Alif waṣlah

Every page of this print has an alif with a small sign sitting on it, at the front of the article and at the front of some other words. It is the alif waṣlah, the alif of joining. This lesson teaches where it is written and the one thing a reader needs to know about it.

The letters

What it looks like

Alif waṣlah is an upright alif with a small sign written on its head, shaped like a tiny ṣād. Like every alif it joins to the letter before it and never to the letter after it. It carries no vowel mark of its own in this print. The transliteration gives it no letter.

Where it is written

It begins the article: the second, third and fourth words of 1:1 all start with it, and so does every article in this print. It also begins some words that are not the article, as the first word of 1:6 and the second word of 87:1 show, where no lām follows it.

It can stand inside a written word, when a word of one letter, such as wāw, bā’ or fā’, is written joined to its front: the fourth word of 110:3 is wāw and then alif waṣlah.

What it does

At the start of a verse, as in 1:2 and 1:6, it begins the reading like any alif. When a word comes before it, the alif is passed over: the last vowel of that word runs straight on into the next word. That is the whole of what this lesson says about it; the rest is the library's Tajwīd title's.

One fact of the writing goes with it. In this print the last letter of the word before an alif waṣlah never carries a sukūn: the word ends in a vowel mark, a long vowel or a tanwīn, and that is what runs on. Look at the first word of 1:1 and the third word of 1:2, each ending in a kasrah before the alif waṣlah of the next word.

In the Qur’ān

In each verse below, every alif waṣlah is picked out. The first verse of al-Fātiḥah has three, each beginning the article, and each after a word that ends in a kasrah.

The sixth verse has three. The first begins a word of its own, with no lām after it; the second and third begin the article.

Here the second word begins with alif waṣlah and sīn, and the last word with the article.

In the fourth word of this verse the alif waṣlah stands inside the written word, after a wāw joined to its front.

Recall

• What is written on the head of alif waṣlah?
• Name a word of al-Fātiḥah that begins with alif waṣlah and is not the article.
• What does the letter before an alif waṣlah never carry in this print?

Answers: a small sign shaped like a tiny ṣād; the first word of 1:6; a sukūn.

Next

The next lesson teaches the muṣḥaf’s own small letters: the small wāw and yā’, the small nūn and mīm, the small sīn, and the round and the oblong circle.