# Classical Arabic Pronunciation of tāʼ marbūṭah in pausa



## Russkitav

I did a cursory check, but didn't see exactly a thread about this, so I am making one now (if there is a thread about this, please excuse my error).

In Classical Arabic, what is the proper pronunciation of the tāʼ marbūṭah in pausa (when not followed by any ending/particle/etc that causes the /t/-pronunciation)? Is it actually silent as is commonly taught to MSA students, or should it actually be a /h/ sound, or is it something else? I know that in modern Arabic, the silent pronounciation is accepted, but my interest is more about classical Arabic.


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## Drink

If I recall correctly, Classical grammarians say that it should be pronounced as an "h". However, my personal theory is that this does not make sense historically and that the pronunciation of the "h" is a hypercorrection by the Classical grammarians themselves. The reason for my theory is that the letter haa' had already been used as a mater lectionis for vowels at the end of words, including for the -a feminine ending in Aramaic (and also Hebrew) when it lost the "t" sound, well before the Arabic language was ever written down; it is known from other evidence that this ending was never pronounced with an "h" in Aramaic. So when Arabic borrowed the Syriac Aramaic alphabet and started being written down, it is entirely plausible that the haa' could have been used to represent a pure vowel with no consonant. And since neither Aramaic nor Hebrew have an "h" sound replacing the lost "t", there is no reason to believe that Arabic would either.


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## Russkitav

Drink said:


> If I recall correctly, Classical grammarians say that it should be pronounced as an "h". However, my personal theory is that this does not make sense historically and that the pronunciation of the "h" is a hypercorrection by the Classical grammarians themselves.


Wouldn't it make sense that it could very well be /h/? It is written with an h-letter variant, and the change does have a parallel in Hebrew (unless you agree it was /h/ in Arabic at one point, but the /h/ changed to null before the Classical Arabic period | In Hebrew, the feminine ending /t/ changes to /h/ in all cases, unlike Arabic that retains the /t/ in a lot of cases)


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## Drink

I have expanded my reply above and in case I didn't say it explicitly, in Hebrew also, the "h" was never pronounced, only written to indicate the vowel.


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## fdb

Drink said:


> If I recall correctly, Classical grammarians say that it should be pronounced as an "h".



That is correct. The final /h/ is also clearly audible in the cantillation of the Qurʼan. Listen for example here: http://www.quranexplorer.com/Quran/ and pick out Sura 101 from verse 1 to verse 11.


Drink said:


> However, my personal theory is that this does not make sense historically and that the pronunciation of the "h" is a hypercorrection by the Classical grammarians themselves. The reason for my theory is that the letter haa' had already been used as a mater lectionis for vowels at the end of words, including for the -a feminine ending in Aramaic (and also Hebrew) when it lost the "t" sound, well before the Arabic language was ever written down; it is known from other evidence that this ending was never pronounced with an "h" in Aramaic. So when Arabic borrowed the Syriac Aramaic alphabet and started being written down, it is entirely plausible that the haa' could have been used to represent a pure vowel with no consonant. And since neither Aramaic nor Hebrew have an "h" sound replacing the lost "t", there is no reason to believe that Arabic would either.



I do not entirely follow your logic. First: the letter هـ is *never* used as a mater lectionis in Arabic. Even in Hebrew and Aramaic final –h is used only as a mater lectionis for long vowels, never for short vowels. So there is no Aramaic scribal precedent for the spelling of final short /a/ with –h. From a comparative Semitic perspective I do not see any real difficulty in assuming that Arabic –atun ,-atin etc. was reduced to –ah in pausal position. Not all languages work the same way.


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## Drink

It's my personal theory and most of it is speculation. I would have to do a lot of research to prove it. As for long/short vowels, it is unclear whether this ending was originally long or short in Aramaic and Hebrew. The earliest evidence of its pronunciation is only around 1500 years old and there are other places where an -a vowel is indicated by this letter which _is_ known to have been short up to some point after it was already written that way (for example, the word אנתה/אתה, equivalent to Arabic أنتَ). But you are right that not all languages work the same way. Arabic could have taken a slightly different path in this case, but who knows.


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## Ihsiin

fdb said:


> First: the letter هـ is *never* used as a mater lectionis in Arabic.



I hate to be a pedant, but ه _is_ used as a mater lectionis fairly commonly in modern written vernacular, so it's quite wrong to say it's *never* used.
Just a sidenote.


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## fdb

Of course you are right. But I was talking about Classical Arabic.


