Fā’, qāf, kāf and lām

This lesson teaches four letters. Two of them, fā’ and qāf, share one body and are told apart by their dots, as the pairs of the last three lessons were. The other two, kāf and lām, are tall letters, and the thing to learn about them is how to tell them from alif.

The letters

Fā’ and qāf

Both begin with a small closed loop that sits on the line. Fā’ has one dot above the loop; qāf has two.

At the start and in the middle of a word, the loop and its dots are all there is, and the two letters differ only in the number of dots. Alone and at the end of a word, each adds a tail, and the tails differ: fā’'s runs flat along the line, like the bowl of bā’, and qāf's is a deep round bowl that drops below the line.

The transliteration writes fā’ as f and qāf as q. Qāf is not kāf: the transliteration keeps q for the one and k for the other.

Kāf

Alone and at the end of a word, kāf is a flat stroke along the line with an upright stroke rising from its right end, and a small slanting mark drawn inside the angle. At the start and in the middle of a word it is a tall slanting stroke that comes down to the line and joins the next letter, and the small mark is not drawn.

Lām

Lām is a tall upright stroke. At the start and in the middle of a word it stands on the line and joins the next letter. Alone and at the end of a word it finishes with a deep round bowl that drops below the line.

Lām and alif are both tall upright strokes, and in the middle of a word they can look alike. Lesson 1 gave the way to tell them apart: alif never joins to the letter after it. A tall stroke that is joined to the letter on its left is lām. At the end of a word, a tall stroke with a bowl beneath it is lām, and a plain tall stroke is alif.

In the Qur’ān

The first verse of Sūrat al-Falaq begins with qāf and ends with it. Its first word is qāf joined to lām. Its last word has lām twice, with fā’ between them, and then qāf at the end, with its bowl below the line.

The first verse of Sūrat al-Kāfirūn has all four letters. Its first word is the same as above. Its middle word has none of the four. Its last word has lām near its start, and then kāf and fā’ in the middle of the word, each drawn without its tail. Between kāf and fā’ the print draws a short flat line that carries a mark; lesson 8 explains the line.

Recall

• How do you tell fā’ from qāf?
• What does kāf look like at the start of a word?
• In the middle of a word, how do you tell lām from alif?

Answers: fā’ has one dot above its loop and qāf two, and at the end of a word fā’'s tail runs flat and qāf's drops below the line; a tall slanting stroke that joins the next letter; lām joins the letter after it and alif never does.

Next

The next lesson teaches mīm, nūn, hā’ and yā’, and the hamzah standing alone.