History of The Arabic Alphabet - Reorganization of The Alphabet

Reorganization of The Alphabet

Less than a century later, Arab grammarians reorganized the alphabet, for reasons of teaching, putting letters next to other letters which were nearly the same shape. This produced a new order which was not the same as the numeric order, which became less important over time because it was being competed with by the Indian numerals and sometimes by the Greek numerals.

The Arabic grammarians of North Africa changed the new letters, which explains the differences between the alphabets of the East and the Maghreb.

(Greek waw = the original name of the digamma)

The old alphabetical order, as in the other alphabets shown here, is known as the Levantine or Abjadi order. If the letters are arranged by their numeric order, the Levantine order is restored:-

(Greek waw = the original name of the digamma)

(Note: here "numeric order" means the traditional values when these letters were used as numbers. See Arabic numerals, Greek numerals and Hebrew numerals for more details)
This order is much the oldest. The first written records of the Arabic alphabet show why the order was changed.