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## Drink

That fact that it was adopted into languages like Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Urdu, Kurdish, etc. as a mater lectionis may suggest that was in fact pronounced that way in Classical times, even if colloquially.


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## Ihsiin

Here's a thought:

I believe there is good evidence from spelling inconsistencies in the Qur'an that at the time when the codex was written (classical times?), in the common speech تاء مربوطة was only pronounced as /t/ when part of a genitive construction, as is the case in modern vernacular Arabic, and indeed other Semitic languages (as in Hebrew, right?). If we accept this to be the case, do we imagine that, for example, the phrase المدينة المنورة would have been realised as _al-madīnahu l-munwwarah_ or as _al-madīna l-munawwara(h)_? The latter seems more likely to me, but then I am biased by my own modern pronunciation.


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## Drink

Ihsiin said:


> (as in Hebrew, right?)



Yes, Hebrew and Aramaic work exactly the same way as colloquial Arabic, except that in Hebrew and Aramaic the distinction is written as well.


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## WadiH

First question is do we have evidence of a _ta marbuta_ in Old Arabic inscriptions (that predate the codification of the Classical grammarians)? If not, then there is no reason to conclude that the grammarians were doing anything other than tracking actual pronunciation.

Regardless, nearly all Arabian dialects pronounce it as '-ah' in the pausal form (an archaic '-at' also exists in some dialects such as Shammar in the north and 'Asir in the south).  This to me indicates that the grammarians were simply recording actual pronunciation rather than any hypercorrection.  It's also clear from their works that the grammarians were far too sophisticated to make such an elementary error, especially with the amount of primary source material (i.e. actual Arabians from the desert) that they had access to, so the hypercorrection hypothesis is very unlikely in my opinion.


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## rayloom

Ihsiin said:


> Here's a thought:
> 
> I believe there is good evidence from spelling inconsistencies in the Qur'an that at the time when the codex was written (classical times?), in the common speech تاء مربوطة was only pronounced as /t/ when part of a genitive construction, as is the case in modern vernacular Arabic, and indeed other Semitic languages (as in Hebrew, right?). If we accept this to be the case, do we imagine that, for example, the phrase المدينة المنورة would have been realised as _al-madīnahu l-munwwarah_ or as _al-madīna l-munawwara(h)_? The latter seems more likely to me, but then I am biased by my own modern pronunciation.



Hi Ihsiin
I don't recall any spelling inconsistencies in the Quran in that regard. The ta-marbuta was always written as a taa ت (an open taa) when in the construct state, otherwise it's written with a haa ـه with the dots added later on to signify that it's a taa in Sandhi and a haa in pausa, as is evident from all 10 recitations of the Quran.
المدينة المنورة would never be pronounced _al-madīnahu l-munwwara._
It would be al-madīnatu l-munwwarah. The first is the Sandhi taa and the latter is the Pausal haa.


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## analeeh

But the very fact that it's consistently written as a t in construct but a h elsewhere arguably implies exactly ihsiin's point - that it was only pronounced as a /t/ in construct state. Otherwise why is it written as a /t/ in construct but an /h/ elsewhere?


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## Ihsiin

In fact, there is inconsistency: when in a construct state it's sometimes written with _taa' maftūḥa_, as in 2:218: رحمت الله, or with _taa' marbūṭa_, as in 3:108: رحمة الله. My point, however, is that the fact that this spelling inconsistency _only_ ever occurs in the genitive construction might tell us something about the pronunciation of the _taa' marbūṭa _in the common speech at the time when the codex was written (that is to say, classical times).

I should point out I'm not talking about formal speech, I'm talking about common speech. I think we can all agree that in formal speech _taa' marbūṭa _was realised as /t/ in all cases apart from in pausa, and in formal speech the correct rendition of المدينة المنورة is _al-medīnatu l-munawwara(h) _(I put the <h> in brackets because this is what is currently under contention). But we can also agree that in modern common speech it's more likely to be rendered as _al-medina l-munawwara. _In fact, in my dialect _il-medina l-imnawwra _is more correctly vernacular, but let's not get hung up - the point is that the _taa' marbūṭa _would not be realised at all in this instance, not as /t/ or /h/.

What I infer from the spelling inconsistencies in the Qur'an regarding _taa' marbūṭa _is that in the common speech of the classical period the situation was much the same, that _taa' marbūṭa _was only realised as /t/ in construct state, that _al-medīnatu l-munawwara_ was only a formal realisation then, as it is now. And if, in common speech, the _taa' marbūṭa _of مدينة was not realised as /t/ or /h/ (I think we can agree that a realisation of /h/ would sound very odd), my instincts are to apply this to all instances in which _taa' marbūṭa _is not realised as /t/ and to pronounce it as null in pausa in formal speech. It is possible, of course, that it was pronounced as /h/ in the syllable coda and not elsewhere. My argument is not conclusive.

