Al-Madd Al-Tabee’ee

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In the same way we sometimes wished that our holiday period can be a little longer, your tongue, ears and some letters themselves wish that they’re said for a little longer. ‘Why?’, you may think… Well, how obscure to the ear is it to hear someone say a dammah instead of a waaw? And how hard is it for them to continue the ayah without stumbling (after not prolonging)? … Let’s start by looking at this first prolongation…

Al-Madd Al-tabee‘ee: normal/natural prolongation is the act of prolonging or “stretching” the sound of the three madd letters:

ي          و          أ

alif     waaw     yaa

for two counts, i.e. the time it takes to say (one-two).

The rule has the following conditions:

The huroof al-madd must all be silent, i.e. have no diacritic on them.

A fat-ha must be present on the letter before a silent alif

A dammah must be present on the letter before a silent waaw

A kasrah must be present on the letter before a silent yaa.

Examples of this are as follow:

________

___qaala          qeela               yaqoolu

These examples can be combined into one word to help you remember the rule. The word is

نُوحِيهَا

nooheehaa

I really want to stress the fact that in the Quran you will not see a diacritic on these three letters if they are in the state of madd.

It will be an alif, waaw, or yaa with no fat-ha, dammah, kasra, or sukoon ontop/underneath. When I say that these letters must be silent, I am not saying they have sukoon. In fact, if you see a sukoon on an alif or waaw or yaa it means that you are not to stretch this letter whatsoever.

An example of sukoon present on these letters is as follows:

Mala-ihi

NOT: Mala-eehi

Aaminoo

NOT: Aaminooaa

Ulaa-ika

NOT: Uoolaa-ika

A final thing to be wary of is something called “‘ella” letters. This is when the three madd letters have no diacrtic on them, but are not prolonged because the letter preceeding them does not have the corresponding diacritic mentioned in the above conditions. This will be further discussed in a later post, insha Allah.

Resources Link:

-Sukoon [Gatway To Arabic: page 48]

-Makhaarij Al-Huroof [dot points 5, 7, 12, 15]

-Short and long vowels  [Gatway To Arabic: pages 21-23; and 44-47]

-Tajweed Rule [Gatway To Arabic: page 4-6 and first half of page 7]

Note, these documents are found on the resources page.

Related Posts: Ahkaam Al-MaddAl-Madd Al-Waajib Al-MutasilAl-Madd Al-Jaa’ez Al-Munfasil – Al-Madd Al-‘Iwad – Al-Madd Al-Badal – Al-Madd Al-LeenAl-Madd Al-‘Aarid Lil Sukoon – Al-Madd Al-Silah: Kubra & Sughra – Al-Madd Al-Laazim: Kalimee – Al-Madd Al-Laazim: Harfee.

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Ahkaam Al-Madd

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One of the largest sections of Tajweed is Ahkaam Al-Madd. There are 9 different types of madd, with two further splitting into five segments, therefore making the total of 13.

To help me remember these mudood (plural of madd), I drew up a table with the name of each madd, the length of it in the two states [where applicable], and placed an example in the last column. This file can be found in the resources page, under the heading, Jadwal Al-Mudood.

It will slowly start making sense as I post the specifics of each madd.

To conclude, and perhaps this should have been introduced instead, a madd is “prolongation”. And so “Ahkaam Al-Mudood” means “Rules of Prolongation”.

As I have now completed posting the nine mudood, select one from the list below to begin!

Related Posts: Al-Madd Al-Tabee’eeAl-Madd Al-Waajib Al-MutasilAl-Madd Al-Jaa’ez Al-Munfasil – Al-Madd Al-‘IwadAl-Madd Al-Badal – Al-Madd Al-LeenAl-Madd Al-‘Aarid Lil Sukoon – Al-Madd Al-Silah: Kubra & Sughra – Al-Madd Al-Laazim: Kalimee – Al-Madd Al-Laazim: Harfee.

Al-Qalqalah

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This-is-is    post-ost-ost    will-ill-ill    be-be-be    about-out-out    Qalqalah-ah-ah…

But what is Qalqalah? First, be rest assured I won’t type echos for the rest of the post. Because it’d get a tad annoying for both author and reader. The word itself sounds repetitive and as interesting as it’s Tajweed rule.

