The article, and the sun and moon letters

This lesson teaches no new letter. It teaches a thing you will see at the front of words on every page: the article, written as alif and lām joined to the noun that follows. In this print the alif is the alif waṣlah, taught in the next lesson, and the lām is written in one of two ways, by the letter that comes after it.

The article

The article is two letters, alif waṣlah and lām, written at the front of a noun and joined to it. The first word of 1:2 begins with it, and so does the last word of 1:4. Below, each is spelled out.

Look at the lām in each. In the first word it carries a sukūn, and the ḥā’ after it carries only its fatḥah. In the second it carries no mark at all, and the dāl after it carries a shaddah. Which way the article is written depends on the letter after the lām, and the letters fall into two sets of fourteen.

The moon letters

Before these fourteen letters the lām of the article carries a sukūn: hamzah on whichever seat it is written, bā’, jīm, ḥā’, khā’, ʿayn, ghayn, fā’, qāf, kāf, mīm, hā’, wāw and yā’. They are called the moon letters, because the Arabic word for the moon begins with qāf, one of them.

The sun letters

Before these fourteen the lām carries no mark, and the letter after it carries a shaddah: tā’, thā’, dāl, dhāl, rā’, zāy, sīn, shīn, ṣād, ḍād, ṭā’, ẓā’, lām and nūn. They are called the sun letters, because the Arabic word for the sun begins with shīn.

That is the whole of what this lesson says. The shaddah on a sun letter is a fact of the writing, there on the page; what it asks of a reader is the library's Tajwīd title's.

Two things to notice

Some words begin with alif waṣlah and a lām that itself carries a shaddah, as in the second word of 1:7 and the first word of 92:1. There the lām is the doubled letter. The second word of 1:1 is written with two lāms after the alif waṣlah, the second of them carrying the shaddah.

A one-letter word such as wāw or bā’ may be written joined to the front of the article, so that the alif waṣlah stands inside the written word, as in both words of 95:1.

Two rarer things are worth knowing. Once, in the thirtieth word of 49:11, the lām of the article carries a kasrah, because the noun after it begins with alif waṣlah itself. And ten verbs begin with alif waṣlah, a lām with a sukūn and then a tā’, as the first word of 75:29 does: there the alif and lām are the verb’s own letters and not the article, so a lām with a sukūn before a sun letter is not always the article written the moon way.

In the Qur’ān

In each verse below, every alif waṣlah and every lām is picked out. The second verse of al-Fātiḥah has the article twice, before ḥā’ and before ʿayn, both moon letters: both lāms carry a sukūn. Other lāms are picked out too, two in the second word and one inside the fourth: they are the letter lām in those words, not the article.

The third verse has it twice before rā’, a sun letter: the lām carries no mark and the rā’ carries a shaddah.

In the sixth verse the first word begins with alif waṣlah too, but no lām follows it: it is not the article, and the next lesson returns to it. The second word has the article before ṣād, a sun letter, and the third before mīm, a moon letter.

Here the article stands twice after a wāw written joined to it, before tā’ and before zāy, both sun letters.

Recall

• What two letters is the article written with?
• What does the lām of the article carry before a moon letter?
• How do you know from the writing that the letter after the article is a sun letter?

Answers: alif waṣlah and lām; a sukūn; the lām carries no mark and the letter after it carries a shaddah.

Next

The next lesson teaches alif waṣlah, the alif with a small sign on it that begins the article and some other words in this print.