7 Free Arabic/Persian Fonts (and Font Sets) You Can’t Miss
Beautiful and Free
What I want to introduce here are not a bunch of links to some Arabic-looking “exotic” Latin-script fonts. The fonts here are true Arabic fonts ready to be used in any Arabic or Persian (Farsi) layout.
As you might have noticed there are not that many companies making Arabic fonts. The reason for that might be the fact that one cannot make any money by designing Arabic or Persian typefaces. So most of the efforts in this field is done by a few companies (like Linotype, Monotype, and some others) outside the Middle East. I list them all in the near future in another post about commercial Arabic and Persian (Farsi) fonts, but here I introduce the available free fonts I find most useful. Some of them are made by support from the local governments (Uthman, Nastaliq, Neirizi) and some others are made by individuals. Most of them can be used for styling text in any Arabic-script language including Arabic, Persian (Farsi), Dari, Kurdish (Sorani), Punjabi, Pashto, Urdu, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Uyghur.
7 Free Arabic Fonts
Sharif FarsiWeb Fonts
Tehran's Sharif university claims that Sharif FarsiWeb Unicode Fonts are the first standard set of Unicode Persian (Farsi) fonts ever made
The set includes Terafik (and Terafik Bold) Elham, Titr, Roya (and Roya Bold,) Koodak, Nazli (and Nazli Bold,) and Homa.
Uthman Taha Naskh Font
Inspired by calligraphic works of Uthman Taha, Uthman Taha Naskh Font is designed to be a highly-refined Naskh font. It is designed and released by King Fahd Glorious Quran Printing Complex (KFGQPC), Al-Madinah Munawarrah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (More information here.)
Uthman Taha Naskh works well with Arabic text but certain letters do not appear correctly in Persian usage.
IRMUG Fonts
IRMUG X Series 2 fonts are created by IRMUG (Iranian Mac User Group). They support Persian (Farsi), Arabic, Dari, Urdu, Pashto, Uzbek, Kurdish, Uighur, old Turkish (Ottoman) and modern Turkish (Roman). The fonts are equipped with two font technologies, AAT and OpenType and can be used on Mac, Windows or Linux.
Iran-Nastaliq
Iran-Nastaliq 2 (Beta) is a free Unicode calligraphic font created by the Iranian Higher Council of Informatics. The design is based on the Iranian-style centuries-old Nastaliq calligraphy method, which is different from the Urdu versions.
Iran-Nastaliq Font is mostly used for titles, short text, signs, and logos. Due to its complicated structure it cannot be used for big chunks of text or for books and publications.
Farhood Font
Farhood is the only Arabic-script typewriter font in the entire universe!
The TTF font is designed by a young Iranian graphic designer, Farhood Moqaddam, in 2006. It works with Arabic, Persian, and other Arabic-script languages.
Neirizi Font
Neirizi Font is another free Unicode calligraphic font created by the Iranian Higher Council of Informatics.
The typography is based on the copies of Qur'ans transcribed by Mirza Ahmad Neirizi, an 18th century Naskh-style calligrapher.
Dast Nevis Font
One of the few, and probably the most well-designed hand-writing style Arabic font is Dast Nevis, designed by Ehsan Iran-nejad, a young graphic designer whose own hand-writing is the basis for the design of this font.
Dast Nevis is a unicode Font and could be used with Arabic, Persian (Farsi), Dari, or any other Arabic-script language.
Do you know any other free Arabic or Persian font? Leave a link in the comments to be included in the list.
