Rasm

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Rasm (Arabic: رَسْم [ræsm]) is an Arabic writing script often used in the early centuries of Classical Arabic literature (7th century – early 11th century AD). Essentially it is the same as today's Arabic script except for the big difference that the Arabic diacritics are omitted. These diacritics include i'jam (إِعْجَام, ʾiʿjām), consonant pointing, and tashkil (تَشْكِيل, taškīl), supplementary diacritics. The latter include the ḥarakāt (حَرَكَات) short vowel marks—singular: ḥarakah (حَرَكَة). As an example, in rasm, the two distinct letters ص ض are indistinguishable because all the dots are omitted, or similarity in shape ک ك are also indistinguishable because all diacritics are omitted. Rasm is also known as Arabic skeleton script. This concept is somewhat similar to scriptio continua in the Latin script, where all spaces and other punctuations is omitted. The rasm form was also common for writing Arabic up until to the early 2nd millennium.