Buckwalter transliteration uses ASCII characters to represent Arabic orthography. As there is a one-to-one correspondence with Unicode, the encoding scheme is reversible. JQuranTree uses a superset of Buckwalter transliteration to enable reversible transliteration of Tanzil XML.
Extended Buckwalter Transliteration
There are 4 non-arabic characters in the original encoding scheme with are not found in the Quranic text: P (peh), J (tcheh), V (veh) and G (gaf). The combination character alif + maddah (|) is also not used in Tanzil XML. These characters are not implemented by the JQuranTree Buckwalter encoder.
Likewise, 14 Quranic symbols do not feature in the original scheme. In the extended scheme used by JQuranTree, these have been assigned to ASCII punctuation marks. This is not ambiguous, since modern punctuation does not occur in the Quran:
- Maddah
(^)
- HamzaAbove
(#)
- SmallHighSeen
(:)
- SmallHighRoundedZero
(@)
- SmallHighUprightRectangularZero
(")
- SmallHighMeemIsolatedForm
([)
- SmallLowSeen
(;)
- SmallWaw
(,)
- SmallYa
(.)
- SmallHighNoon
(!)
- EmptyCentreLowStop
(-)
- EmptyCentreHighStop
(+)
- RoundedHighStopWithFilledCentre
(%)
- SmallLowMeem
(])
The extended Buckwalter transliteration scheme is shown in Fig 1. below. Sections highlighed in yellow indicate those parts of the scheme which have been extended over the original:
| UNICODE | BUCKWALTER | |||
| Decimal | Hex | Glyph | ASCII | Orthography |
| 1569 | U+0621 |  |
' | Hamza |
| 1571 | U+0623 |  |
> | Alif + HamzaAbove |
| 1572 | U+0624 |  |
& | Waw + HamzaAbove |
| 1573 | U+0625 |  |
< | Alif + HamzaBelow |
| 1574 | U+0626 |  |
} | Ya + HamzaAbove |
| 1575 | U+0627 |  |
A | Alif |
| 1576 | U+0628 |  |
b | Ba |
| 1577 | U+0629 |  |
p | TaMarbuta |
| 1578 | U+062A |  |
t | Ta |
| 1579 | U+062B |  |
v | Tha |
| 1580 | U+062C |  |
j | Jeem |
| 1581 | U+062D |  |
H | HHa |
| 1582 | U+062E |  |
x | Kha |
| 1583 | U+062F |  |
d | Dal |
| 1584 | U+0630 |  |
* | Thal |
| 1585 | U+0631 |  |
r | Ra |
| 1586 | U+0632 |  |
z | Zain |
| 1587 | U+0633 |  |
s | Seen |
| 1588 | U+0634 |  |
$ | Sheen |
| 1589 | U+0635 |  |
S | Sad |
| 1590 | U+0636 |  |
D | DDad |
| 1591 | U+0637 |  |
T | TTa |
| 1592 | U+0638 |  |
Z | DTha |
| 1593 | U+0639 |  |
E | Ain |
| 1594 | U+063A |  |
g | Ghain |
| 1600 | U+0640 |  |
_ | Tatweel |
| 1601 | U+0641 |  |
f | Fa |
| 1602 | U+0642 |  |
q | Qaf |
| 1603 | U+0643 |  |
k | Kaf |
| 1604 | U+0644 |  |
l | Lam |
| 1605 | U+0645 |  |
m | Meem |
| 1606 | U+0646 |  |
n | Noon |
| 1607 | U+0647 |  |
h | Ha |
| 1608 | U+0648 |  |
w | Waw |
| 1609 | U+0649 |  |
Y | AlifMaksura |
| 1610 | U+064A |  |
y | Ya |
| 1611 | U+064B |  |
F | Fathatan |
| 1612 | U+064C |  |
N | Dammatan |
| 1613 | U+064D |  |
K | Kasratan |
| 1614 | U+064E |  |
a | Fatha |
| 1615 | U+064F |  |
u | Damma |
| 1616 | U+0650 |  |
i | Kasra |
| 1617 | U+0651 |  |
~ | Shadda |
| 1618 | U+0652 |  |
o | Sukun |
| 1619 | U+0653 |  |
^ | Maddah |
| 1620 | U+0654 |  |
# | HamzaAbove |
| 1648 | U+0670 |  |
` | AlifKhanjareeya |
| 1649 | U+0671 |  |
{ | Alif + HamzatWasl |
| 1756 | U+06DC |  |
: | SmallHighSeen |
| 1759 | U+06DF |  |
@ | SmallHighRoundedZero |
| 1760 | U+06E0 |  |
" | SmallHighUprightRectangularZero |
| 1762 | U+06E2 |  |
[ | SmallHighMeemIsolatedForm |
| 1763 | U+06E3 |  |
; | SmallLowSeen |
| 1765 | U+06E5 |  |
, | SmallWaw |
| 1766 | U+06E6 |  |
. | SmallYa |
| 1768 | U+06E8 |  |
! | SmallHighNoon |
| 1770 | U+06EA |  |
- | EmptyCentreLowStop |
| 1771 | U+06EB |  |
+ | EmptyCentreHighStop |
| 1772 | U+06EC |  |
% | RoundedHighStopWithFilledCentre |
| 1773 | U+06ED |  |
] | SmallLowMeem |
Fig 1. Extended Buckwalter transliteration.
See Also
- Arabic Transliteration – Tim Buckwalter's website
- Buckwalter Transliteration – Wikipedia article
- Phonetic Transcription