The Harakat: Fatha, Kasra, Damma and Sukun

You have learned the shapes of the 28 Arabic letters, you can name them one by one, and yet a line of the Qur'an still looks like a wall you cannot climb. That is not a failure on your part. Naming the letters is only half the job. The other half is the little marks that sit above and below them, the marks that tell you what sound each letter actually makes. These are the harakat, and they are the bridge between reciting the alphabet and reading a real word.

In everyday printed Arabic these marks are usually left off, because native speakers can guess them from context. In the mushaf and in every beginner text they are written in full, precisely so that nobody mispronounces a single word of Allah's speech. This guide walks through each mark slowly, with plenty of vowelled examples. If the letter shapes themselves are still shaky, start with our guide on how to read Arabic first, then come back here.

What the harakat actually are

The word harakah literally means "movement." Its plural is harakat. A harakah is a small diacritical mark placed above or below a letter to show the short vowel that follows it. Be clear about this from the outset: the harakat are not letters of the alphabet. The 28 letters are the consonants, the skeleton of the word. The harakat are the marks that bring that skeleton to life. Arabic even gives us a neat pair of words for the two states: a letter carrying a harakah, a short vowel, is mutaharrik ("moving"), and a letter carrying no vowel is sakin ("still"). Almost everything you read is an alternation of moving letters and still letters, and once your eye starts sorting them into those two groups, reading becomes a rhythm rather than a guess.

The three short vowels

Arabic has exactly three short vowels: fatha, kasra and damma. Each is a single mark, each makes one short sound, and every moving letter carries exactly one of them. Learn these three thoroughly and you have unlocked the majority of what you see on the page. We will use the letter ba as our test letter throughout, so you can hear each mark against the same consonant.

Fatha: the short "a"

The fatha is a small diagonal stroke written above the letter. It gives a short "a" sound, like the a in "cat." So a letter with a fatha on top is read as that consonant plus a short a.

Kasra: the short "i"

The kasra is a small diagonal stroke written below the letter. It gives a short "i" sound, like the i in "sit." The kasra is the odd one out in that it is the only common mark written underneath the letter rather than on top, which makes it easy to spot.

Damma: the short "u"

The damma is a small curl written above the letter, shaped like a miniature waw. It gives a short "u" sound, like the u in "put." Be careful here: some beginner guides loosely call it an "o," but the accurate value is a short u. Note also that the damma is only shaped like a waw. It is a mark, not the letter waw itself.

Sukun: the sign of no vowel

The sukun is a small circle written above the letter. It is not a vowel at all. It is the sign that the letter has no vowel after it. A letter carrying a sukun is closed off cleanly and the syllable ends there, which is why we call such a letter sakin, "still." Think of the sukun as a full stop for that single letter. A common beginner slip is to add a little vowel to a letter that carries a sukun, so resist it: the consonant is pronounced with nothing after it, and the syllable stops dead.

How a word is built: consonant plus harakah

Here is the heart of it. An Arabic word is a string of consonants, and each consonant is switched on by whatever mark sits on it. A moving letter contributes its consonant plus one short vowel. A still letter contributes just its consonant. Work through the letters one at a time and the word assembles itself in your mouth. The marks that felt like clutter are in fact the clearest possible instructions, and for a wider tour of the other little signs you meet on the page, see our guide to the symbols on the Qur'an page.

Shadda: doubling a letter

The shadda (also called tashdid) is a mark shaped a little like a small "w," written above the letter. It tells you the consonant is doubled, that is, pronounced twice. The first of the two is sakin (no vowel) and the second is mutaharrik (with its own short vowel), so a doubled letter is really a still letter immediately followed by a moving one, packed into a single written letter. Because that second half still needs a vowel, the short vowel is written together with the shadda: a fatha or damma above it, a kasra usually just below the letter. The clearest way to feel the difference doubling makes is a minimal pair.

Tanwin: the hidden "n" at the end of a word

Tanwin, or nunation, is one of the three short-vowel marks doubled at the end of a word. Doubling the mark adds an "n" sound, as if a silent noon had been tacked on. This is the point people most often get wrong, so hold onto it: tanwin is not simply another vowel. It adds a consonant, the /n/ sound, after the short vowel, even though no noon is ever written.

Short vowels and their long counterparts

Once the three short vowels are secure, one more piece makes reading whole. Each short vowel has a long partner, formed by adding a letter of prolongation, one of the three huruf al-madd. These letters are alif, waw and ya. Unlike the harakat, they really are letters, and what they do is stretch the matching short vowel into a long one. At this reading-foundation stage that is all you need: short vowel, then its long twin. How many beats each long vowel is held, and the different kinds of elongation, belong to tajweed proper, which our guide to the madd rules in tajweed takes further.

Where the harakat came from

The earliest copies of the mushaf were written as a bare consonantal skeleton, with no dots and no vowel marks at all. The reciters carried the correct reading in their hearts. As Islam spread and more non-Arabs entered the faith, marks were introduced to protect the reading. By the traditional account, Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali devised an early system using coloured dots for the three short vowels, and al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi later refined it into the small superscript marks we use today, shaped from the long-vowel letters. The reports vary in their detail, so take this as the received tradition rather than a settled record, but it is a beautiful reminder that this whole system exists to guard the Qur'an's pronunciation.

Seeing every mark in a single ayah

Rather than treat these marks as separate lessons, it helps to watch them work together in a real vowelled verse. One short ayah from Surah al-Qamar contains almost everything covered above at once.

Look closely and you will find the whole system in one line. There is a sukun on the dal of لَقَدْ and on the noon of مِن, each closing its syllable. There is a shadda on the sin of يَسَّرْنَا, on the dhal of لِلذِّكْرِ, and in مُّدَّكِرٍ, each doubling its letter. And the final word مُّدَّكِرٍ ends in a tanwin kasra, read "-in." If you can read this ayah correctly, mark by mark, you have proven to yourself that the harakat are no longer a barrier. It is fitting to end on learning itself, for the Prophet ﷺ tied the very best of this community to the Book you are now learning to read.

Notice, even here, the marks at work: تَعَلَّمَ and عَلَّمَهُ both carry a shadda on the lam, doubling it. Progress with the harakat is genuinely fast once the pieces click, and the click usually comes sooner with a teacher listening to your pronunciation and correcting it in the moment. If you would like that, you can find a Qur'an or Arabic teacher for one-to-one lessons at your own pace.