some of the best examples number of inscriptions on softer materials, such as wood and leather, have also been discovered. Although there is a significant difference between the styles of letters on the hard surfaces and those on the soft. Old South Arabian (Musnad) is composed of 29 letters , that is one letter more than the Arabic alphabet, which is between “S” and “Sh”, and names “Samekh”. Aspects of difference between Musnad and the present Arabic writing is that Musnad is written in separate letters, and the shape of the letters do not change according to its place in the word. However, some letters change according to the beginning of the writing. Musnad is either prominent, or deep. Prominent writings are for important writings and deep writings are for ordinary. The material on which the Musnad was written were stones, rocks, wood, and metal. In the course of its development the Musnad use appeared in the “Lehyanite’, “Thamudic”, “Safaitic”, pen to which many changes and amendments were made. And from it “Habashi’ writing was born. As regards his place among the Arabs of the Peninsula , when we look at the internet and its role in cultural dialogue , the Arabs of the Peninsula considered Musnad inscription which was indisputably their national writing until the dawn of Islam. It was used by people in all parts of Arabia in their homeland and abroad . It was their means of chronology and record of their glories and history.2- Features of Musnad Script: 1. It is written from right to left and vice versa. 2. Its letters are not joined. 3. Shape of letters are uniform despite their positions in the word. 4. Words are separated by vertical lines. 5. A letter is doubled in case of assertion. 6. No points and punctuations. 7. Easy to be learned by beginners. My OSA Musnad Font My design and technical work is only a treatment of the OSA Musnad as a symbol of writing. And it is possible to use in computer.. My design is not aimed at demonstrating the linguistic and intellectual structure of the Old South Arabian (Musnad). It is so simple that it could be easy to learn by learners and those who are interested in the OSA Musnad letters in computer. The basis of such importance is that it spares a lot of time and effort for researchers and students in this field. Formerly they used to write the Musnad texts either by handwriting or scan them , But now they can easily write its texts in OSA Musnad by using keyboard directly, so that they can change , amend and fulfill easily and accurately . So, we made use of speed, easiness and accuracy. And anyone interested in the South Arabian history in any part of the world can due to this design read and write OSA Musnad letters most easily. This design will also be used by historians and archeologists. , as well as specialist linguistics . The design also demonstrates the aesthetics of the Himyarit writing. About this font family Old South Arabian is An Arabic, Old South Arabian and Latin typeface for desktop applications ,for websites, and for digital ads. Old South Arabian font family contains two types: Old South Arabian and Old South Arabian serif. The font includes a design that supports Arabic, Old South Arabian and Latin languages. Old South Arabian typeface comes with many opentype features.

Another Now is a typeface with an elegant touch. Combining the classic with the new, Another Now has a glamourous, neoteristic style which we like to call Neoglam. Delicate hairlines meet thicker stems. This font can be used for fashion or beauty-related projects, branding, logos, headlines, and more. Modern and contemporary, Another Now is a step forward to elegance.

Many blackletter and calligraphic typefaces are elegant and can be used for items like invitations and liturgical or religious texts. Rankensteen is probably not one of them. It is crude and bizarre and with a somewhat menacing appearance. It seems more appropriate for a letter from a pirate than for a formal invitation.

The thought behind this font was not to join vertical, horizontal and diagonal stems. Each stem is designed separately and arranged in a good manner to create glyphs. Something different from tradition; liberal, but in the limit.

strokeWeight is inspired by the aesthetics of computer vector graphics. strokeWeight is the name of a processing programming function to set the thickness of a stroke. The single bezier curve that describes a stem as a centerline with a particular stem thickness represents the basic idea of this typeface. The unconventional corners and stem endings derive from the concept. If you buy the complete strokeWeight family you will get a strokeWeight variable font file for free!

A one-time co-worker of mine sometimes used a fanciful inkpen-style script in display-lettering situations. I liked it a lot. "Phil," I says, "why not do the whole alphabet, maybe a few little dingbats, and I'll make a font." Well, one day he presented me with a stack of posterboard; he'd done some letters, all right -- hundreds of 'em. I managed to boil these down into a typeface called Treefrog, a name that seems to match its organic jumble, its tall x-height, its left- and right-leaning stems, its thick and thin strokes. Full release has many dingbats.

Laricio is the italian name of the larch tree. This typeface has naturalist and renaissance connotations. The design of the stems is organic. The general feeling is slightly prickling like the foliage of conifers. In french, the word "fût" qualifies the "stem" (of a letter) and also the "bole" (of a tree).

