Shaddah

Lesson 9 taught the three marks that give a letter its short vowel, and lesson 10 the sukūn that closes a letter. This lesson teaches one more mark written above a letter: the shaddah. It is not a vowel. It tells you that the letter is doubled: written once, it counts twice.

The mark

What it looks like, and what it stands for

The shaddah is a small sign shaped like a w, or like a tiny sīn without its bowl, written above the letter.

A letter with a shaddah stands for the same letter twice over: the first closed, as a letter with a sukūn is, and the second carrying a vowel. So where you see one bā’ with a shaddah, the word holds two: a bā’ with no vowel of its own, and then a bā’ with the vowel that is written on the shaddah. How a doubled letter is recited, and for how long it is held, is taught in the library's Tajwīd title.

Where its vowel mark sits

A shaddah never stands by itself. A vowel mark, or a tanwīn (the next lesson's mark), is always written with it; in this text every shaddah has one.

• A fatḥah or a ḍammah is written above the shaddah.
• A kasrah is written in one of two places, depending on the typeface: beneath the shaddah but above the letter, as many muṣḥafs set it, or beneath the letter. In either place it is the kasrah of the letter that carries the shaddah.

Whatever its place, the vowel belongs to the second of the two letters the shaddah stands for.

In the Qur’ān

The first word of sūrah 78 is two letters, and the second carries a shaddah with a fatḥah above it.

In the second verse of al-Fātiḥah, the third word ends with a bā’ that carries a shaddah and a kasrah. Look for the kasrah: beneath the shaddah, or beneath the letter.

Here a ṣād carries a shaddah and a ḍammah. The alif this word begins with is written with a small sign on it, which lesson 18 teaches.

In this verse every lām and mīm is picked out. Two of them carry a shaddah: the mīm that ends the first word, and the lām in the middle of the second. The lām and the mīm of the last word carry none: each has a vowel mark alone.

Recall

• Is the shaddah a vowel mark?
• Where is a fatḥah written when its letter has a shaddah?
• What does one letter with a shaddah stand for?

Answers: no, it marks a doubled letter; above the shaddah; the same letter twice over, the first closed and the second with the vowel.

Next

The next lesson teaches tanwīn: fatḥatān, kasratān and ḍammatān, the doubled vowel marks at the end of a word.