زَاي
Where it comes from
All 17 pointsThe tongue tip and lower teeth الأصوات الصفيرية
The tip sits just behind the lower front teeth and the air is forced through a narrow channel, producing a whistle. Ṣād, sīn and zāy share this whistle.
How to write it
The isolated form, shown as one common way to write it — Arabic stroke order is not fixed as rigidly as it is in some scripts.
- Stroke 1 of 2: part of the letter's body.
- Stroke 2 of 2: a dot, added after the body is finished.
All four forms
زIsolated
Initial
Medial
زFinal
The short gold marks show which sides the letter joins to its neighbours.
Zay doesn't connect to the letter after it, so it has no initial or medial form.
Same shape, different dots
These letters share one skeleton — only the dots tell them apart.
Often confused with
In a word
Isolated
زَيْتُون
zaytoon
olive
Final
كَنْزٌ
kanz
treasure
In the Quran
IsolatedAz-Zalzalah 99:1
إِذَا زُلْزِلَتِ الْأَرْضُ زِلْزَالَهَا
سورة الزلزلة
FinalAl-Kahf 18:82
وَكَانَ تَحْتَهُ كَنْزٌ لَهُمَا
سورة الكهف
Browse every letter in the Arabic letters tool.