EDIT The Syriac alphabet consists of 22 letters, all of them consonants, and accents that can indicate vowels. It is a joined-up script (some of the letters get connected) and written from right to left. There are no numbers, instead the letters also have numerical values.

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EDIT History
The Syriac script used to be the main way to write down Syriac christian literature. The variation of the script shown here appears to be the oldest and classical form, »estrangelâ« (the name is derived from the Greek description στρογγυλη, strongylê, 'rounded'). It is no longer the main script for writing Syriac but has become popular again for scholarly publications. There are two more variations of the script, though. After a shism in 489 AD between the east Syrian followers of Nestorius in Persia and the west Syrian followers of Jacob of Edessa, the script began to evolve differently with each group. The version of the Jacobits was called »Serta« and the version of the Nestorians »Nestorian«, a variation of which is still in use today for religious writings by Christians in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

In the Miscellaneous Symbols block are two versions of the Christian cross: U+2671 East Syriac Cross and U+2670 West Syriac Cross respectively.

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EDIT Language
The Syriac language is still spoken today by about 404000 people, mainly in Syria, and also used for sermons in Syrian churches in the southern Indian state of Kerala. One major variety of Syriac is known as Assyrian.

The Syriac alphabet was also the major script for writing Aramaic, also it has also been written inversions of the Latin, Hebrew and Cyrillic alphabets.

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EDIT Fonts
The Syriac Computing Center developed free OpenType-Fonts with the »Meltho« project: http://www.bethmardutho.org/meltho/ now on http://syrcom.cua.edu/Meltho/

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