Recitation · a Light

The small letters above the line tell you where to stop

Open a printed Qur'an and small letters float above the text: a mim, a jim, a lam with an alif, a cluster of three dots that appears twice. They are not part of the revealed text. They are pause marks, worked out so that a reciter taking a breath at the end of a phrase does not break the sense, and the system in widest use is credited to Muhammad ibn Tayfur al-Sajawandi, who died in the twelfth century. There is a compulsory stop, a permitted stop, a place where stopping is forbidden, and a pair where you may stop at one but not at both. A reader who ignores them can turn a clause into a sentence that says something else.

Al-Sajawandi · died c. 1165 CE