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Question I have a question about the letters that appear by themselves in the Qur'an. They seem to be at the beginning of the surahs mostly. There are no vowel marks on them. How do we read them? What do they mean? May Allah reward you for your answers and explanations. Answer There
are 29 surahs that start with the separate letters, written as one word.
There are 14 different letters or combination of letters among these 29
different surahs. These separate
individual letters occur only at the beginning of some surahs, never in the
middle or end of a surah. The
most common occurrence is that of
,
and
each
of which begin six different surahs. There
are some surahs that start with one of these separate letters, such as
.
The greatest amount of these separate letters as one word are at the
beginning of surah Maryam, which begins with five separate letters,
.
Surah Ash-Shuraa starts with six separate letters, but they are divided
into two separate words, in two separate aayaat.
These
letters are read as if each letter is written out, each written letter ending
in a sukoon. In other words,
is
read as
.
These separate letters follow the rules of tajweed; so in this example
there is an idghaam of the
saakinah
of the letter
, with the
that
has a kasrah of the written out letter,
.
The
individual letters in the group
get
6 vowel counts each, the letter
gets
4 or 6 vowel counts, both are acceptable, the individual letters in the group
get
two vowel counts each, and the alif has no lengthening to it. The true meaning of these letters is known only to Allah, the Exalted. Most tafseers state that although the true meaning of these separate letters is not known to man, they point out to the miracle of the Qur’an. From these letters, all available to the Arabs, this wonderful Qur’an was revealed in the clear Arabic language, and no human, Arab or non-Arab, can write anything similar in content, meaning, beauty, wisdom, nor guidance.
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