Fā’-e a’jami and its miswriting and distortion in recent manuscripts, along with instances from the Divan of Qatrān-e Tabrizi

Fā’-e a’jami is a consonant that was in the past written in the form of an ڤ with three, dots over it. It was at first a voiced fricative, bilabial phoneme (consonant). In the course of time, the fā’-e ajami (β) changed into other phonemes (f, v, b, p). As a result of this linguistic development and following the disappearance of the fā’-e ajami, its written form, namely ڤ (with three points over it) came to look strange and unfamiliar to the scribes of manuscripts in general. Thus, when copying from the old manuscripts, they were unable to recognize this written sign, and willynilly began to miswrite or distort it. In the present study, based on instances from the Divan of Qatrān-e Tabrizi, we have addressed the problem of distorting and miswriting in relatively recent manuscripts.