Abjad Calculator (Adad Calculator)

Each Arabic letter has a number in the abjad system, from alif = 1 to ghain = 1,000. The abjad value of a word is the sum of its letters. محمد (Muhammad) is meem 40 + hay 8 + meem 40 + dal 4 = 92, and بسم اللہ الرحمن الرحیم adds up to 786.

Type or paste a name in Urdu or Arabic script above, or tap the letters. The calculator shows the value of every letter, the total for each word and for the whole phrase. Urdu letters such as پ, چ and گ take the value of the Arabic letter they are built on.

Haroof e abjad: the 28 letters and their values

The letters are learnt in eight groups that give the system its name: ابجد، ہوز، حطی، کلمن، سعفص، قرشت، ثخذ، ضظغ (abjad, hawwaz, hutti, kalaman, saafas, qarashat, thakhaz, zazagh). The first nine letters count 1 to 9, the next nine count tens, the next nine hundreds, and ghain is 1,000.

This is the eastern order, called Abjad Qamri in many Urdu books, used across Pakistan, India, Iran and the Arab east. North African (Maghribi) tradition gives six letters different values, so its totals can differ.

Urdu letters in abjad

The abjad system was made for the 28 Arabic letters. Urdu adds letters that Arabic does not have. In Urdu chronograms and adad tables each one takes the value of the nearest Arabic letter of the same shape.

Hamza is the one letter on which books disagree. Many Urdu adad tables count a written ء as 1. Other writers give it no value because it is not one of the 28 abjad letters, and some count it as ye (10). Pick the rule you follow in the calculator; it applies to ء and to ئ. Letters that carry a hamza on another letter keep that letter's value whatever the setting: ؤ counts as wao (6), ۓ as bari ye (10), and أ or إ as alif (1). Vowel marks, shadda and the small standing alif are never counted, because only written letters count. آ counts as alif (1), and ۃ or ة counts as he (5).

How to calculate the adad of a name

1. Write the name in Urdu or Arabic letters exactly as it is normally spelt. Spelling matters: فاطمہ and فاطمة give the same value, but a spelling with an extra ی changes it.
2. Find each letter in the table above.
3. Add the values.

For example, عمران (Imran) is ain 70 + meem 40 + re 200 + alif 1 + noon 50 = 361. عائشہ (Aisha) is ain 70 + alif 1 + hamza 1 + sheen 300 + he 5 = 377 when hamza counts as 1, or 376 if it counts as nothing.

Some people then reduce the total to one digit by adding its digits until one is left: 361 gives 3 + 6 + 1 = 10, then 1 + 0 = 1. The calculator shows this as well.

Abjad values of common words and names

Worked out by the calculator with hamza counted as 1.

What abjad numbers were used for

Before Indian digits spread in the Muslim world, Arabic letters in abjad order were used to write numbers, much as Roman letters were in Europe. Astronomers' tables and some manuscripts used them for centuries.

The best known use in Urdu and Persian is the chronogram (tarikh). A poet writes a line whose letters add up to the year of an event. When the Mughal emperor Humayun died after a fall from his library stairs, the line ہمایوں پادشاہ از بام افتاد (Humayun the king fell from the roof) was quoted as the chronogram of his death. Its letters add up to 112 + 313 + 8 + 43 + 486 = 962. Humayun in fact died in Rabi al-Awwal 963 AH (January 1556), so the line comes out one year short, a known discrepancy in this famous chronogram. Chronograms were composed for births, deaths, buildings and books well into the twentieth century.

In South Asia, 786 is widely written at the top of letters and documents as a short form of بسم اللہ الرحمن الرحیم, because that is its abjad total.

Abjad questions