Improvement in the Art of Arabic Writing The great reform of Abdul Malik, was the improvement in the art of Arabic writing. Hajjaj bin Yusuf, his able administrator had the greater share in it. There were two defects in Arabic script, Firstly, it consisted of consonants only, with the result that one word could be pronounced in several sounds. The non-Arabs were facing much difficulties as they could no.t understand the words written without vowels. Secondly, the Arabic alphabet has several letters which have one and the same shape such as dal, zal, etc. Hajjaj bin Yusuf introduced vowel marks into Arabic script and in order to distinguish letters of the same shape he promoted the use of putting nuqtas (points) on these identical letters. These improvements made the art of writing Arabic more perfect and thus helped the discrimination of Arabic language to wide circle of readers’.
