Cutting the Qiblah

Diagnosis: Spelling

Arabic text in question

Arabic text as it should be

Note: You don’t use diacritics (تشكيل) in everyday Arabic. We use them here to clearly explain the grammar, spelling and meaning of words. To avoid confusion, we generally ignore auxiliary vowels that are necessary for pronunciation to avoid consonant clusters.

Analysis

There is a mistake in إتجاه القبلة, which means direction of the Qiblah, the prayer direction for Muslims to Mecca.

➤ Correct: اِتِّجاهُ الْقِبْلَةِ – without the Hamza at the beginning.

The original إتجاه القبلة starts with a Hamza that’s a bit too assertive. The إ is a so-called همزة القطع (“cutting” Hamza). It should be the shy kind, the هَمْزةُ الْوَصْلِ (connecting Hamza), which only speaks up when it’s the very first word.

So, the correct form is اِتِّجاهُ القِبْلَةِ. Think of the initial Aleph as a silent helper, only needed at the start.

The noun اِتِّجاه is the verbal noun (مصدر) of the VIII-verb اِتَّجَهَ – يَتَّجِهُ, which means to go; to head. The root is و-ج-ه. In the pattern اِفْتَعَلَ, if the first letter is weak (حَرْفُ العِلَّةِ), like the letter و in our example, then the و merges with the ت with the result that the ت is doubled, indicated by the shadda (ٌشَدّة).

This process is known in morphology as إِدْغامٌ (assimilation, when two identical or similar letters merge) and might involve إِبْدالٌ (substitution, the changing of one letter for another for phonetic reasons).

In short, the initial Hamza was a little too assertive for its grammatical role.

• Source: Real Place
• Time the picture was taken: November 2022
• Location: Saudi Arabia
  Tariq Bin Ziad Street
  43314 العلا
  Saudi Arabia
  Latitude: 26.572307
  Longitude: 37.944638
  

Credit
Picture credit: Gerald Drißner
Added: 03/25/2025 Gerald Drißner

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