Serway is a captivating typeface that seamlessly blends elegance with a touch of playfulness. This font's defining characteristic is its wavy stems, which give each character a dynamic and fluid appearance. The wavy stems gracefully meander, creating a harmonious rhythm that adds a unique visual appeal to any design. The wavy stems in Serway mimic the graceful movement of gentle waves, the bending of tall grasses in the wind, or the meandering path of a flowing river. These organic shapes infuse each character with a sense of fluidity and harmony. The sans serif structure of Serway maintains a contemporary and modern aesthetic. The clean lines and smooth curves of the letterforms offer a sense of simplicity and sophistication, perfectly complementing the nature-inspired wavy stems. Serway is an ideal choice for various design projects, including editorial design, packaging, headlines, web design, logo creation, and branding. Its wavy stems add a distinct touch that sets it apart from traditional sans serif fonts, making it perfect for designs that seek to capture attention and create a memorable visual impact.

Beautiful round stems makes this font family an elegant choice, useful both for texts and headlines.

The six weight Organon Sans typeface is a stylish and feature-laden OpenType family which complements its sister Organon Serif, both components working in tandem to create an elegant, legible and thoughtfully designed suite of fonts which share similar cap & x heights, stem widths and ascender/descender values. Tapered stems give the Organon Sans fonts an attractively robust appearance.

Misket is a display typeface designed by Altay Dagistan. The glyphs were drawn one by one by hand, using traditional calligraphy methods. The font features a modulation called “reversed contrast”. Instead of the stems being thicker than the horizontals like in most typefaces, the contrast is reversed so, the stems are much thinner than the horizontals.

1970’s Techno-typography finds its rebirth in Berkmire AOE. From its beefy weight to its narrow and sometimes unusual counter cuts, Berkmire AOE started as a digitization of a film typeface called Belden by LetterGraphics. This bulky techno typeface was taken from its limited character set and fleshed out to include an expanded language glyph set. The Capital letterforms seem to push the edge of readability, while the lowercase falls more in line. The letterforms of Berkmire AOE are easy to convert to paths and extend various stems, making this revival something you can really let your imagination run wild with for your designs.

An isolated letters display typeface design which emphasizes the vertical stems and has an overall Arabian tales and oriental look and feel. All letters start with a prominent vertical stem shaped as pirate sword and ends in very narrow stroke. Banan font family has two members, regular and left-slanted italic styles. This font family design follows the guidelines of Mutamathil Taqlidi type style with one glyph for every basic Arabic Unicode character or letter, as defined in the latest Unicode Standards, and one additional final form glyph, for the freely-connecting letters in traditional Arabic cursive text. Banan employs variable x-height values. It includes only the Lam-Alif ligatures. Soft-vowel diacritic marks, harakat, are selectively positioned. Most of them appear by default on the same level, following a letter, to ensure that they would not interfere visually with letters. Tatweel is a zero-width glyph. Keying the tatweel key before Alif-Lam-Lam-Ha will display the Allah ligature. Banan includes both Arabic and Arabic-Indic numerals, in addition to standard punctuations.

Along Sans Grande is an ultra condensed sans serif font family developed based on the typeface styles of the Along Sans Geometric Font Family. In the case of the black weight with the largest change in the size of the stem, the size is 180:140:100, respectively. And, the thin weight style has the same proportion of stem size. Some Glyphs that need to support the stem alone remain a size 222 for Black Weight. These interpolation rules are sufficient to complement the rhythm and readability of the whole family. This family is perfect for special titling works, logo designs, and cool showcases.

Silk Serif Condensed is the condensed version of Silk Serif, a high-contrast typeface with thin, pointy, heavily bracketed serifs, and ball terminals in the appropriate places, as well as bracketed junctions in various letterforms. The main feature of the typeface is the disconnection between the bowls and the stems. However, the bowl is very close to the stem, creating the illusion of connection.

Morton, another modern grotesque typeface which deliver a extraordinary unique within typeface with the style of condensed let you create more impact with your design. Morton Type Family available in nine weights, the Thin weight deliver you a simple hair line stem until you reach the bold weight, you will get more dynamic with three stem weights which give you a modern, old school look and feel.

Terzo uses three lines in the main stem of the capitals resulting in an interesting display of script capitals. Flourishes are uniquely positioned and are deliberately minimalist in order to feature the three part stem capitals. Lowercase characters are also strong enough not to be dominated by the capitals. The overall result is a well balanced and refreshing script that will serve many purposes!

Every element in this typeface shouts tall and narrow, slender and provocative. With wispy delicate serifs attached to elevator-style vertical stems, Stratosphere’s only goal seems to be getting to the top in style. And no matter how you describe it - ultra thin or ultra condensed - this typeface is best for short headlines and titles. Use only in large display sizes and use sparingly. Stratosphere Light is also available in the OpenType Std format. Some new characters have been added to this OpenType version. Advanced features currently work in Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress 7. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

HK Kelie is a light to medium-contrast typeface with swashy, medium bracketed serifs, and terminals in the appropriate places, as well as bracketed junctions in various letterforms. The main feature of the typeface is the disconnection between the bowls and the stems. However, the bowl is very close to the stem, creating the illusion of connection. HK Kelie is calm, attractive, and legible — but above all, it is sophisticated.

