► 01 ◄

Verse 1

(The Disjointed Letters)

الم

“Alif. Lām. Mīm.” There are four topics related to these.

First Topic

The Qur’an’s miraculousness and inimitability rise from the horizon of the Disjointed Letters, for it is a light manifested from the blending of the corruscating subtleties of eloquence (or rhetoric – al-balāgha). This topic contains many fine points, but whatever their tenuousness a true dawn breaks from their totality.

Firstly: “Alif. Lām. Mīm.,” together with the other Disjointed Letters at the start of some suras, their sisters, consist of half the letters in the alphabet, the basic elements of all words. That is, the Qur’an uses half the twenty-eight letters and disregards half. Ponder over this!

Secondly: The half it takes are more commonly used than those it leaves.

Thirdly: Of the letters it takes, the Qur’an repeats those easiest on the tongue, like Alif and Lām.

Fourthly: It mentions the Disjointed Letters at the start of twenty-nine suras, which corresponds to the number of letters of the alphabet. [^3]

[^3]:If Hamza is counted, there are twenty-nine letters in the Arabic alphabet.

Fifthly: It takes half of those letters that have pairs, like the concealed (mahmūsa), the emphatic (majhūra), the stressed (shadīda), the soft (rakhwa), and the musta‘liya, munḥafiḍa, and munfatiḥa letters, and the rest of them. Of those that have no pairs (awtār), it takes fewer of the ‘heavy’ like the tremolo (qalqala), and more of the ‘light,’ like the labiolinguals (dhallāqa).

Sixthly: Those it uses of these are finer in character.

Seventhly: The way the Qur’an has chosen for [selecting] the Disjointed Letters is one out of five hundred and four possibilities, and this is the only possible way of halving the letters [of the alphabet] with their particular