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.
That is the whole method. This is the drill book for The Qur’an Reading Roadmap: the roadmap explains what the marks mean, and these twelve pages give you something to do with your mouth. Each drill takes a few minutes.
Out loud
In your head you sound perfect. The mistakes live in your mouth, so that is where the work has to happen.
Decode, do not 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 finished when it has become boring. That is the only test, and it is a reliable one.
The twelve rungs
Drill 1 of 12
One letter, three vowels
Say the letter, then the mark sitting on it. Above the letter is a, below it is i, and the little loop above is u.
The first twelve
the mark moves, the letter does not
Drill 2 of 12
All twenty eight
The whole alphabet, three times over. Read each block left to right, then go back and read it again without looking at the small letters underneath.
With a fathah
a
With a kasrah
i
With a dammah
u
Drill 3 of 12
Sukoon
A small circle above a letter means no vowel at all. Land on the letter and stop there. Most beginners add a faint “uh” after it, so listen for that.
Twelve closed syllables
hamzah, fathah, then the letter closing
Five that bounce
ق ط ب ج د, the five that knock when they close
In real words
Drill 4 of 12
Two letters, joined
Joined up, letters change shape. Read the shape in front of you rather than the two isolated letters you know are inside it. Every one of these is a word, and every one is in the Qur’an.
Drill 5 of 12
Three letters
Sound out each letter, then run the three together. Slowly at first. Speed is the last thing to arrive and the first thing people reach for.
Drill 6 of 12
Shaddah
The small w above a letter doubles it. One letter is written and two are read: lean on it, hold it, then let the second one go.
Drill 7 of 12
Tanween
Two of a vowel mark instead of one, and you hear an n on 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, and 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
This is a rule you can see rather than one you have to remember. Look at the lam. A sukoon on it means say it. No sukoon, and a shaddah on the letter after it, means the lam has 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 that no other Arabic book does. Three of them are sounds you say. One of them is never said at all.
The alif you skip
a head like a small ص on the alif
Letters written small
full length vowels the old script never wrote
Drill 11 of 12
Your first ayah
One word at a time, syllable by syllable. Then the whole line joined together, which is how it is actually read.
All four, joined
now without the gaps
bismillāhir raḥmānir raḥīm
In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Especially Merciful
Drill 12 of 12
A whole surah
Surah al-Kawthar, the shortest in the Qur’an. Three ayat, read on your own, from the letters up.
Indeed, We have granted you al-Kawthar.
So pray to your Lord and offer sacrifice.
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 to what comes after them, so their start and middle repeat.
One shape worth knowing on sight: a lam followed by an alif is drawn as a single crossed stroke rather than 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
Fourteen letters let the lam of al be heard. Fourteen swallow it. The mushaf tells you which is which every time, so this card is for curiosity as much as for 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
Fourteen letters in one phrase, and they are exactly the fourteen moon letters. Learn the phrase and you have learned both lists at once.
Card 4 of 4
The marks only a mushaf uses
Six small letters and zeros that change what you say, and six signs in the margin 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”, almost always on the ha of “his”.
The small ya
A long “ee”, in the same place.
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 is always allowed at the end of an ayah, wherever the signs fall. Where you have a genuine choice, stop somewhere the meaning is complete, and if you have to breathe mid sentence, go back a word or two and start again from there.
When the drills have gone quiet
The part a page cannot do
You have read a surah out loud, built from the letters up. Most people who set out to read the Qur’an never get that far, and you should sit with that for a moment before you go looking for the next thing.
What is left needs ears. The errors that survive this book are the ones you cannot hear yourself making: a heavy letter read flat, a madd cut to one count, a throat letter that turned into its nearest English cousin somewhere between your head and your mouth. You will read them wrong and hear them right, every time, until somebody else is listening.
That is why recitation has always been taken face to face, from one reciter to the next, back to the Prophet ﷺ. It is the one part of this that was never written down, because it cannot be.
The Qur’an Reading Roadmap is the other half of this. Every rule behind these drills is explained there, along with a thirty day plan to work through. It is free as well, and the two are meant to sit open side by side.
My Tijarah
Read these pages to a teacher
Your first lesson is free. Open at drill one, read it aloud, and ask them to stop you the moment they hear a wrong letter. Twenty five minutes will tell you more than a month on your own.
Book a free trial lesson→mytijarah.co.uk
Every Arabic word in this book is real, and almost all of it is Qur’anic. The Qur’anic text is the Uthmani script of the reading of Hafs from ‘Asim by the way of ash-Shatibiyyah, which is what nearly every mushaf sold in Britain prints. Surah al-Kawthar is 108:1 to 3, and the English follows Saheeh International.