Abjad Table: The Numerical Value of Every Arabic Letter (Full List)

Anyone who starts exploring Abjad numerology ends up looking for the same thing: a reliable table. Which letter is worth what? Below you will find all 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet in Abjad order, with their names, numerical values and classical element groups, in a single list. After the table come the mnemonic, the extra Persian letters, the rules for hamza and ta marbuta that confuse most people, and step-by-step worked examples.

The Abjad values of all 28 letters

The table shows the values of ebced-i kebîr ("the great Abjad"), the most widespread system and the one behind every calculation on this site. The element column follows the hurufat tradition, which assigns the letters in Abjad order to fire, air, water and earth in turn. Some authors classify them differently; in particular, air and water are sometimes swapped.

How is the order memorised? An eight-word key

Traditionally the table is learned through eight words that mean nothing on their own but are easy to say. Each word is simply the next run of letters strung together, so reciting them also counts the values for you:

• Abjad (ا ب ج د): 1, 2, 3, 4
• Hawwaz (ه و ز): 5, 6, 7
• Ḥuṭṭī (ح ط ي): 8, 9, 10
• Kalaman (ك ل م ن): 20, 30, 40, 50
• Sa'faṣ (س ع ف ص): 60, 70, 80, 90
• Qarashat (ق ر ش ت): 100, 200, 300, 400
• Thakhadh (ث خ ذ): 500, 600, 700
• Ḍaẓagh (ض ظ غ): 800, 900, 1000

In Ottoman Turkish the same words are pronounced ebced, hevvez, huttî, kelemen, sa'fes, karaşet, sehaz and dazığ. The logic of the values is simple: the first nine letters stand for the units (1–9), the next nine for the tens (10–90), the next nine for the hundreds (100–900), and the twenty-eighth letter, ghayn, is 1000 on its own. Every digit can therefore be written with a single letter, which is exactly what allowed Ottoman poets to hide a whole year inside one line of verse in their chronograms.

Why does the Abjad order differ from the alphabet order used today?

The order you see in Arabic dictionaries and school primers today is the hija'i order: ا ب ت ث ج ح خ د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق ك ل م ن ه و ي. It groups letters that look alike, such as ba, ta and tha, or jim, ḥa and kha. The Abjad order is older and follows the ancient letter sequence of the Semitic alphabets. The six letters of the last two groups (ث خ ذ ض ظ غ) are sounds that had no separate letter in that older alphabet, which is why they were added at the end and received the highest values.

In practice this means you cannot work out a value from a letter's position in the modern alphabet. Ta (ت) is the third letter in hija'i order yet is worth 400 in Abjad; ha (ه) is third from the end yet is worth only 5.

The Persian and Ottoman extra letters

Persian, and Ottoman Turkish after it, added four letters for the sounds p, ch, zh and g, which Arabic lacks. These letters have no Abjad value of their own; by established convention they take the value of the letter they are built on:

• پ (pe) → like ba, 2
• چ (che) → like jim, 3
• ژ (zhe) → like zay, 7
• گ (gaf) → like kaf, 20

So even when a Turkish or Persian name contains a letter that seems to be missing from the table, the calculation runs through its base letter.

Ta marbuta and hamza: two small rules that change the result

Ta marbuta (ة): this letter, seen at the end of names such as Fatima (فاطمة), looks like ha and is counted as ha, 5, in this site's calculations. Other approaches count it differently, so if your result does not match another source, this is the first place to look.

Hamza (ء): when hamza sits on a carrier letter (أ ؤ ئ), the carrier is counted as written: أ as alif, 1; ؤ as waw, 6; ئ as ya, 10. How a free-standing hamza should be counted is handled differently by different authors.

Three further rules apply to names and the Divine Names: the definite article al- (ال) is not added, a doubled letter (shadda) is not counted twice, and the small "dagger" alif that does not appear in the written form is ignored. In short, you count what is actually written on the page.

Worked examples: Zaynab, Yusuf and Aisha

To apply the table to a name, read its established Arabic spelling letter by letter:

1. Zaynab (زينب): zay 7 + ya 10 + nun 50 + ba 2 = 69
2. Yusuf (يوسف): ya 10 + waw 6 + sin 60 + fa 80 = 156
3. Aisha (عائشة): ayn 70 + alif 1 + hamza on ya (ئ) 10 + shin 300 + ta marbuta 5 = 386

The Aisha example shows both rules at work: ئ is counted as ya and ة as ha. Zaynab reveals another detail: if you check the element column, three of its four letters belong to the air group and one to water.

Knowing the table, however, is only the first step. In the Abjad tradition a name is never read in isolation: a person's name is calculated together with their mother's name, and the star chart (yıldızname) sign and element come from that combined total. Two women called Zaynab, both carrying the value 69, can arrive at entirely different maps simply because their mothers' names differ.

3 tips for using the table

1. Count the Arabic spelling, not the Latin one. Not every vowel you hear is written as a letter in Arabic script; the "a" sounds in Zaynab do not appear at all. Find the established spelling first, then count.
2. Do not confuse letters that sound alike in transliteration. Letters that look the same in Latin script can have very different values: h is ه 5, ح 8; s is س 60, ص 90; t is ت 400, ط 9; k/q is ك 20, ق 100; z is ز 7, ظ 900; d is د 4, ض 800. Pick the wrong letter and the total can shift by hundreds.
3. Choose your conventions once and keep them. Whatever approach you adopt for ta marbuta, hamza and the extra letters, use it in every calculation. If you are comparing two names, this is essential.

Is there only one Abjad table?

The values on this page are those of ebced-i kebîr, the "great Abjad". Classical sources also mention other methods, such as ebced-i sağîr, which serve different purposes and involve different operations. In the Maghrebi tradition of North Africa, the order of some letters, and therefore their values, is different. All calculations on this site use ebced-i kebîr, the system widespread in the Ottoman and eastern traditions. If you see a different number in another source, first check which system it uses.

What does the last column of the table tell you?

Most people look only at the numbers, yet in the hurufat tradition every letter also has a nature. Do fire letters dominate a name, or water and earth? Is there not a single air letter? This distribution opens a layer of reading that is independent of the name's total, and tradition interprets it as a clue to temperament. Even so, the way the letters gather in the elements only takes on meaning when it is read together with the sign, the day and the other indicators.

You can see how the letters of your own name are distributed, and how tradition reads that pattern, in a report prepared personally for you.

Note: Abjad and hurufat are a traditional field of culture and interpretation. The information in this article is for general information only and contains no definitive results, predictions or guarantees.