Qalqalah: sound articulation and echo. In essence the word means shaking/disturbance. In Tajweed, it means to disturb the letter that has sukoon, i.e. that is saakin, but without any corresponding movement of the mouth and jaw that is associated with voweled letters (i.e. letters that have fat-ha, dammah, or kasra). Qalqalah “shakes” to “echo” the letter without taking up the preceding or succeeding letter’s diacritic.

To explain:

There are five letters in the Arabic alphabet that apply to Qalqalah. These five letters are:

ق          ط          ب          ج          د

daal      jeem       baa       tah      qaaf

To easily remember these letters, remember the phrase they make up, (قطب جد).

Simply, Qalqalah is echoing the above five letters when they are in state of sukoon, i.e.

قْ     طْ     بْ     جْ     دْ

To feel the importance of Qalqalah, try saying (أط), how about (أق) you’ll find one of two things happen. Either the back end of your tongue gets stuck and it’s difficult to loosen it and breathe, or your tongue will naturally slip and the back of your mouth is open again. It is this “slipping” that Qalqalah is based on. Disturbing the letter without moving your jaw or mouth. Try it for the rest of the letters, (أد) and (أج) and (أب). Imagine trying to say the word,

أبْناء

If there was no “slipping”/”shaking”/”echoing” of the letter baa (بْ) then how hard would it be to say the noon (ن) straight away with your lips still pressed together? Doing Qalqalah will cause your lips to “slip” a bit i.e. open up a tiny bit without adding a diacritic to the baa, to make it easy to pronounce the noon. On a final note, as one Imam puts it,

The qalqalah is necessary for these letters because they have the attributes of jahr (stoppage of the flow of breath) and shiddah (stoppage of the flow of sound), so without qalqalah, there would be no sound!

But as the blog has not covered attributes of letters yet, this might just sound all too surreal for some.

There are three types of Qalqalah:

Qalqalah Kubra (Strong Echo): occurs at the end of an ayah.

Qalqalah Wusta (Medium Echo): occurs at the end of a word in the middle of an ayah.

Qalqalah Sughra (Subtle Echo): occurs in the middle of a word whether at the beginning, middle or end of an ayah.

Examples of Qalqalah:

Kubra (strong):

_______Kasab __________________ Al-falaq

________Muheet _________________Masad _________________ Al-ma’aarij


You may notice the the last letters that require Qalqalah don’t actually have sukoon drawn above them! Diacritics have been put in place for readers who want to continue reading without a pause through to the next ayah. However, stopping at the end of every ayah is preferred and so in these such circumstances you must do a strong Qalqalah.

Wusta (middle):

qad aflaha ___________najid lahu

 

Here the sukoon is clearly marked on the Qalqalah letters.

V.I.Note: if you run out of breath and wish to stop in the middle of an ayah, and you stop at a word that has a qalqalah letter on the end, you must, must, must read it as a qalqalah kubra! For example, if I wanted to stop at the word qad in the above example, the daal must be echoed strongly. Then if I were to continue reading by repeating the word and continuing, I do a qalqalah wusta.

Here’s the example again:

[reciting] … [out of breath] … [stopping at word qad] … [doing a strong echo on the daal] … [takes breath] … [wants to continue] …

[start at the word qad and reads: qad aflaha, doing a qalqalah wusta on the daal].

Simple!

Sughra (subtle):

khalaqna _ _______________tat-heeran _____________________ abnaa’akum__

Similarly the sukoon is clearly marked on the Qalqalah letters.

Resources Link:

-Tajweed Rule [Tajweed Basics: Foundations and More: page 9]

Sukoon [Gatway To Arabic: page 48]

-Makhaarij Al-Huroof [dot points 5, 7, 12, 15]

 


I suggest visiting Quranic Audio to listen to Qalqalah.

Select your favourite reciter and listen to Surat Al-Falaq [113]/Al-Masad [111]/Al-Qiyaamah [75] for Qalqalah kubra.

Qalqalah wusta and sughra occur throughout the entire Quran. I don’t think there is any particular one you really should listen to. Surat Al-Qalam [68] has a fair few Qalqalah sughra. I also suggest Surat Al-Muzzamil [73] for a combination of wusta and sughra.