Ḫāʾ
Arabic letter khah (U+062E), khāʾ, or ḫāʾ, used in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto and Uyghur
Ḫāʾ or Khāʼ (خ, transliterated as ḫ (DIN-31635), ḵ (Hans Wehr), kh (ALA-LC) or ẖ (ISO 233)) is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being ṯāʼ, ḏāl, ḍād, ẓāʼ, ġayn). It is based on the ḥāʾ ح. It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪍, South Arabian 𐩭, and Ge'ez ኀ.
It represents the sound [x] or [χ] in Modern Standard Arabic. The pronunciation of خ is very similar to German, Irish, and Polish unpalatalised "ch", Russian х (Cyrillic Kha), Greek χ and Peninsular Spanish and Southern Cone "j". In name and shape, it is a variant of ḥāʾ. South Semitic also kept the phoneme separate, and it appears as South Arabian , Ge'ez Ḫarm ኀ. Its numerical value is 600 (see Abjad numerals). In most European languages, it is mostly romanized as the digraph kh.
When representing this sound in transliteration of Arabic into Hebrew, it is written as ח׳.
“Ḫāʾ” enters the record as arabic letter khah (U+062E), khāʾ, or ḫāʾ, used in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto and Uyghur. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Arabic, letter and khah can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Ḫāʾ” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Arabic, letter and khah provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q173060. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Ḫāʾ”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Ḫāʾ primary sources, Ḫāʾ archive and Arabic research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ḫāʾ”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Ḫāʾ” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.