Syriac alphabet Syriac alphabet The Syriac alphabet ( ) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century AD. It is one of the Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and it shares similarities with the Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic and the traditional Mongolian scripts. Syriac is written from right to left in horizontal lines. It is a cursive script where most, but not all, letters connect within a word. Spaces separate individual words. All 22 letters are consonants, although there are optional diacritic marks to indicate vowels and other features. In
Letters of the Living Abjad numerals system the letters of the Arabic alphabet are assigned numerical values. The Arabic letters h ح and y ي, which compose the Arabic singular adjective meaning "living" in the phrase Letters of the Living, add up to 18, and therefore the phrase "Letters of the Living" refers to the number 18. There is a similar symbolism about the numerical value of the corresponding Hebrew word in Judaism. The Báb referred to the 18 Letters of the Living, along with himself, as the first "Váḥid" of the Bayán Dispensation. In the Abjad numerical value of the word Wáḥid (واحد)