Rasm is an Arabic term that signifies: drawing, sketch, trace, graph, pictures, outline, pattern, mark, notes, design, regulation, form, rate. When speaking of the Qur'an

Qur'an

The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...

, it stands for the basic text made of the 18 letters without diacritics/i'jam.

The rasm is the oldest part of the Arabic script; it has eighteen elements:

The eighteen letters of the rasm and their values

rasm
IPA values	ʔ, aː	b, t, θ	ħ, x, d͡ʒ	d, ð	r, z	s, ʃ	sˤ, dˤ	tˤ, ðˤ	ʕ, ɣ	f	q	k	l, ɫ	m	n	h, t	w, uː	j, iː

However, in both initial and medial positions, these conflate to fifteen distinct forms, as the differences between , , and ; and between and are lost.

Compare the beginning of the with all diacritics and with the rasm only:





or with spaces:



(note that spaces do not occur only between words)

The Kufic Samarkand Qur'an that was from 1869 to 1917 in St. Petersburg shows almost only the rasm.

External links

• Are There Scribal Errors In The Qur'an?
• Some pages from the famous St.Petersburg-Samerkand-Tashkent Koran. The fourth to seventh images are written in the Kufic
  Kufic
  Kufic is the oldest calligraphic form of the various Arabic scripts and consists of a modified form of the old Nabataean script. Its name is derived from the city of Kufa, Iraq, although it was known in Mesopotamia at least 100 years before the foundation of Kufa. At the time of the emergence of...
  
   script
• A page in the earliest script, known as ma'il