PLATE (3 of 4): HAMIDULLAH ARTICLE
78 ISLAMIC ORDERhave been written (
).
For printing the Qur'an, they have invented a new sign, a small alif, which is marked just above the letter which
this alif is to follow, and the difficulty is removed. I shall not deal particularly with the words ibn and ibnat (
) in the Qur'an, which begin simply with a provisional vowel; as there is no sentence in the Qur'an
beginning with these words, they occur in the midd1e of phrases, their provisional vowe1 is marked with the
neutral, sign, referred to above. Finally, the same letter alif is written, I do not know, why in certain words of the
Qur'an, and is absolutely unnecessary and is completely silent in pronunciation. I refer to
which ought to have been written
. Lastly I must particularly bring into relief the case of
the word la (
), which in four or five cases is only l (
) without the final alif. The word la means no, and
the word l means certainly. It is horrible to think when it is meant "the believers certainly shall journey unto God"
and ("he unbelievers certainly shall assemble in the hell" and the unfortunate ignorant reader unintentionally says
"not" instead of "certainly". We shall point out all these passages in our second list.
The "sick letter" (
= English oo) is written in certain words but never pronounced, particularly 204 times in
(instead of
), 26 times in
(instead of
), 17 times in
(instead
of
), and twice in each of
and
(instead of
and
. In the Qur'an the
"sign of silence"is marked over such cases and consequently with a little attend on the pitfall is avoided. Again, in
certain cases the letter is lacking, although in logic it ought to have been written. For instance, the words
and
require to be written
and
. In modern editions of the
Qur'an, a very small (
letter were a sign of vocalization and not a letter of the alphabet. Lastly,in certain words it is written yet with a
different pronunciation, namely aa and not oo. (So 32 times in the wordwhich could be written
. Again 67 times in the word
and twice in
which could be written
and
. It is curious that the same word is written with alif and not with waw 24 times
in
, 17 times in
, and 6 times in
). Similar is the case of' regular (
) which is more often merely (
).
Lastly, the third "sick letter" ee (
). It is not written in the [case of]
which occurs altogether 69 times
