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Automatic off-line Arabic handwriting recognition based on segmentation still faces big challenges. A database, covering all shapes of handwritten Arabic characters, is required to facilitate the recognition process. This paper introduces a new database for handwritten Arabic characters (HACDB), designed to cover all shapes of Arabic characters including overlapping ones. It contains 6,600 shapes of characters written by 50 writers. This database can be used for training and testing the words for their recognition after segmentation. Also, it presents the possibility for comparing different approaches and evaluate their accuracy on a common base.