Why normalise alef forms?

Arabic has several alef variants — أ إ آ ٱ — that users type inconsistently or omit the hamza from entirely. Folding them all to the bare alef ا lets a search for احمد match أحمد, إحمد, and آحمد without depending on exact spelling.

Which characters does it fold?

It maps alef with hamza above, alef with hamza below, alef with madda, alef wasla, and the wavy/high-hamza alefs to the plain alef ا. With the extra option on it also folds alef-maksura ى to ya ي and ta-marbuta ة to ha ه, which most Arabic search stacks do.

Does it remove vowel marks?

Optionally. The strip-tashkeel toggle removes harakat and other combining diacritics so that vowelled and unvowelled spellings compare equal. Leave it off if you need to preserve fully vocalised text.

Should I normalise the index and the query the same way?

Yes. Matching only works if both sides pass through an identical pipeline. Fold the stored terms and each incoming query with the same options, otherwise a normalised index term will not match an un-normalised query.

Is anything uploaded?

No. The mapping table is bundled with the page and all conversion runs in your browser. Nothing you paste is sent anywhere.

Arabic Alef Normalizer

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Arabic alef comes in several forms that users type inconsistently, which breaks naive text matching. This normaliser folds every alef variant to the bare alef ا so that searches succeed regardless of which alef was typed.

How it works

The tool replaces each alef variant with the plain alef, then optionally applies the wider folding that search engines commonly use:

أ إ آ ٱ ٲ ٳ ٵ   ->  ا   (all alef variants to bare alef)
ى  ->  ي           (optional: alef-maksura to ya)
ة  ->  ه           (optional: ta-marbuta to ha)
+ optionally strip tashkeel (harakat / combining marks)

The first rule is the core: regardless of hamza, madda, or wasla, the result is one canonical alef. The extra ya/ta-marbuta folds and the tashkeel strip mirror what production Arabic search indexes do, so enabling them maximises recall.

Tips and example

أحمد and احمد both normalise to احمد, so a user who omits the hamza still finds the name. Apply the exact same options when building your index and when handling each query — if the stored term is folded but the query is not, they will not compare equal. For display text keep the original; only the search key needs to be normalised.