Joining, lām-alif and the stretching line

You have now met every letter. Each card in lessons 1 to 7 showed a letter's shapes: alone, at the start, in the middle and at the end of a word. This lesson puts the shapes together, and teaches two things the joining makes that are not letters at all.

The four shapes

A letter is joined to its neighbours along the line, and takes a shape for its place:

• alone, joined to nothing;
• at the start, joined only to the letter after it;
• in the middle, joined on both sides;
• at the end, joined only to the letter before it.

Most letters have all four shapes. The six letters of lessons 1 and 3, alif, dāl, dhāl, rā’, zāy and wāw, join only to the letter before them, so they have two: alone, and at the end. The hamzah joins nothing, and has one.

Because Arabic runs from right to left, the letter before a letter stands to its right, and the letter after it to its left.

What sets a letter's shape is its place in the joined piece, not in the word. After one of the six letters that do not join forward, the next letter begins a new piece: it takes its start shape though it stands in the middle of a word, or its alone shape if it is the word's last letter.

This word is four letters in one piece: nūn at the start, ʿayn and bā’ in the middle, dāl at the end.

This word is three letters in two pieces. Yā’ is at the start, and wāw is joined to it and ends the first piece. The mīm after the wāw is joined to nothing on either side, so though it ends the word it is drawn in its alone shape, head and tail.

Lām-alif

One pair of letters is written as a single shape. When lām is followed by alif, the two are not drawn as one upright stroke and then another: they are drawn together, as two strokes that rise from one foot and lean apart. The shape is called lām-alif, and it counts as two letters: in the spelling below, the lām and the alif are each named.

This word is wāw, and then lām-alif. The wāw does not join forward, so the lām-alif stands in a piece of its own.

In the last verse of al-Fātiḥah, lām comes several times and alif twice, but only in this word does an alif follow a lām. In the last word an alif stands before a lām, not after one, and the two are drawn apart, since alif does not join forward. Every lām and every plain alif is picked out here. Two alif-like letters are not: the alif with a small sign on it that begins the second, sixth and ninth words is alif waṣlah, taught in lesson 18, and the alif that begins the third word carries a hamzah and is its seat, taught in lesson 15.

The stretching line

A join between two letters can be drawn longer than it needs to be: a flat line along the baseline, called the stretching line, taṭwīl. It is not a letter and is not said. In handwriting and in print it is used to space out a line; this print also uses it to make room for a mark, and the spelling below names it as a piece of its own.

In the third word of the first verse of al-Fātiḥah, the stretching line stands between mīm and nūn, and carries a small upright stroke above it. That stroke is the small alif, taught in lesson 13.

In the first word of the third verse of Sūrat an-Nās, the stretching line stands between lām and hā’, and carries the same mark.

Recall

• Which letters have only two shapes?
• Why is the mīm at the end of the second word of the fourth verse of al-Fātiḥah drawn in its alone shape?
• Is the stretching line a letter?

Answers: alif, dāl, dhāl, rā’, zāy and wāw, and the hamzah has one; because the wāw before it does not join forward, so the mīm is joined to nothing; no, it lengthens a join and is not said.

Next

The next lesson teaches the three short vowel marks: fatḥah, kasrah and ḍammah.