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Question
Assalamu
alaykum wa rahmatullah I
have seen two different ways of reading Verse 4 of Sura Al-Masad. One of them
puts a sign of obligatory stop (mim) over the word "wa-amra'tuh,"
while the other has no sign of stop at all. Could you please explain this
situation and, above all, how to translate in English the two possible
readings, considering that we have dhamma at the end of the phrase "wa'amra'tuhu"
and fat'ha on "hammalata" : 1.
"wa'mra'tuhu hammalata al-hatab [read without stop]
We
know that the signs fat-ha, dhamma, and kasra can change the meaning intended,
at least the grammatical formulation of the sentence. Answer Wa
alaikum assalaam wa rahmatu Allahi wa barakatuh. The
two different ways of stopping are both found in the book “Manaar al-Hudaa
fee bayaan al-waqf wal-ibtidaa”, by Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Abdul Kareem Al-Ashmoonee,
and produce two slightly different explanations of the aayaat.
The vowels, on
however
in both ways of stopping do not change, only we stop with a sukoon when we
read it the second way, as we stop on all words with a sukoon.
To
understand the meaning of the two ways of stopping, we need to look at the
aayah before this one. Aayah
three of surah Al-Masad is:
The
translation of the explanation of the meaning of this aayah (number three) can
be: “He
will [enter to] burn in a Fire of [blazing] flame”. We know that stopping at the end of an aayah is sunnah. If we say the first word of the next aayah and stop, we know then that this word is attached in meaning and grammar to the previous aayah, since by itself, it makes no sense. The meaning then would be:
“He
will [enter to] burn in a Fire of [blazing] flame and his wife [as well].” This may sound awkward in English, but the second subject can be put at the end of a sentence or phrase in Arabic. Another example of the second subject being delayed in its position in the phrase is:
“…That
Allah is disassociated from the disbelievers, and [so is] His Messenger
[disassociated]. (9:3) When we stop on the word and then continue on meaning: “(she) the carrier of the fire wood “ The subject “she” is implied but hidden. If aayah four is recited from the beginning to the end with no stop:
The
word
is
a noun in the emphasized form. Only
‘Aasim reads it with a fat-h, all other readers recite it with a dhammah,
meaning it is either the predicate When we recite with a fat-h on the word , which we should if we are reading by the way of ‘Aasim (Hafs ‘an ‘Aasim), which is the way almost all Muslims recite today, the fat-h is due to the grammar form of dispraising of Abu Lahab’s wife, or because she is in the state of carrying ( ). We added the grammar terms for added information. Wa alaikum assalaam wa rahmatu Allahi wa barakatuh. |