I am biased by my own dialectal pronunciation. I do not pronounce ه as /h/ when it comes at the end of the word unless it is part of the root. For example يشبه _yišbah_ as opposed to شفته _šifta_, or for that mater مدينة _medīna_. The only instance in which a suffixal ه would be realised as /h/ would be when it follows a long vowel _and_ precedes a _ḥaruf sākin_. Observe, for example, the following line of poetry:

قلبي يبو حمزة *تراه* تفتت وذاب
_gaḷbī yabū ḥamza *trāh* tfettet wδāb
_
Now, my dialectal pronunciation conventions necessarily inform my formal pronunciation conventions, and as such when reading formal Arabic I never pronounce ة as /h/, only ever as /t/, or null in pausa. Similarly, it's likely that the pronunciation conventions of the common speech would have informed the formal pronunciation for particular individuals in the classical period too. I have already suggested that in the common speech _taa' marbūṭa _was realised as null when it was not realised as /t/, at the very least when not in the syllable coda. Is it too fantastical to suggest it was realised as null in _all_ cases when it was realised as /t/? I don't think so.


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## fdb

rayloom said:


> The ta-marbuta was always written as a taa ت (an open taa) when in the construct state,



This is quite simply wrong, as Ihsiin has noted.


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## Drink

Just one thing I would note:

I don't think there was a "formal" and "informal" pronunciation at the time the Quran was written. There were just different dialects that pronounced things differently.


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## rayloom

Ihsiin said:


> In fact, there is inconsistency: when in a construct state it's sometimes written with _taa' maftūḥa_, as in 2:218: رحمت الله, or with _taa' marbūṭa_, as in 3:108: رحمة الله. My point, however, is that the fact that this spelling inconsistency _only_ ever occurs in the genitive construction might tell us something about the pronunciation of the _taa' marbūṭa _in the common speech at the time when the codex was written (that is to say, classical times).[...]



My memory betrayed me.
I get your point there, however, ancient grammarians have described several dialectal variation of the common speech of the era. They describe the consistent pronunciation of the taa-marbuta as a taa even in Pausa. The also describe the pronunciation of the plural feminine marker -aat ات as -aah اه in pausa (in the non-construct). They don't describe a haa (or null) in Sandhi, at least during the period when CA was inflected. But even if we assume the presence of non-inflected variants of Arabic at the time (as several Semiticists have suggested), and in which المدينة المنورة would be pronounced something like al-madīna(h) l-munwwara(h), it might have not been reported because it was considered wrong (by our grammarians). Even though I presonally believe they would have reported it anyways.

Back to the topic, a similar phenomenon to addition of the haa sound in pausa, is the هاء السكت. In which a haa is added after short vowels to prevent stopping on a short vowel.
Also if we take the word بنت bint (the feminine form of the masculine singular بن) to be a reflection of an older stage of the language, where the taa is always pronounced even when not in the construct state, I can't see how the taa, the feminine marker, would only be limited to the construct, while the haa would be a feminine marker elsewhere, then with the haa giving way to the taa. I believe it to be the other way round. The taa being consistently pronounced in all forms, with it disappearing (not in all Pre-Classical dialects) in pausa, giving way to a haa, thus not stopping on a short vowel. And like هاء السكت, which was a real pronounced haa.


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## Drink

rayloom said:


> Also if we take the word بنت bint (the feminine form of the masculine singular بن) to be a reflection of an older stage of the language



In Hebrew there are many feminines like this that keep the -t always because there was no vowel preceding it (although a new epenthetic vowel has since been inserted, much like the colloquial pronunciation bin*i*t in Arabic). For example, məyallede*t* (which used to be *məyallid*t*) compared to Arabic muwallid*a*(h).


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## rayloom

^In Arabic, there aren't many.
بنت
أخت
هنت
اللات


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## Ihsiin

rayloom said:


> My memory betrayed me.
> I get your point there, however, ancient grammarians have described several dialectal variation of the common speech of the era. They describe the consistent pronunciation of the taa-marbuta as a taa even in Pausa. The also describe the pronunciation of the plural feminine marker -aat ات as -aah اه in pausa (in the non-construct). They don't describe a haa (or null) in Sandhi, at least during the period when CA was inflected. But even if we assume the presence of non-inflected variants of Arabic at the time (as several Semiticists have suggested), and in which المدينة المنورة would be pronounced something like al-madīna(h) l-munwwara(h), it might have not been reported because it was considered wrong (by our grammarians). Even though I presonally believe they would have reported it anyways.



