My TijarahRead TheQur’anOut Loud
Twelve drills, from a single letterto a whole surah. Plus four cards.
How to use these pages
Say every line out loud.
In your head, you sound fine. Out loud, the slips show up. So that’s the whole method: every line, out loud, as slowly as you need. Slow is allowed. The Prophet ﷺ said the reader who falters and finds it hard has two rewards (Sahih Muslim 798).
The Qur’an Reading Roadmap explains what each mark means. These 12 drills give your mouth the practice, a few minutes each. Keep the 4 cards at the back beside your mushaf.
Out loud
Nobody else has to hear you. A quiet room and the recorder on your phone are enough.
Decode, don’t recall
Letter first, then the mark on it, then the sound. If you knew the word before you read it, cover it and go again.
Climb slowly
A drill is done when it feels boring. Then move up one rung.
The twelve rungs
Drill 1 of 12
One letter, three vowels
Say the letter with the mark on it. A dash above is a, a dash below is i, and the little loop above is u. If you learnt from an Urdu qaidah, these are zabar, zer and pesh.
The first twelve
the mark moves, the letter stays
Drill 2 of 12
All 28 letters
The whole alphabet, three times over. Read each block in alphabet order from the top left. Then read it again without looking at the small English letters underneath.
With a fathah
a
With a kasrah
i
With a dammah
u
Drill 3 of 12
Sukoon
The sukoon (jazm), a small mark above a letter, means no vowel at all. Land on the letter and stop there. Many learners add a faint “uh” after it, so listen for that.
12 closed syllables
hamzah, fathah, then the letter closing
Five that bounce
ق ط ب ج د: qalqalah, a small knock as they close
In real words
Drill 4 of 12
Two letters, joined
Joined up, letters change shape. Read the shape you see, not the letters you know are inside it. All 12 are words from the Qur’an. In فِى the last ya has no dots: that’s how a mushaf writes it.
Drill 5 of 12
Three letters
Sound out each letter, then run the three together, slowly. Speed comes last, so don’t reach for it first.
Drill 6 of 12
Shaddah
The small w above a letter is a shaddah (tashdeed). It doubles the letter: one is written, two are read. Lean on it, hold it, then let go.
Drill 7 of 12
Tanween
Two vowel marks instead of one, and you hear an n at the end of the word. The n is never written. Say it, and listen for it.
Drill 8 of 12
Madd
A long vowel is held for two counts. A count is about the time it takes to fold one finger. Never one, never three.
Short against long
the same sound, held once and held twice
stretched by ا, held for two
stretched by ي, held for two
stretched by و, held for two
In words
Drill 9 of 12
The lam of al
You can see this rule on the page. Look at the lam of al. A sukoon on it means say it. No sukoon, and a shaddah on the next letter, means the lam is gone.
Say the lam
sukoon on the lam
Lose the lam
shaddah on the next letter
Drill 10 of 12
The alif you skip, and the letters written small
A mushaf uses marks you rarely see in other Arabic books. Three below are sounds you say. One is never said at all.
The alif you skip
a head like a small ص on the alif
Letters written small
long vowels written small, and one letter never said
Drill 11 of 12
Your first ayah
One word at a time, syllable by syllable. Then the whole line joined, the way it’s really read.
All four, joined
now without the gaps
bismillāhir raḥmānir raḥīm
In the name of Allāh, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful. (Saheeh International)
Drill 12 of 12
A whole surah
Surah al-Kawthar, the shortest surah in the Qur’an: three ayat, ten words. Read it on your own, from the letters up. The English is Saheeh International.
Indeed, We have granted you, [O Muḥammad], al-Kawthar.
So pray to your Lord and offer sacrifice [to Him alone].
Indeed, your enemy is the one cut off.
Card 1 of 4
Every letter, in all four of its shapes
The small bar shows the side a letter joins on. Shaded rows are the six that never join the letter after them, so start looks like alone, and middle like end.
