Idiqlat

Writing Systems Technology

A font family for the East Syriac style of the Syriac script

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Idiqlat — A modernized East Syriac font

The Idiqlat font supports the East Syriac style of the Syriac script. The font has support for glyph alternates, ligatures, and diacritics that the East Syriac style requires. The design of the font is a resized and modernized revival of metal type cut in India from around 1920.

The font name, Idiqlat, means “Tigris River” in ancient Akkadian/Assyrian. The emphasis is on the first syllable: EE-dee-klat.

The East Syriac style is used primarily by the Assyrians (Church of the East) and Chaldeans. It is also used by the Syrian Orthodox in headings of texts.

Design

The Idiqlat font supports the East Syriac style of the Syriac script. The font has three weights: ExtraLight, Light, and Regular. A type sample showing an inventory of some of the glyphs and features can be seen here: design type samples.

Font Features

This font uses state-of-the-art OpenType font technology, including variant glyphs for a number of characters and ligatures for use in particular contexts. Read more about our smart font features.

Character Set Support

The Idiqlat font supports the characters known to be used by languages written with the East Syriac style of the Syriac script. Read more about our character set support.

Common questions

How is this font different from East Syriac Marcus?

This font was initially based on the design of the Syriac characters in East Syriac Marcus. However, significant design changes have been made in order to modernize and opitimize the font for web and mobile use.

  • The Latin characters were imported from Crimson Pro.
  • Significant design changes have been made in order to modernize and opitimize the font for web and mobile use.
  • The font has been resized in order to match standard point sizes in modern fonts. It also includes Light and ExtraLight weights.
  • The default isolate designs of kaph, mim, and nun have been modified. Since isolate forms for these characters do not exist in modern typefaces, a variety of different designs have been created for the isolate forms. The default forms in this font are the most prevalent, but the original forms from East Syriac Marcus are still available through a Stylistic Set.
  • The font has added support for alternates, ligatures, and diacritics that the East Syriac style requires.
  • The design of two characters, U+0738 (dotted zlama horizontal) and U+0739 (dotted zlama angular), have been swapped to follow the Unicode Standard design.
  • U+0740 (feminine dot) has been reverted to use the single dot, and U+0324 (diaeresis below) was added to support the double dot below.
  • It also supports the Syriac abbreviation mark which is rendered by a line with a dot at each end and in the center.
  • This font was updated to use a more modern build system so that it can be easily updated in the future.

See complete Idiqlat - FAQ list.

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