Tecnica Slab Stencil font family is the stencil version of Tecnica Slab font family, it has been designed for Graviton Font Foundry by Pablo Balcells in 2014. Tecnica Slab Stencil consists of 8 styles. The 4 “Stencil 1” styles contain a narrow stem for big sizes type and/or rigid materials printing, and the 4 “Stencil 2” styles contain a wide stem for small sizes type and/or light materials printing.

Tecnica Stencil font family is the stencil version of Tecnica font family, it has been designed for Graviton Font Foundry by Pablo Balcells in 2014. Tecnica Stencil consists of 8 styles. The 4 “Stencil 1” styles contain a narrow stem for big sizes type and/or rigid materials printing, and the 4 “Stencil 2” styles contain a wide stem for small sizes type and/or light materials printing.

Silk Serif is a high-contrast typeface with thin, pointy, heavily bracketed serifs, and ball terminals in the appropriate places, as well as bracketed junctions in various letterforms. The main feature of the typeface is the disconnection between the bowls and the stems. However, the bowl is very close to the stem, creating the illusion of connection. Silk is delicate and legible — but above all, it is sophisticated.

Necia Stencil font family is the stencil version of Necia font family, it has been designed for Graviton Font Foundry by Pablo Balcells in 2014. Necia Stencil consists of 16 styles. The 8 “Stencil 1” styles contain a narrow stem for big sizes type and/or rigid materials printing, and the 8 “Stencil 2” styles contain a wide stem for small sizes type and/or light materials printing.

Aguda Stencil font family is the stencil version of the Aguda font family and has been designed for Graviton Font Foundry by Pablo Balcells in 2014. Aguda Stencil consists of 16 styles. The 8 “Stencil 1” styles contain a narrow stem for big sizes type and/or rigid materials printing, and the 8 “Stencil 2” styles contain a wide stem for small sizes type and/or light materials printing.

A revival of one of the popular wooden type fonts of the 19th century, suitable for display. The bold version has rounded ball shapes at top and bottom of stems as well as at horizontal strokes. The pointed version has pointed shapes at top and bottom of stems as well as at horizontal strokes. Lowercase was not originally designed for these fonts. These new versions include caps, figures and accented caps.

The main difference between Accord Alternate and Accord is in the way curved strokes join with vertical stems in letters such as "bpn".

This square and elegant typeface has unique round stems that makes the geometric look of Tmura MF work well in any point size.

This minimalist font inspired by cherry stems is a great choice for impactful logo design and branding. The elegant and simple shapes of each character make it versatile and suitable for any type of logo, whether it's a wordmark or a symbol. The cherry stem inspiration adds a unique touch that sets it apart from other fonts. Use this font to create a lasting impression and memorable branding for your business or project.

Silk Sans Display is the sans version of the high-contrast typeface Silk Serif. The main feature of the font family is the disconnection between the bowls and the stems. However, the bowl is very close to the stem, creating the illusion of connection. Silk is delicate and legible — but above all, it is sophisticated. Silk Sans Display is available in 7 weights, from Extra Light to Black, and supports Western, Central and South-Eastern European languages.

Onyon is a bizarre typeface with vertical stems that thicken in the middle and narrow at the ends. It was created as an experiment to see what a typeface would look like if the vertical stems were diamond or rhombus shaped. The letters are angular with unusual triangular serifs and they have no curves. It is a harsh, cruel typeface that will make your eyes water if you use it at small point sizes for text.

Kamui is a font designed by Carlos Fabian Camargo G. and used to write headlines. Its strategy makes it ideal for covers and advertisements with Japanese-style manga comics requiring latin style. Precisely its purpose was inspired by typographical classics such as Mistral by R. Excoffon and Zapfino by H. Zapf that then were diluted by separate strokes as blackletter calligraphy. However, high doses of miscegenation and lettering untimely torn between 50% esthetic and 50% legibility. That way his radical expression is highly profitable for composing and designing words and phrases with Eastern look. And more importantly, the writing seems drawn quickly with thin-tipped brush staining over a rough surface, from that process comes the idea of corroded outlines and changes in contrast. In conclusion, some diagonal strokes, horizontal, curved and vertical stand or hide from their simulation of scarcity or abundance of ink clots. That way each stroke seems inconsistent, footprint of the 423 brush drawing glyphs in Regular Kamuy. In that sense, the OpenType features included are: Standard Ligatures, Contextual Alternates, discretionary ligatures, swash, stylistic alternates, alternatives for titles, ordinals, fractions. And to end the Variable “Kamuy Dingbats” has is 52 fictitious drawings and zamurais.