Arabic star

٭
Arabic star
U+066D ٭ ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR

The Arabic star is a punctuation mark added to Unicode 1.1 by political and cultural reasons to use it in typing instead of asterisk (U+002A * ASTERISK), which might take a six-lobed form (✻) in some typesets reminding a six-pointed Star of David (✡) or might be even mistaken for it in a print of poor quality.

The Arabic star is given a distinct character in Unicode, U+066D ٭ ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR (the note "appearance rather variable" was added in Unicode 5.1), in the range Arabic punctuation. Despite its name, the character might take an eight-lobed form in some typesets, which could be related to octagram shape of the Rub el Hizb sign (۞).

Variants

In many modern fonts, however, the asterisk is five- or six-pointed, and the Arabic star is sometimes six- or eight-pointed. The two symbols are compared below (the display depends on your browser's default sans-serif font).

AsteriskFull-width AsteriskArabic starfive-pointed starsix-pointed stareight-pointed star
* ＊ ٭ ★ ✶ ✴

Unicode

In Unicode, Arabic and similar stars are encoded at:

In some displays, the use of the ٭ character can cause the text directionality to change.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Unicode 1.1 appendix H § 5.4.3: ‘٭’ [066D] arabic five pointed star’
  2. ↑ Fonts & Encodings by Yannis Haralambous, page 73: ‘There is nothing inherently Arabic about the character ‘٭’ 0x066D arabic five pointed star; it was provided only to ensure that a five-pointed asterisk would be available, as the ordinary asterisk ‘*’, with its six lobes, might be mistaken for a Star of David in print of poor quality.’
  3. ↑ Kenneth Whistler, who was secretary of the Unicode Technical Committee around the time this character was added later wrote: ‘U+066D is a politically motivated addition for Arabic, which always retains its 5-pointed form, so as not to be reminiscent in any way of the Star of David.’
  4. ↑ Unicode 5.1 chart Arabic
  5. ↑ Chart U+0600 Arabic
  6. ↑ Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm