What is "basmala"

The Basmala ( ), also known by its incipit Bismillah (, "In the name of God") is the name of the Islamic phrase "In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful".

This is the phrase recited before each sura (chapter) of the Qur'anexcept for the ninth. It is used by Muslims in various contexts (for instance, during daily prayer) and is used in over half of the constitutions of countries where Islam is the official religion or more than half of the population follows Islam, usually the first phrase in the preamble, including those of Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Maldives, Pakistan, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates.

In Arabic calligraphy, the Basmala is the most prevalent motif, even more so than the Shahadah.

In Unicode, the Basmala is encoded as one ligature at codepoint U+FDFD in the Arabic Presentation Forms-A block.