Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Arabic script first appeared in written form in the 6th century when it was used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Quran. This script evolved from the cursive form of the Nabataean script over several centuries. The process began with the Nabataeans adopting the Aramaic alphabet in the 6th and 5th centuries before the common era.
The nomadic tribe known as the Nabataeans developed the Arabic script from the Aramaic alphabet. They established a powerful kingdom centered around Petra in modern-day Jordan and began to infuse the Aramaic alphabet with their own linguistic features. This hybrid script eventually shed its Aramaic skin to become the Arabic script.
The Arabic script is used to write Persian, Malay, Urdu, Serbo-Croatian, Sorani, Kashmiri, Mandarin, Uyghur, Hausa, Yoruba, Swahili, and Wolof. The modified version of the Arabic script originally devised for use with Persian is known as the Perso-Arabic script by scholars. These adaptations may feature altered or new characters to represent phonemes that do not appear in Arabic phonology.
The Bilali Document was written by Bilali Mohammet in the 19th century. It is a handwritten, Arabic manuscript on West African Islamic law that is currently housed in the library at the University of Georgia. The script was also used to write the letter by Ayuba Suleiman Diallo who lived from 1701 to 1773 and the letter by Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori who lived from 1762 to 1829.
Turkey changed to the Latin alphabet in 1928 as part of an internal Westernizing revolution. The Arabic script was generally replaced by the Latin alphabet in the Balkans, parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia during the 20th century. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many of the Turkic languages of the ex-USSR attempted to follow Turkey's lead and convert to a Turkish-style Latin alphabet.