Arabic ligatures

Very often in the Quranic text you can see a combination of two letters in a rather complex Arabic script, which makes reading a bit complicated for beginners. This bundle of two or more letters into one confusing symbol is called a ligature. In this short lesson, we will shed light on some aspects which may cause you difficulty reading.

Laam-alif

This symbol is found very often in the Quran, so it is impossible to read the Quran without knowing it. Here's what it looks like:

It is a union of two letters — laam and alif:

Therefore, in the laam-alif ligature the «stick» on the right is laam, and the one on the left is alif.

There is a very important aspect concerning alif here. As we said earlier, it serves two purposes:

1. It denotes elongation for fathah if alif is without hamzah, or without any sign or vowel above and under it.

2. It is read as a, i or u (depending on a vowel placed on above or under it) if there is hamzah on top of alif.

Let's study some examples where alif serves as madd (elongation):

This letter is read «laa», it is extended in recitation the timing of roughly two beats because of alif.

If there is hamzah on top of or under alif, then we need to read alif too, e.g:

Please note that if alif is read with kasrah, hamzah is written under alif, and only then kasrah is placed under the hamzah.

Let's view the words with laam-alif:

The colon in the transcription denotes elongation.

Laam-alif with hamzah:

Also there is another interesting aspect related to laam-alif and hamzah. In the example above, hamzah is put exactly on top of alif but sometimes it happens that hamzah is not above alif but between the letters alif and laam like this:

liayatina

The colon in the transcription denotes elongation. In this case, alif does not act as a carrier for hamzah, but means elongation, i.e. the word above is equivalent in pronunciation to the following:

The letters jim, haa and kha

These three letters are quite often combined into ligatures in words. Below are examples of words in the usual form and using ligatures with these letters.

Here, for example, laam-alif has «climbed» onto the letters haa and jim:

hija:bun

Here the letter kha has «climbed» onto meem:

And here, it's meem which has climbed onto haa:

The letter sawd has connected with the letter haa:

askha:bu

The letter haa has connected with the letter yaa:

ar-raykhaanu

The connection of noon + haa and noon + kha

The connection of faa + jim:

fajaalahum

The connection of seen + haa:

sikhrun

The connection of yaa + jim:

The connection of yaa + meem:

maryama

The connection of ta + meem:

kuntum

The connection sa + meem:

summa

summu

The connection of yaa + meem:

kadthdthabtum

The letter «ha» (not haa)

Sometimes the letter «ha» can be written in the form of a zigzag:

naharin

annahum

jahannama

nashhadu

feehaa

The connection of laam and ha:

lahum

The connection of ha and meem:

baynahum