In less than 5 minutes you’ll know more about the Quran Arabic than most local Imams. Why is this important? First of all, the next time you read the Quran you’ll actually feel something instead of just hearing sounds coming out of your mouth. Because the Quran is not sent down so you will sound like a halal rock star (a Qari), it is to be understood and implemented.
The Quran is a rich tapestry of words that are meant to guide and refine mankind into a superbeing that can shape society as it should be. The words in the Quran can be divided into three categories and they are Ism (Noun), Fill (Verb) and Harf ( Particle).
‘Ism’ is similar to the English noun but they are not the same. Arabic noun consists of person, place, things, ideas adjective and adverb as explained in the superiority of Arabic nouns. Here we dwell a just a little bit deeper into what Arabic noun is all about. When you come across an Arabic noun it immediately tells you 4 things.
There are 4 properties of the Arabic noun. In other words, there are 4 things that you need to know if you were to master Arabic noun. Let’s go over them one by one. At this point, you only need to be aware of them, you do not need to memorize them, yet.
Here they are:
Status
Every Ism has a status. Status is known as I’rab. You can think of status as the function that you perform in a day. You might be a leader, a friend, a family member, a mentor and etc. In each of these functions, you behave differently. Similarly, an Arabic Ism also performs varying functions in a sentence. In a sentence, an Ism might be a subject (doer), predicate (details) or taking other supporting roles (after of words).
Number
refers to the quantity of the noun like whether it is singular or Plural. However, Arabic is more refined when it comes to quantity. In Quranic Arabic, you have singular for representing a single noun, dual representing two of the same noun, and anything that is more than 2 is considered as a plural. The singular and dual is fairly straight forward but things start to get exciting when it comes to plural. Plurals in Arabic can be broken down into 6 categories but you do not have to worry about it now. All you have to know is that Arabic Ism is subject to quantity so every time you identify a noun you must ask yourself whether it is singular, dual or plural.
Gender
In Arabic, every Ism whether it is a person or things is either masculine or feminine. In English when it comes to gender we refer to a noun as he, she or it. In Arabic, there is only ‘he’ or ‘she’ but there is no ‘it’. It is much simpler than you think because by default all Arabic nouns are masculine unless otherwise indicated. So much so that the focus is on learning to identify feminine nouns and how to recognize them. It is just like life, the female always get all the attention
Type
This is the last thing you need to know about nouns- Every time you see a noun you need to ask a question is this noun proper or common. Types show whether a particular noun refers to something that is common or proper. Basically, you need to identify whether that noun refers to something specific or general. An example of a common noun would be ‘a boy’ while the proper noun is more specific such as ‘the boy’.
Let’s recap what has been explained. The study of Arabic only deals with 3 categories of words one of which is a noun, Arabic Noun revolves around four things which are status, number, gender, and type. Status tells us the role that a particular noun plays in a sentence. While number refers to the quantity of the noun and gender is obvious females are always right.
Shahfizal Musa is the editor of Halalop. He graduated with a Law degree from Thames Valley University London. He is an award-winning journalist covering topics such as human trafficking, Muslim research discoveries, and exceptional Muslims.
