Lesson Nine

11. The straight, the imaalah, and the in between (part one)

A.  Warsh has two allowed ways of reading . The definition of is every alif that is changed over from a ,  or originated from a , or was written with , no matter what the make up (wazan)or “weight” of the word, whether it be as :

 or as in: . Any word that is in the double form that takes a in the basic make up of the word, and any verb that has a when it is put in the first person singular past tense will be considered .  It requires knowledge of the Arabic language to know whether a word contains or not, especially when written as an alif.  Al-hamdu lillah, for those who are not sure, there are many reference books and the mushaf al-qira'aat  that explain which words have

The rules for at the end of a word are only applied if the  letter following in the next word is not saakin (when reading in continuum).  When stopping on a word that ends in we can stop with either of the two allowed ways for Warsh, which are  and and we do not consider the following word, since it is not being read.  For example in the phrase: the two allowed ways of reading   with or are only when stopping on ; when continuing reading, the alif is not pronounced.

The first of the two allowed ways for Warsh in is reading the alif with “straightness” or with , and the second allowed way is reading with
is half way in between and the straight alif.  In   the alif is read with 50% of the sound being a and 50% being an alif. In the alif is read with the sound of 75% alif and 25% .  Any word that is in the double form that takes a in the basic make up of the word, and any verb that has a when it is put in the first person singular past tense is considered and can be read with or on the .

Warsh has both allowed ways of reading for any letter  that is either or any alifaat read with  by both Imam Hamzah and Imam Al-Kisaa’ee except for four words: , , , these four  words are read by Warsh with only.

If there is a and a word with in it in one phrase, the following ways of reading are allowed or required: If we read with two vowel counts, we can only read with (a straight alif with no whatsoever) on . If we read with four vowel counts we can only read with on . If however, we read with six vowel counts, we then can read with either or .  An example of a phrase containing both and is:  . on

The same relationship holds true if precedes .  If we recite with then we can lengthen two or six vowel counts, and if we recite with , then we can recite with four or six vowel counts.  An example of this is found in the following  aayah:  

The relationship of with is not one of restriction, so both ways of each are allowed with the other.  There would then be four possible ways of reading an aayah or phrase that had both and ;   with four or six vowel counts of and with four or six vowel counts of

In an aayah with all three occurrences, meaning , , and all are present in the phrase or aayah, there would be six possible ways of reciting the aayah. The first being two vowel counts for , four vowel counts for , and   for .  The second allowed way would be: four vowel counts for , four for , and on .  The third allowed way would be: six vowel counts for ,four for , and   for .  The fourth allowed way would be:  six vowel counts for
 , six vowel counts for , and  الفتح for . The fifth allowed way would be six vowel counts for , four vowel counts for , and for ; and the last allowed way would be six vowel counts for , six vowel counts for
, and   for .  Examples of some aayaat with all three occurrences are: ا

 

Insha' Allah next lesson we will continue with this chapter

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