View source for Huruf Muqatta'at (Disjointed Letters in the Qur'an)

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'''Muqatta`āt''' (مقطعات), are unique letter combinations that begin certain chapters of the [[Qur'an]]. 
Muqatta`āt  literally means abbreviated or shortened. They are also known as  '''Fawātih''' ({{lang|ar|فواتح}}) or openers as they form the opening verse of the respective chapters.

==Introduction==

In [[Arabic]] language, these letters are written together like a word, but each letter is pronounced separately. None of these combinations, however, come together to form a meaningful Arabic word. Still, these letters appear joined together in print. Muqatta'at have been and continue to be a topic of intense research and academic discussions in [[Islam]]ic literature and Qur'anic studies.

A few examples of Muqatta'at

#''' 'Alif Lām Mīm''' - Surah Al Baqara, Surah Al Imran, and others
#''' 'Alif Lām Rā' '''- Sura Yunus, Surah Hud
#''' 'Alif Lām Mim Rā' '''-Sura Ar Raa'd
#'''  Ḥā' Mīm''' - Surah Ha Mim Sajda
#''' Kāf Ḥā' Yā' `Ayn Ṣād''' - Surah Maryam

Of the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet, exactly one half, that is 14 letters, appear as muqattā`at, either singly or in combinations of two, three, four or five letters. The fourteen letters are:
أ ح ر س ص ط ع ق ك ل م ن ه ي (''alif, ha, ra, sin, sad, ta, ain, qaf, kaf, lam, mim, nun, ha, ya''. Notably, each of these letters has a unique [[w:rasm | rasm]].  (The apparent hamza in ك is a graphical device to reflect its original form, as does its variant ﻛ and its initial and medial cases, ﻛ and ﻜ, respectively.)

==Context==

[[Image:Qur'anic initial letters en.PNG|right|frame|A [[w:tree diagram | tree diagram]] of the Qur'anic initial letters, labeled with the respective numbers of occurrences. To be read right to left.]]
Certain co-occurrence restrictions are observable in these letters; for instance, ''alif'' is invariably followed by ''lam''. The substantial majority of the combinations begin either ''alif lām'' or ''hā mim''.  See the diagram for fuller information.

In all but 3 of the 29 cases, these letters are almost immediately followed by mention of the Qur'anic [[revelation]] itself (the exceptions are [[surah]]s 29, 30, and 68); and some argue that even these three cases should be included, since mention of the revelation is made later on in the surah. More specifically, one may note that in 8 cases the following verse begins "These are the signs...", and in another 5 it begins "The Revelation..."; another 3 begin "By the Qur'an...", and another 2 "By the Book..."  Additionally, all but 3 of these surahs are Makkan surahs (the exceptions are surahs 2, 3, 13.)

The surahs that contain these letters are: surah 2, surah 3, surah 7, surah 10, surah 11, surah 12, surah 13, surah 14, surah 15, surah 19, surah 20, surah 26, surah 27, surah 28, surah 29, surah 30, surah 31, surah 32, surah 36, surah 38, surah 40, surah 41, surah 42, surah 43, surah 44, surah 45, surah 46, surah 50, surah 68.

==Classical Islamic Opinions==

Many tomes have been written over the centuries on the possible meanings and probable significance of these 'mystical letters', as they are sometimes called. Opinions have been numerous but a consensus remains elusive. There is no report in the [[hadith|Ahadith]] or [[Sirat Rasul Allah|Sirat]] of [[Muhammad|Muhammad's]] having used such expressions in his ordinary speech, or his having thrown light as to its usage in the Qur'an. And, more importantly, none of his [[Sahabah|Companions]] seemed to have asked him, regarding it. This apparent lack of examples of this sort of inquisitiveness is cited as proof that the usage of such abbreviations were well known to the Arabs of the time and were in vogue long before the advent of Islam.

