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
Islamic tools: for Hijri date conversion.
LibreOffice: set up Bidi support. If you're 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-arabic^{[broken link: package not found]} for Libreoffice fresh.
Thunderbird: install thunderbird-i18n-ar for language pack.
Firefox: install firefox-i18n-ar for language pack.

Shell

bash and zsh use "combining characters" (1) feature to merge diacritics and characters in one 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 doesn't map Arabic characters given by input method, motion commands don't 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.

Wide-character support:

noto-fonts - Google Noto fonts. Or noto-fonts-ar^AUR for Arabic only.
ttf-ibm-plex
ttf-dejavu - Includes DejaVu Sans Mono, for monospace Arabic fonts.
ttf-ubuntu-arabic^AUR

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) [1] [2]
ttf-qurancomplex-fonts^AUR — Fonts by King Fahd Glorious Quran Printing Complex in al-Madinah al-Munawwarah

Ruqaa, Kufi (~Sans-Serif):

ttf-aref-ruqaa^AUR
ttf-cairo^AUR
mada-font^AUR^{[broken link: package not found]}
ttf-reem-kufi^AUR
ttf-raqq^AUR - A manuscript Kufic typeface.

Monospace:

vazir-code-fonts^AUR - Persian font with good monospace support for Arabic.
otf-kawkab-mono^AUR

Bitmap:

Arabeyes bitmap font

Misc:

ttf-arabeyes-fonts^AUR — Collection of free Arabic fonts
ttf-markazi-text-variable^AUR
ttf-mada-variable^AUR
ttf-sil-lateef^AUR — Unicode Arabic font from SIL
ttf-rubik^AUR
ttf-tajawal^AUR

Troubleshooting

Common issues may be solved by checking Locale#Troubleshooting first. For problems related to 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, set up a supported input method then restart X server. The following are input methods confirmed to work.

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

To set up input method (E.g: xim), either use im-config -n xim if you have it installed, or manually by adding 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"

However, since most QT-based programs do not have this issue, it is enough to add export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim to ~/.xsessionrc or ~/.xprofile.

Tip: If XIM is set as the default input method, 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

See Font configuration/Examples#Excluding Arabic script from other languages.