Arabic: ــٰ
The dagger alif (Arabic: ألف خنجرية) or superscript alif is written as a short vertical stroke on top of an Arabic letter. It indicates a long pronounced as //aː// sound where alif is normally not written, e.g. Arabic: هَٰذَا or Arabic: رَحْمَٰن . The dagger alif occurs in only a few modern words, but these include some common ones; it is seldom written, however, even in fully vocalised texts, except in the Qur'an. As Wright notes "[alif] was at first more rarely marked than the other long vowels, and hence it happens that, at a later period, after the invention of the vowel-points, it was indicated in some very common words merely by a fatḥa [i.e. the dagger alif.]" Most keyboards do not have dagger alif. The word Arabic: [[الله]] is usually produced automatically by entering "", or in Arabic: "ا ل ل ه". The word consists of alif + ligature of doubled with a shadda and a dagger alif above .
There are two possible ways of representing the dagger alif in modern editions of Quran. In the editions printed in the Middle East the dagger alif is written with fatḥah: Arabic: الرَّحْمَٰنِ . In the editions printed in South Asia (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) the dagger alif is written without fatḥah: Arabic: الرَّحْمٰنِ .