Some of the better known opinions are:

<li> These letters stand for words or phrases related to [[Allah]] and his attributes. According to this view<br>
Alif Lām Mim stands for 'Anā Allāhu `ālim or I am Allah the All Knowing<br> 
Alif Lām Rā  stands for 'Anā Allāhu Rā'i or I am Allah the Seer<br>
The Companions Ibn Abbas and Ibn Mas'ud are said to have favored this view as cited by Abu Hayyan al Andalusi in his Bahr Al Muhit.<br>
Though plausible, this opinion does not find favor among other classical commentators, the reason given being that the possible combinations of letters are virtually infinite and the Attributes they represent seem to be chosen arbitrarily

<li>Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, a classical commentator of the Qur'an, has noted some twenty opinions regarding these letters, and mentions multiple opinions that these letters present the names of the Surahs as appointed by Allah. In addition, he mentions that Arabs would name things after such letters (for example, 'money' as 'ع', clouds as 'غ', and fish as 'ن'). {{bdo|ltr|<ref>{{cite journal|coauthors=Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, Shehzad Saleem|year=2003|month=July|title=Al-Baqarah (1-7)|journal=Renaissance|author=Michael R. Rose; Casandra L. Rauser; Laurence D. Mueller}}</ref>}}

===Possible, non-dogmatic perspective===

The classical Muslim scholars considered the text of the Qur'an to be unchanged. Thus, they do not consider that the muqattā'at may [[Corruption of Qur'an|possibly have been added after the prophets lifetime]], accounting for the general absence of narrations where companions inquire regarding the meaning of these letters (where mention of the letter does appear, it is usually a companion discussing a surah that begins with these letters, rather than asking about the letters themselves. Critical scholars have suggested, however, that the reference to these surahs by their muqatta'at letters is likely not reflective of conversations that actually took place during the prophet's life time, but was something introduced to these narrations many decades and multiple centuries after the prophet's death. Even the versions of the narrations recorded in the hadith books seem to dis-include these letters at times.)

This possibility is, however, not without its difficulties, and is elaborated later in this article.

==Modern Islamic Research==

In 1974, an Egyptian biochemist named [[Rashad Khalifa]] announced he had discovered [[The Miracle of 19|a mathematical code in the Qur'an based on these initials and the number 19]]<ref>Rashad Khalifa, ''[http://submission.org/miracle/visual.html Quran: Visual Presentation of the Miracle]'', Islamic Productions International, 1982. ISBN 0-934894-30-2</ref>, which is mentioned in Surah 74:30<ref>[{{Quran-url-only|74|30}} Qur'an, Chapter 74, Verse 30]</ref> of the Qur'an.  (However, Günter Lüling claims that the number is really 7, as in the 7 gates of the Christian [[Hell]].  See [http://www.christoph-heger.de/Surah_74_30.htm "Above it are neither nineteen nor seventeen."])  According to his research, these initials which prefix 29 chapters of the Qur'an occur throughout their respective chapters in multiples of this very number, nineteen. He has noted other mathematical phenomena throughout the Quran, all related to what he describes as the "mathematical miracle of the Qur'an."  Although subsequently dismissed as a heretic by Muslim scholars, his work did receive some acclaim by notable sources:

Scientific American of September 1980, p. 22. Martin Gardner wrote of Khalifa's initial publication in the West: "It's an ingenious study of the Quran,...Nineteen is an unusual prime. For example, it's the sum of the first powers of 9 and 10 and the difference between the second powers of 9 and 10."

Three years later the Canadian Council on the Study of Religion reported in its Quarterly Review of April 1983 that the code Khalifa discovered is "an authenticating proof of the divine origin of the Quran." Since 1983, little notice has been taken of this work. 

Amin Ahsan Islahi stated that Arabs used to use such letters in their poetry and since Qur'an addressed them in their own linguistic style, it was only appropriate for Qur'an to use the same style. He agrees with Rāzi and mentions that since these letters are names for Surahs, being proper nouns they are not bound to have a meaning. At the same time, he cites research from Hamiduddin Farahi, a Qur'anic scholar from the Indian subcontinent, on how these letters must be appropriately chosen according to the content and theme of the surahs.

