Wadaad writing, also known as Wadaad Arabic, is the traditional Somali adaptation of written Arabic, as well as the Arabic script as historically used to transcribe the Somali language. Originally, it referred to an ungrammatical Arabic featuring some words in Somali, with the proportion of Somali vocabulary terms varying depending on the context. Alongside standard Arabic, wadaad writing was used by Somali religious men (wadaado) to record xeer (customary law) petitions and to write qasidas. It was also used by merchants for business and letter writing. Over the years, various Somali scholars improved and altered the use of the Arabic script for conveying Somali. This culminated in the 1950s with the Galal alphabet, which substantially modified letter values and introduced new letters for