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I’ve put together a few extra notes about hamzatul wasl that are worth remembering and noting. Many take these notes for granted, others don’t even know them. Just before I begin, I want to point out that some of these rules are heavily based on the Arabic grammar (which I won’t cover), or they relate to another tajweed rule I have not yet posted. Ultimately, there are two categories for this post. They will be as follows…

1. The Questioning Hamzah + Hamzatul Wasl

Definition of some words:

questioning hamzah: is that hamzah which turns a statement into a question, in the form of “a”, i.e. hamzah (  ء  )

participle: refers to that word which starts off with a hamzatul wasl. The type of hamzatul wasl is the definite article, in Arabic, the definite article is called the laam ta‘reef, which is read and written as “Al-” before a word. It translates to “the” in English.

The rule:

If the questioning hamzah enters a word that starts with a hamzatul wasl of type participle, the hamzatul wasl is dropped and swapped for an alif. This does not change whether the laam in the original “Al-” is merged or pronounced based on whether it’s a laam shamseeyah or qamareeyah. Note, that when this occurs, it is called Al-Madd Al-Farq.

So, examples:

The original Arabic word is,

Ath-thakarayni

With the questioning hamzah, it is now pronounced as,

Aaa-thakarayni

A couple more examples:

Al-Aana (original Arabic word)

Aaal-aana (with questioning hamzah)

Allahu (original word)

Aaallahu (with questioning hamzah)

Just a side note, this questioning hamzah not only affects the hamzatul wasl, but it also acts upon the same concept of the madd badal tajweed rule. Note the first and last examples are also madd al-laazim kalimee muthaqqal, whereas the 2nd example is the madd al-laazim kalimee mukhaffaf.

2. The Preceding Sukoon

When a hamzatul wasl is preceded by a sukoon, a reciter has three options, based on the circumstance.

Circumstance 1: If the hamzatul wasl is preceded by the word min (مِنْ), then the silent noon is voweled with a fat-ha. We take this rule for granted, because the Quranic scripture does this for us already, we see it all the time and probably don’t even know about it.

A couple of examples,

Minal-jinnati

Faminallahi

Circumstance 2: If the hamzatul wasl is preceded by the pluralising silent waaw that is preceded by a fat-ha, or if the hamzatul wasl is preceded by the pluralising silent meem, then the meem/waaw are voweled with a dammah. As with above, the Quranic scripture does this for us. An example of each:

Ilaykumul-eemaana

Ishtarawud-dalalata

Circumstance 3: In all other cases, not covered in the first two circumstances, any word that ends with any form of sukoon that precedes a word starting with a hamzatul wasl of any form, must have the sukoon voweled with a kasra.

Some cases are covered by Quranic scripture. The sukoon is voweled for us ready to read. Examples of this are,

Wa Qaalati-mra’atu

Ani-drib

Cases not covered by the Quranic scripture are that which contain tanween in the preceding word. This can happen across two ayaat, or within one ayah. All the examples provided happen across two ayaat, however…

Examples:

Stopping: Shadeed. Al-latheena

Continuing: Shadeedinil-latheena

Stopping: Mah–thooraa. Unthur

Continuing: Mah–thooran-i-nthur

Stopping: Ahad. Allahu

Continuing: Ahadunillahu

A take-home message from this post would be to learn the two categories, and their rulings. Just so that you’re in the know. If you want to keep it simple for yourself, then the least you should do is remember the 2nd category’s 3rd circumstance about tanween.

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