Localization/Arabic

This article describes how to set up Arabic language environment.

Applications

Locale article explains how to set up system or user locale.
Bidirectional text article lists Bidi support status in applications.
Keyboard layout: set it by setxkbmap ara,us. Check the article for more info.
Ayaspell offers spellchecking extensions. Can be installed system-wide by hunspell-ar^AUR.
Aspell: install aspell-ar^AUR
Dict: For Arabic dictionaries install dict-freedict-eng-ara^AUR, dict-freedict-ara-eng^AUR.
Islamic tools: for Hijri date conversion.
LibreOffice: set up Bidi support. If you are not using a system-wide Arabic dictionary, Ayaspell extension can be installed from Tools > Language > More Dictionaries Online > Arabic. For language pack, install libreoffice-still-ar for the stable branch and libreoffice-fresh-ar for Libreoffice fresh.
tesseract: for OCR detection, the default data package tesseract-data-ara is mostly inaccurate. Try tesseract-data-best-ara^AUR see [1].
Thunderbird: install thunderbird-i18n-ar for language pack.
Firefox: install firefox-i18n-ar for language pack.
dwm: see Dwm#Arabic Letter-shaping

Shell and Terminal

st: see St#Arabic shaping support
mlterm: see Mlterm#Render Arabic script in Xft and Mlterm#Arabic script rendering when using fixed width fonts
bash: enables by default "combining characters" (1) feature, which merges diacritics with previous character.
zsh: to properly display diacritics add setopt COMBINING_CHARS to your .zshrc.

Vim

See Vim#Bidirectional support for setting up Bidi support.
Since Vim does not map Arabic characters given by input method, motion commands do not work. A possible workaround is to set keymap within Vim without changing X11 keymap. This can be done set keymap=arabic, then switching between layouts via Ctrl-^, or by manually set langmap in vimrc:

set langmap=ضصثقفغعهخحجد;qwertyuiop[],شسيبل;asdfg,اتنمكط;hjkl\;',ئءؤرلا;zxcvb,ىةوزظ;nm،./,لآB,آN,'M,؟?,ِA,ٍS,لأG,أH,ـJ,،K,ًW,ُE,ٌR,لإT,إY,÷I,×O,؛P

Fonts

Check Font configuration/Examples#Arabic for setting up font configuration. Persian fonts like vazirmatn-fonts^AUR also include support for Arabic letters. A list of Persian fonts can be checked from Fonts#Persian.

Multi-script (extended Arabic script) fonts:

noto-fonts - Google Noto fonts includes Noto Kufi Arabic, Noto Sans Arabic, and Noto Kufi Arabic. Use noto-fonts-ar^AUR for installing these only.
ttf-ibm-plex
ttf-sil-harmattan^AUR
ttf-dejavu - Includes the monospace DejaVu Sans Mono' font.
ttf-arabeyes-fonts^AUR — Collection of free Arabic fonts that includes:
- KACST fonts
- Thuluth script font
- Thabit: monospace font
- Decorative: AlArabiya, AlBattar, AlHor, and others.

Sans-Serif:

Monospace:

vazir-code-fonts^AUR - Persian font with good monospace support for Arabic.
otf-kawkab-mono^AUR
ttf-amiri-typewriter^AUR - Typewriter Naskh font based on Amiri

Bitmap:

Arabeyes bitmap font

Naskh (~Serif):

ttf-scheherazade-new — Unicode Arabic font from SIL (Alternative for Traditional Arabic font)
ttf-amiri^AUR — A classical Arabic typeface in Naskh style pioneered by Amiria Press. Its Latin characters are based on Crimson (otf-crimson) [2] [3]
ttf-qurancomplex-fonts^AUR — Fonts by King Fahd Glorious Quran Printing Complex in al-Madinah al-Munawwarah
ttf-sil-lateef^AUR — Unicode Arabic font from SIL

Ruq'ah, Kufic (~Sans-Serif):

ttf-aref-ruqaa^AUR - Ruq'ah typeface.
ttf-cairo^AUR
ttf-mada-variable^AUR
ttf-raqq^AUR - A manuscript Kufic typeface.
ttf-reem-kufi^AUR
otf-qahiri^AUR

Kashida justification

Kashida justification could be applied either to single letters or in-between letters. For more information, see [4].

LibreOffice: single-letter Kashida not supported. In-between-letter Kashida is supported by applying paragraph justification.
LaTeX: single-letter Kashida not supported. In-between-letter Kashida can be applied using justification=kashida option in Babel package. The following is a sample preamble:

\usepackage[
	english,
	bidi=basic,
]{babel}
\babelprovide[
	import, main,
	justification = kashida,
	transforms = kashida.plain
]{arabic}
\babelfont[arabic]{rm}{Scheherazade New}

typst: Unsupported

Tips and tricks

Disable URL encoding for links containing Arabic characters. See Character encoding#URL encoding.

Troubleshooting

Common issues may be solved by checking Locale#Troubleshooting and Character encoding#Troubleshooting first. For problems related to letter-shaping or text direction, check Bidi.

XKB Lam Alif problem

X keyboard layout sends Arabic ligature glyphs as a single glyph. For example, Laa+Alif ligature "لا" (U+0644, U+0627) is sent as "ﻻ" (U+FEFB), and similarly for (ﻷ، ﻵ، ﻹ). This is due to a known limitation in xkb which does not allow mapping a key to more than one character. To solve this problem, run a supported input method. The input method workaround takes advantage of Compose Sequences. For a technical reading on this, check [5]. These are confirmed to work:

IBus: supported since v1.5.28.
ibus-typing-booster: supported since 2.19.0

For a more lightweight option, you can use Xim. Add the following to your environment variables:

XIM=none
XIM_PROGRAM=/bin/true
XIM_ARGS=
GTK_IM_MODULE=xim
QT_IM_MODULE=xim
SHORT_DESC="X compose table"

Alternatively, you can use IM config wrapper script: im-config -n xim.

Since QT-based programs do not have this issue, it is enough to add export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim to ~/.xsessionrc or ~/.xprofile. The issue is also fixed for GTK4.

Tip: If input method is used, then XCompose table offers additional Arabic letters like: گ، ڤ، چ، پ, quotes «», as well as Wikipedia:Zero-width non-joiner, by pressing the AltGr key. The default compose table is located in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ara.

Fix Arabic legibility when using Noto Fonts

If Arabic characters are rendered an in an unexpected font (e.g: Nastaliq, Urdu font, etc.), see Font configuration/Examples#Excluding Arabic script from other languages.