Oh, of course, there were (and still are) dialects in which تاء مربوطة  was realised as /t/ in all cases - this is evident enough from the Arabic loanwords in Persian etc. which retain the /t/, apart from anything else. What I argue for is dialects which treated تاء مربوطة just as we do in (most of) our modern dialects. I cannot explain away the particular interchange between تاء مربوطة and تاء مفتوحة that we find in the Qur'an in any other way. Of course, what the grammarians have recorded is one source of evidence when it comes to building up a picture of ancient pronunciation, but spelling inconstancies are another. The only conclusion I find myself reaching is that all these variants existed.



> Back to the topic, a similar phenomenon to addition of the haa sound in pausa, is the هاء السكت. In which a haa is added after short vowels to prevent stopping on a short vowel.
> Also if we take the word بنت bint (the feminine form of the masculine singular بن) to be a reflection of an older stage of the language, where the taa is always pronounced even when not in the construct state, I can't see how the taa, the feminine marker, would only be limited to the construct, while the haa would be a feminine marker elsewhere, then with the haa giving way to the taa. I believe it to be the other way round. The taa being consistently pronounced in all forms, with it disappearing (not in all Pre-Classical dialects) in pausa, giving way to a haa, thus not stopping on a short vowel. And like هاء السكت, which was a real pronounced haa.



I'm not familiar with هاء السكت - can you provide a few examples? From what you've described, however, it seems to me that it is precisely a mater lectionis. The ه is used to indicate that the final short vowel is pronounced, but naturally should not be realised itself, being morphologically erroneous. This is exactly how ه is used today in written vernacular, for example in عليه for _ʕalayya_ "on me", or بويه _būya _"my father". If it was later realised as /h/ then this would surely be hypercorrection. But furthermore, if ه _were_ used this way, that would imply a precedent in which final ه was realised as null, thereby making it suitable for use as a mater lectionis.

I don't see that the word بنت has much relevance here. Of course, the ت in بنت is never realised as anything other than /t/ in any situation. This was the case in classical Arabic and remains the case in modern vernacular. As you've said, this type of feminine marker is rare and is probably fossilised from a much older form of the language (pre-Arabic, maybe?). What we're interested in here is the much more regular feminine marker ة and it's various realisations throughout the ages. We know for certain that there were dialects that only realised ة as /t/ in the construct state and as null elsewhere - we know that because they are the ancestors to the modern dialects that do the same thing. The only question is: how far back does this feature go? For the reasons I have given, I'm minded to suggest that it goes back at least to classical times. However, my evidence is, of course, not conclusive.

The original question was about the 'proper' pronunciation of ة in pausa in classical Arabic. I have a problem with the word 'proper', because it implies an absolute standard of correctness that I cannot abide - for me, usage is arbiter final, and there is always some variation within usage. As such, the question which I have been stumbling towards answering is not so much as to whether or not a null realisation in pausa was 'proper' in classical times, but whether to not it was present, which on the whole I think it was.


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## Ghabi

Ihsiin said:


> I'm not familiar with هاء السكت - can you provide a few examples?


Hello. There are some related threads for this:
- لِمه
- وما أدراك ما هيه
- صيغة الأمر بحرف واحد


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## Ihsiin

Thank you Ghabi. Yes, this is what I thought it was - it seems clear that this ه is a mater lectionis and its realisation as /h/ is an instance of hypercorrection.


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## Ghabi

In Sibawayhi's descriptions the additional -h is not merely orthographical. It's one of the strategies to avoid pausing at a vowel. For example in §490 he mentions the imperative اِرْمِهْ irmih, as well as the variant اِرْمْ irm. So the idea seems to be that the speakers of that time either added an -h or dropped the vowel when pausing.


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## WadiH

It makes no sense that anyone would have said Al-Madinahu al-Manawwarhu since that would mean applying the case ending to a 'ha' that is not part of the actual root, which I don't think ever happens.  Clearly, the "h" here was meant to signify the pausal form.


Ihsiin said:


> I am biased by my own dialectal pronunciation. I do not pronounce ه as /h/ when it comes at the end of the word unless it is part of the root. For example يشبه _yišbah_ as opposed to شفته _šifta_, or for that mater مدينة _medīna_.


