Manually setting the page number of specific pages to an arabic letter

Question

For some pages in a book document, I need to manually set the page number to an arabic alphabet character.

For example, The first page of my document should have آ as its page number, and second page should be ب and third page should be ج.

I don't need the page numbers to be automatically set as the pages with this format are 5 or 6 at most. So manually setting them would work but I can't find any command which allows me to set alphabet characters for a specific page.

Please note that, I don't want to set the page numbers to arabic numbers as suggested here with this command : \renewcommand{\thepage}{\arabic{page}}. I need to set the page number to an arabic alphabet character such as آ or د.

What I've Tried:

• \renewcommand\thepage{آ} : I've tried doing this before every page that I want to manually set but as soon as I do another \renewcommand\thepage{ب} for the next page, then the first page number is overwritten to ب.
• \setcounter{page}{آ}: this obviously won't work as it excepts a number and not an alphabet character.

So, is there a way to manually set the page number of specific pages to arabic alphabet characters?

Answer 1

The following example defines \arabicalph as number formatting command like \arabic or \alph (see latex.ltx). Then, the numbering style can be easily switched by \pagenumbering{arabicalph}:

\documentclass[a5paper]{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{FreeSerif}

\makeatletter
\newcommand*{\@arabicalph}[1]{%
  \ifcase#1%
  \or
    آ%
  \or
    ب%
  \or
    ج%
  % ...
  \else
    \@ctrerr
  \fi
}
\newcommand*{\arabicalph}[1]{%
  \expandafter\@arabicalph\csname c@#1\endcsname
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\pagenumbering{arabicalph}
\lipsum
\end{document}

Answer 2

Just use a \clearpage before the next page begins.

\documentclass[]{article}

\usepackage{blindtext}

\begin{document}
\renewcommand{\thepage}{Z}
\blindtext
\clearpage
\renewcommand{\thepage}{Y}
\blindtext
\clearpage
\pagenumbering{arabic}
\blinddocument
\end{document}