Harmattan — Free Arabic Google Font
Harmattan, named for the seasonal trade winds of West Africa, is SIL International's typeface for the Warsh style of Arabic script used across that region — a simplified rendering approach distinct from the Hafs style most other Arabic fonts follow. It's a specialist choice for West African Arabic-script languages rather than a general-purpose Naskh.
About Harmattan
Harmattan is SIL International's Arabic typeface for languages of West Africa, named after the trade winds that blow there in winter. It follows the Warsh style and deliberately simplifies rendering, using basic joining forms and only the required lam-alef ligatures. George W. Nuss was the original designer and Becca Hirsbrunner is the lead designer; a 2023 update brought it to four weights.
Harmattan was developed by SIL International for languages that use the Arabic script in West Africa, and is drawn in the Warsh style rather than the Hafs style most Arabic fonts follow — worth knowing if a project needs Arabic-script coverage for West African languages specifically rather than for Modern Standard Arabic.
Designer: SIL International
Best used for
- West African Arabic-script languages
- Warsh-style Qur'anic text
- Simplified-ligature rendering
How Harmattan compares
Scheherazade New, also from SIL, is the better fit for standard Arabic in the familiar Naskh style, while Harmattan serves West African orthographies. Compared with Noto Naskh Arabic, Harmattan uses far fewer ligatures and has a simpler, more uniform texture, which keeps letter shapes predictable. For general-purpose Arabic reading, one of those two is usually the better default.
Tips for using Harmattan
Choose Harmattan when you are setting a West African language written in Arabic script, or when you want a plain, simplified Arabic texture without ornamental ligatures. For mainstream Arabic, Persian or Urdu work it is rarely the first choice. Its glyph set covers the Unicode 15.0 Arabic repertoire, so uncommon letters render correctly.
Styles & weights
4 weights, self-hosted:
- 400 — Regular Download .ttf
- 500 — Medium Download .ttf
- 600 — SemiBold Download .ttf
- 700 — Bold Download .ttf
Arabic character preview
ا ب ت ث ج ح خ د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق ك ل م ن ه و ي
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم — مرحبا بالعالم — ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩
Download Harmattan
Using Harmattan on the web
Load it from the Google Fonts CDN:
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Harmattan:wght@400;500;600;700&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">Then reference it in your CSS:
font-family: "Harmattan", sans-serif;License
Licensed under the SIL Open Font License — free for personal and commercial use. What the OFL allows →