One shape to know on sight: a lam followed by an alif is drawn as one crossed stroke, not as two letters side by side.
Card 2 of 4
The vowels, the marks, and how long to hold them
Three sounds, each with a short form and a long one. Everything else on this card is a mark that changes what you do with one of them.
Three marks that change the letter
sukoon
مِنْminNo vowel at all. Land on the letter and stop there.
shaddah
إِنَّinnaOne letter written, two letters read. Lean on it.
tanween
أَحَدٌaḥadunAn n on the end of the word that is never written.
The three tanween endings
the n is heard, never written, and it goes if you stop
aḥadun carrying on, aḥad if you stop
kufuwan carrying on, kufuwā if you stop
raḥmatin carrying on, raḥmah if you stop
The five lengths
Hafs from ‘Asim, by the way of ash-Shatibiyyah
Natural
2
counts
قَالَJoined
4 or 5
counts
ٱلسَّمَآءِSeparated
4 or 5
counts
إِنَّآ أَعْطَيْنَٰكَBecause you stopped
2, 4 or 6
counts
ٱلرَّحِيمِCompulsory
6
counts
ٱلضَّآلِّينَCard 3 of 4
The two halves of the alphabet
14 letters let the lam of al be heard. 14 swallow it. The mushaf shows you which every time, so this card is for curiosity as much as reference.
Moon letters: say the lam
A sukoon sits on the lam. ٱلْقَمَر, al-qamar.
Sun letters: lose the lam
A shaddah sits on the letter after it. ٱلشَّمْس, ash-shams.
What to look at
one mark decides it, and the mushaf prints it for you
A sukoon sits on the lam, so the lam is heard. Every moon letter behaves this way.
No sukoon on the lam, and a shaddah on the letter after it. The lam vanishes into it.
The old mnemonic
ibghi ḥajjaka wa khaf ‘aqīmah
14 letters in one phrase, and they’re exactly the moon letters. Learn it and you know both lists, because every other letter is a sun letter.
Card 4 of 4
The marks only a mushaf uses
Six marks in the word that change what you say, and six signs above the line that tell you where you may stop.
Written into the word
The dagger alif
A full long “aa” that the old script never wrote. Read it as an alif.
The small waw
A long “oo” on the ha that means “him” or “his”.
The small ya
A long “ee” on the same ha, after a kasrah.
The joining alif
Read it only when you start here. Skip it completely when you carry on.
The round zero
Written but never spoken, whether you stop or carry on.
The upright zero
Silent when you carry on. Spoken as a long “aa” when you stop on it.
Printed above the line
added by later scholars as a guide to the meaning, not part of the revealed text
Stop
Carrying on would join two ideas that do not belong together.
Do not stop
Unless it falls at the end of an ayah, where stopping is always allowed.
Either
Stopping and continuing are both sound.
Better to carry on
You may stop, but the meaning sits better joined.
Better to stop
You may carry on, but the meaning sits better apart.
One or the other
Two sets of three dots. Stop at one of them, never at both.
Stopping at the end of an ayah is always allowed, whatever the signs. Where you have a real choice, stop where the meaning is complete. If you run out of breath mid sentence, go back a word or two and start again from there.
Before you close the book
The part a page can’t do
You’ve read a whole surah out loud, built up from single letters. This book can’t hear you do it.
The slips that survive these drills are the ones you can’t hear yourself make: a heavy letter read flat, a madd cut to one count, a throat letter that slides into the nearest English sound. In your own ears they sound right. That’s why recitation has always been learned face to face, one reader listening to the next.
If you learnt as a child and still read slowly, you didn’t fail. Nobody has been listening to you read.
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Every Arabic word in this book is real, and most come from the Qur’an. The Qur’anic text is quran.com’s Uthmani script for the reading of Hafs from ‘Asim, by the way of ash-Shatibiyyah. Surah al-Kawthar is 108:1 to 3, and the English follows Saheeh International.