The idea of putting the name ‘Jawi’ came out from Jawa, Indonesia. Jawi came from the arabic literature, Persian to Malay Archipelago, which is located at the north side of Indonesia.
The earliest artifacts found is ‘Batu Bersurat Terengganu’ dated 1303 century AD (702 Hijrah) while the use of Rumi alphabet for the Malay language started way back at the end of 19th century. You can see at all the shop’s name have their Jawi version name. But the most strongest jawi user in Malaysia is Kelantan. Jawi was once the standard script for the Malay language but the government forced Jawi to be replaced by Latin scripting called Rumi. Until today, Jawi is one of the two important and official scripts in Brunei Darussalam, and is used as second way script in Malaysia. It was actually should be the world language because Tanah Melayu had the biggest trades in the world so the world should learn how to speak Melayu and write Jawi in melayu to make the trade process more easier. When Islam arrived in Southeast Asia, the Arabic script was adapted to write the Malay language. It were found in southern Sumatra and on the Bangka Island. The different is it can’t merge together.īack in the old days, Jawi were created from arabic language. It could also be merged if the that one word have the ability to merge together. They are 37 alphabet where a total of 31 are from the arabic alphabet.
