The Hamza Overcorrection

Diagnosis: Spelling

Sometimes, street-level spelling corrections take on a life of their own.

Wander through Cairo’s Al-Azhar (الْأَزْهَر) district, check the local signs pointing to the mosque, and you might stumble upon an accidental battle of the Hamzas. This specific sign perfectly captures what happens when a well-meaning local grabs a red marker to fix a typo — but completely forgets to wipe away the original mistake.

As Marnix Demesmaeker, who submitted this brilliant catch, explains:

“Two years prior to taking this picture, the text read:

الى مسجد سيدى ومولاى الأمام الحسين

Originally, a cutting Hamza (هَمْزَةُ قَطْع) was missing from الى, and the Hamza in the word إمام was placed erroneously on top of the letter instead of underneath it.

When I came back two years later, there was an attempt at correcting the mistakes.”

The well-meaning corrector successfully applied red paint to add the required symbols below the letters, but they left the original, incorrect symbol right where it was. The result? A valiant effort birthed a brand new typographical anomaly.

Arabic text in question

Arabic text as it should be

To the mosque of my master and my lord,
Imam al-Ḥusayn,
and (to) the noble shrine.

Remark: Here سَيِّدِي وَمَوْلَايَ is a honorific pair, so it does not need to be translated too literally as two separate titles. You could also just say “To the mosque of my revered master…”

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 often ignore auxiliary vowels that are necessary for pronunciation to avoid consonant clusters.

Analysis

Let’s break down the mechanics of what the corrector tried to fix, and understand why the glottal stop (هَمْزَة) matters so much here.

• Write the word for the Imam (الإٔمام) with a cutting Hamza (هَمْزَةُ قَطْع) placed below it: الْإِمَام. The mistake is not cosmetic. The word الإِمام means the Imam. The word الأَمام – on top with “a” – points the reader toward the front / in front of. One tiny Hamza changes the word family.
• Observe the spelling of “my master” (سيدى) and “my lord” (مولاى). This should not be treated as the same kind of typo as the Hamza mistake. In standardized modern Arabic, you normally write these with dots under the final Yaa (ي). However, Egyptian writers often uniformly apply a dotless form (ى) for a final ي. In the above photograph, that is best described as an Egyptian orthographic convention, not the main error.

• Source: Real Place
• Time the picture was taken:  2024
• Location: Egypt
  Al-Azhar Mosque, El-Darb El-Ahmar, El Gamaliya, Cairo.
  Latitude: 31°15’44.9″E
  Longitude: 30°02’48.6″N

Credit
Picture credit: Marnix Demesmaeker
Added: 04/27/2026 by Marnix Demesmaeker

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