al-Durra al-Arjuza fi Rasm al-Kalim al-Mahmuza
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- al-Durra al-Arjuza fi Rasm al-Kalim al-Mahmuza
al-Durra al-Arjūza fī Rasm al-Kalim al-Mahmūza (The Poetic Pearl on the Orthography of Hamzated Words) is a didactic poem on Arabic orthography composed in the rajaz meter by Mahmūd Abū Sarīʿ (Mahmūd Muḥammad Mahmūd Mursī). The work spans 58 verses and codifies the rules governing the spelling and script placement of the hamzah in all positions within Arabic words.
Content and Structure
The work is organized into an introduction, three main sections, dedicated subsections for exceptions, and a conclusion:
- Introduction (vv. 1–9): Opens with praise of God and blessings upon the Prophet ﷺ, outlines the objective of establishing a concise, beneficial rule for writing the hamzah, and introduces the four orthographic representations of the letter—isolated on the line (mufradah), or seated upon alif, yāʾ, or wāw—depending on its position and vowel markings.
- Initial Hamzah (vv. 10–17): Details the rules for word-initial hamzah (al-hamzah al-ibtidāʾiyyah), both disjunctive (qaṭʿ) and conjunctive (waṣl), noting that it is drawn uniformly as an alif. When an open hamzah is followed by an alif of prolongation (madd), it is written with a maddah over the alif to avoid adjacent identical letters (tawālī al-amthāl). It notes exceptions for compound formations such as la-in, li-allā, and hāʾulāʾ, as well as instances preceded by interrogative particles or conjunctive prefixes that shift the hamzah into medial status.
- Medial Hamzah and Vowel Hierarchy (vv. 18–32): Treats medial hamzah (al-hamzah al-mutawassiṭah), establishing the standard comparative rule based on the relative phonetic strength of the hamzah’s own vowel and the vowel of the preceding letter. The author ranks vowel strengths from strongest to weakest: kasrah (corresponding to yāʾ or a tooth/nabrah), followed by ḍammah (corresponding to wāw), fatḥah (corresponding to alif), and sukūn (requiring solitary placement on the line).
- Exceptions to the Medial Rule (vv. 33–48): Details three specific exceptions:
- Hamzah originally written on an alif followed by an alif of madd, where older scribal practice wrote it isolated or on a nabrah (e.g., al-Qurʾān, al-mirʾāh), though modern scribes standardly place a maddah above the alif.
- Hamzah written on a wāw followed by a wāw of madd, distinguishing between connected letters (written on a nabrah, as in al-kuʾūs) and unconnected letters (written isolated on the line, as in al-ruʾūs).
- Cases where a hamzah would normally sit isolated on the line but can connect to both the preceding and following letters (e.g., shayʾan, hayʾah, khaṭīʾah), endorsing writing it on a nabrah over stretching the baseline.
- Final Hamzah (vv. 49–52): Explains that a word-final hamzah (al-hamzah al-muṭarrafah) follows the same underlying principle as the medial hamzah, but because pause (waqf) renders the final letter unvowelled, its graphic seat is determined entirely by the vowel of the immediately preceding letter.
- Conclusion (vv. 53–58): Concludes with prayers and records that the poem was completed in the town of al-Mujaffaf.
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