The
Tifinagh or
Tifinigh abjad is the alphabetic script used by the
Tuareg, a
Berber people of northern
Africa, to write their traditional language, Tamasheq or Tamashek. It dates from about the
6th century BC and clearly has different sources (O'Connor 112), probably Punic and Northern Arabic scripts, while at the same time being very innovative. It almost died out in the
3rd century AD. The script has no vowels.
Before the first century BC, Tifinagh was more widely used by all speakers of Tamazight[?] or Berber in North Africa. This old version of Tifinagh is sometimes named Libyan to distinguish it from the modern version used by the Tuareg.
All Wikipedia text
is available under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License