Awami Nastaliq

Awami Nastaliq is a free font for Urdu and other South Asian languages written in Nastaliq. It requires Graphite 1.3.4 or later: Firefox with Graphite enabled and LibreOffice support this technology, while Chrome and Safari cannot be relied on for correct shaping.

Language publishing with Graphite

Peter Martin and SIL developed Awami for languages that need more base letters and vowel marks than Urdu alone. Its calligraphic segments descend across the line and need space above and below. Use a paragraph containing the actual language’s marks to set line spacing; a short Urdu heading does not establish support for another language.

This is a specialist publishing choice. Keep the shaping engine in your production checklist, including when exporting PDF. Our preview uses the complete official web fonts to retain Graphite tables, but an incompatible browser can still produce a misleading sample.

Files, weights and supported scripts

The ZIP contains 5 original TTF files, version 3.400, with the license. Available preview weights: 400, 500, 600, 700, 800. The supplied source covers Arabic, Persian, Latin, Urdu.

Compare the intended use

For a conventional web project, compare Noto Nastaliq Urdu and Gulzar in the target browser before choosing Awami.

License and source

Personal and commercial use, embedding and redistribution are permitted under SIL Open Font License 1.1. Keep the included license and notices when distributing font files. See the official Awami Nastaliq source.

Explore Nastaliq fonts and fonts for calligraphic layouts. Prepare an Arabic sample with the Arabic keyboard, then use our guide to choosing an Arabic font.

For another Urdu Nastaliq design, compare Beaconhouse Nastaliq Regular 400. The Beaconhouse package contains one OpenType style. Its Persian and Western digits are present, while Arabic-Indic digits (U+0660–U+0669) need another font; inspect numerals and line spacing in your actual document.