Ilm-ul-Adad gives each Arabic letter a fixed number and adds the numbers to find the value of a word. This section teaches the system step by step: the letters and their values, how to calculate correctly, and how the tradition was used in history and literature.
Start Here
Begin with the letter values, the 28 numbers everything else rests on. Then try a few names in the Ilm-ul-Adad Calculator and compare your own working with its letter by letter breakdown. The Phrase Calculator shows how whole phrases are counted, and the Chronogram Decoder shows the system at work in poetry.
Guides
What Is Ilm-ul-Adad?
The meaning of the name, how letter values work, where they came from and what they are used for.
Read the guideThe Reality of Ilm-ul-Adad
What is real in the system, what is only claimed, and how to test a number reading yourself.
Read the guideIlm-ul-Adad Books
Reference entries, histories of numbers and Urdu chronogram books, with legal places to read them.
Read the guideHisab al-Jummal
The classical Arabic name for the abjad numeral system, and what the term means.
Read the guideHuruf Muqattaat
The disjointed letters that open 29 surahs: what they are, how they are read, and the main views.
Read the guidePractice and Teaching Tools
Arabic Letter Values
All 28 letters with their values in both systems, in abjad or dictionary order.
See the letter valuesAbjad Quiz
Learn the values in ten-question rounds, letter to value and value to letter.
Take the quizGuides Coming Soon
- How to Learn Ilm-ul-Adad
- Is Ilm-ul-Adad Halal or Haram? What Scholars Say