Farahi links these letters back to Hebrew alphabet and suggests that those letters not only represented phonetic sounds but also contained a symbolic meaning to them, and Qur'an perhaps uses the same meanings when choosing the letters for surahs. For instance, in support of his opinion, he presents the letter Nun (ن), which symbolizes fish and Surah Nun mentions Jonah as 'companion of the fish'. Similarly, the letter Ṭa (ط) represents a serpent and all the Surahs that begin with this letter mention the story of Moses and serpents.<ref>{{cite book|author=Islahi, Amin Ahsan|title=Taddabur-i-Quran|publisher=Faraan Foundation| year=2004| pages=82-85}}</ref>

Yūsuf `Alī in Appendix 1 of his translation of the Qur'an<ref>Yūsuf `Alī, `Abdullah, ''The Holy Qur'ān: Text, Translation and Commentary'', New Revised Edition, Amana Corporation, Brentwood, MD, USA, 1989. ISBN 0-915957-033-5</ref> adduced some statistics regarding the Muqatta`āt (p. 124). 

Yūsuf `Alī's evidence can be summarized in the table below.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
!Letters
!Surahs
|-
|'Alif Lām Mīm
|2, 3, 29-32
|-
|'Alif Lām Mīm Ṣād
|7
|-
|'Alif Lām Rā'
|10-15
|-
|'Alif Lām Mīm Rā'
|13
|- 
|Kāf Hā' Yā' `Ayn Ṣād
|19
|-
|Ṭā' Hā'
|20
|-
|Ṭā' Sīn Mīm
|26, 28
|- 
|Ṭā' Sīn
|27
|-
|Yā' Sīn
|36
|-
|Ṣād
|38
|-
|Ḥā' Mīm
|40-46
|-
|`Ayn Sīn Qāf
|42
|-
|Qāf
|50
|-
|Nūn
|68
|}

==Possible Critical Perspective==

The critical perspective is typically developed as follows:

1. The rasm of each of the muqatta`āt is unique. In the case of ي, it is only found initially, so its rasm is unique, too. Except for ي and ن, each letter has no dots. In the case of ن, the dot is usually omitted in handwriting in the final and isolated cases.

2. The muqatta`āt are not mentioned in an early Muslim writings, notably, the ahadith and sirat.

3. The muqatta`āt are not distributed at random. 'Alif Lām Mīm occurs in two consecutive sets of surahs: 2-3 and 29-32. 'Alif Lām Rā' occurs in the consecutive surahs 10-15. Ḥā' Mīm occurs in the consecutive surahs 40-46. Ṭā' Sīn Mīm occurs in the nonconsecutive surahs 26 and 28.  However, if Ṭā' Sīn is really Ṭā' Sīn Mīm, then the latter also occurs in consecutive surahs.

From 1 and 2, it appears that the muqatta`āt were written in the original, [[Arabic letters and diacritics|defective (dot-free) Arabic]] script without any diacritics to distinguish consonants or vowels. Moreover, they were possibly written after the Ahadith and Sirat were compiled, or, perhaps, were unknown to the writers of those works.

From 3, we can conclude that the muqatta`āt date to after the recension of the Qur'an that produced its modern, longest-to-shortest organization.

The question now becomes what do the muqatta`āt represent? two hypotheses exist:

1. A relic of a now lost filing system

2. Scribal initials

If either were true, we would expect no muqatta`āt between the ranges of other muqatta`āt and no overlaps. This is apparently dis-confirmed by:

1. The presence of 'Alif Lām Mīm Ṣād (sura 7) and 'Alif Lām Rā' (suras 10-15) between the ranges of 'Alif Lām Mīm (suras 2-3 and 29-32). Even if 'Alif Lām Mīm Ṣād is really 'Alif Lām Mīm, the presence of 'Alif Lām Rā' dis-confirms the hypothesis.

and

2. The presence of two sets of muqatta`āt in Surah 42. (Though, perhaps this indicates the work of two scribes.)

Still, some hold that the muqatta`āt to be scribal initials rather than components of the surahs. The consecutive appearances of some sets indicates that some scribes were given consecutive surahs to copy.  
==See Also==
*[[The Origins of the Quran|The Origins of the Qur'an]]
*[[Al-Fatiha]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Arabic]]
[[Category:Qur'an]]
[[Category:Qur'anic textual history]]
[[Category:Revelation]]