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PLATE (3 of 4): HAMIDULLAH ARTICLE

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78                                             ISLAMIC ORDER

have 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 ( ) is added just after the first one, in order to distinguish it from the text, as if the second

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 word which 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

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