Characteristics of Letters  Part 6

 

Characteristics that have opposites

 

 

The Fluency and the Refusal   and    

 

The last of the five “pairs of opposite characteristics is special in that in fact, these both of the characteristics in this “pair” have no applied tajweed application.  These two characteristics have more to do with the Arabic language than anything else, and are only included here because they are found in tajweed books and Imam Al-Jazaree included them in the characteristic section in his poem about the basics of tajweed.

 

 is defined linguistically as: fluency or purity of language.

More specifically, it reliance on  the tip of the tongue in pronouncing letters.  There must be a letter from  present in a four or five letter root for the word to be Arabic in origin.  If none of the letters in the four letter root are from this group, then the word is not an Arabic word.  An example of this would be in the word: ,   where the second small  is counted as part of the word, meaning there are five letters.  

 

 

        is defined linguistically as: desisting, refusal

The letter that has this characteristic is considered heavier because it doesn’t rely on the tip of the tongue.

             

Its linguistic definition: Fluency or purity of language	Its linguistic definition: Desisting , refusal
Reliance in pronouncing the letters on the tip the tongue and lips. There is forbiddance of the letters of the  group solely making up a four or five-letter root word in the Arabic Language. There must be a letter from the group of  (fluency) present in a four or five letter root for the word to be Arabic in origin.  If none of the letters are from the fluency group then the word is not an Arabic word.	Abstention from concealment of the letter pronouncing it due to heaviness present
Its letters:	The rest of the Arabic Alphabet

 

Again, these two characteristics have no application in tajweed. 

 

Imam Mohammed Al-Jazaree wrote the following lines about the characteristics that have opposite “pairs”:

 

The meaning of these four lines is:

(1)Its characteristics [the letters’ characteristics] are apparent ( ), softness and lowered ( ), opened  ( ), desisted 
( ), and the opposite [of them are] say:

 [The following are the opposites of these named characteristics and their letters.  The first group of characteristics has the remaining letters left after the opposite listed characteristic’s letters are taken out].

(2) Its whispered ( ) [letters are] " ", its strengthened ( ) [letters are] " "

(3) and between soft and strengthened () [are the letters] " ", and the seven elevated are gathered
( ) [in the phrase of] " ". 

 

(4) [The letters] ، ، ،  [have the characteristic of] ( ), [and the letters in the group] " " [have the characteristic of] fluency
( ). 

A note: The words that are together such as:  both have the same basic meaning and come from the same root, but are in different forms.  One is close to the infinitive in meaning (the lowering) the other implies “the one lowered.”  Both were written here in the explanation for clarity. 

 

The next tidbit, insha’ Allah, will start explaining the characteristics that do not have opposites, meaning they are either present in the letters or not present.   There is no opposite characteristic that the letters that do not have this specific characteristic have.