Khojki

Khojki is a script traditionally used by the Khoja community, a subgroup of Ismaili Shia Muslims, primarily in western India and parts of the Arabian Peninsula. The name “Khojki” derives from the community’s designation of itself as “Khoja” and the suffix “‑ki” for “of”. The script evolved in the late Middle Ages, around the 15th century, as a localized adaptation of the early forms of the Gujarati and Devanagari scripts, which themselves trace their lineage to the ancient Brahmi script. Over time, the Khojki script incorporated influences from Arabic and Persian orthographies due to the community’s extensive trade and religious ties with the Persian world and the Ottoman Empire.

Khojki is an abugida, in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as a unit and vowel diacritics are attached to consonants. Its orthographic inventory includes letters for the 17 independent sounds of the Gujarati language and additional characters to represent Arabic phonemes required for writing Qur’anic verses and other Islamic texts. The script’s characters have a distinct angular quality, with a tendency towards a narrow, upright letterform. The earliest surviving manuscripts are dated to the early nineteenth century and were used to transcribe a variety of religious texts, including the Qur’an, Sufi poetry, and community histories.

In the twentieth century, the Khoja community largely shifted to using the Devanagari and Gujarati scripts for everyday writing, relegating Khojki primarily to liturgical and ceremonial contexts. Contemporary preservation efforts, such as the publication of the “Khojki Dictionary” by the Khoja Foundation and digitization projects managed by South Asian language institutes, aim to document and revitalize the script. Although its use is limited today, Khojki remains a crucial cultural artifact that reflects the historical intersection of South Asian linguistic traditions and the transregional exchange of religious and commercial ideas.