08 · Filasṭīn

The Palestine Order in Council of 1922, article 82, made English, Arabic and Hebrew the three official languages of Mandate Palestine [1]. Until 1948 the Mandate's stamps and coins carried the word فلسطين beside PALESTINE [2]. The drawing does not argue about the name. It writes it once.

It is written in ruqʿah, the everyday handwriting of the Arab world — the hand of shopping lists and school exercise books, the most common form of Arabic handwriting there is [3]. Six letters: an initial fāʾ with its single dot, the tall lām, a flat sīn without teeth (that is how ruqʿah writes it), a ṭāʾ with its leaning stem, a yāʾ with two dots below, and a low open nūn. One underline, drawn by hand. A small gloss in Latin letters, for the reader who cannot yet read the word.

Our page how to read your shirt draws the six letters large and names them.

For every T-shirt sold, FREE PALESTINE MEDIA S.R.L. gives €5 to a medical charity working in Gaza and the West Bank — named here once the written agreement is signed. The €5 is given by us from our own revenue; it is not a payment by you to the charity and is not tax-deductible for you. Transfers are made monthly and published on the ledger.