Yes, I think you are biased by your native dialect because the pausal form inside the Arabian Peninsula (where the dialects are more conservative) do realise it as Al-Madina Al-Munawwarah (the first 'h' is elided into the following vowel but the second 'h', where the actual pause occurs, is realised).  I see no reason to believe that the Arabian dialects in the Quran's time did not act in a similar way.


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## rayloom

Some grammarians do propse هاء السكت as being the origin of the hā of the tā-marbūTa, after the omission of the tā because of a tarkhīm occuring at the end of the word.
And as Wadi Hanifa said, the hā is pronounced in the Arabian dialects. المدينة, as in our example, in the Madani Hijazi dialect is pronounced with the hā. Same goes for Makkah and Jiddah, and all words ending in tā-marbūTa.


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## Ibn Nacer

Salut tout le monde,

J'ai une question en français : est-ce qu'on ne prononce pas "t" lorsque al tâ'ul-marbûtah est précédée par une alif de prolongation ? Par exemple on dit  : zakât, salât et non zakâh, salâh...

Qu'en pensez-vous ?


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## rayloom

Salut Ibn Nacer

On les prononce sans "t". Zakâh  Salâh etc quand le mot n'est pas un muDâf et est avant une pause terminale (à la fin d'un énoncé).
Cela dit, il y a quelques dialectes en Arabie (surtout dans le centre et l'est), et probablement ailleurs dans le monde arabe, qui prononce le "t" final en tout cas.


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## Ibn Nacer

Merci Rayloom (j’espère que tu vas bien depuis le temps),

On les voit très souvent écrits _zakât, salât _malheureusement.


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## rayloom

Merci Ibn Nacer. J'éspère que tu vas bien de ton côté aussi.

Tu trouveras ici la prononciation du mot _zakâh_ en pause terminale la première fois, puis quand le q_â_ri' reprend le verset, il prononce le "t" en liaison (ce qui ressemble à la liaison en français)


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## Ibn Nacer

Merci encore.


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## Ihsiin

Ghabi said:


> In Sibawayhi's descriptions the additional -h is not merely orthographical. It's one of the strategies to avoid pausing at a vowel. For example in §490 he mentions the imperative اِرْمِهْ irmih, as well as the variant اِرْمْ irm. So the idea seems to be that the speakers of that time either added an -h or dropped the vowel when pausing.



Thanks for the reference, I'll look it up as soon as I can get my hands on a good copy of Sibawayh.

Hmm, the posts here have given me some food for thought. It seems to me that هاء السكت being actually realised would imply that the Classical Arabs were incapable of stopping on a short vowel, which I find rather difficult to sallow. On the other hand, come to think of it, this would explain the convention of elongating line-final vowels in formal poetry, and possibly the replacement of final short vowels with phonemically long vowels in many dialects (e.g. فعلتِ -> فعلتي, etc.).

I'm beginning to be convinced.


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## rayloom

The final haa wasn't as pronounced as if it occured elsewhere in the word since the final syllable isn't stressed.


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## Ihsiin

Here's a question which just occurred to me:

For those modern dialects which do realise suffix ه as /h/, how are long vowels (such as ا) which are shortened word-final treated?


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## Ghabi

If you mean words like حياة, then there's a thread devoted to the topic (see especially from Post#19 onwards).


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## Ihsiin

No, this is not quite what I mean.
I'm talking about the modern reflex of what in Classical Arabic would be ـاء or just ـا. So, for example, in Iraqi the word for "sky" is سما _sima_ (with a short /a/ that is actually pronounced more like /e/), or "we saw" would be شفنا _šifna_ (again with a short /a/). In written vernacular you'll sometimes see these spelt as سمه and شفنه (though the latter would be much more common than the former) because ـا and ـه are pronounced identically.
What I want to know is, in dialects which pronounce ـه as /ah/, what is the realisation for short ـا?


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## WadiH

Ihsiin said:


> What I want to know is, in dialects which pronounce ـه as /ah/, what is the realisation for short ـا?



Short /a/ or /e/ (which is why we wouldn't write anything like سمه شفنه عدنه etc.).


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## Ihsiin

And I assume ـه and ـا are never rhymed in poetry?


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## WadiH

Correct they are considered distinct _qafiyas_ and so cannot be rhymed (though I can imagine it occurring in isolated instances as a matter of poetic license).  See pages 9-15 of this document, where you have an _aleph_ poem followed by a _haa_ poem: http://www.saadsowayan.com/manuscripts/manuscript22.pdf .


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## Ihsiin

Thanks. This book looks very interesting.


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