Tajweed Judgment: Idgham Across a Stop
A student recites Surah Al-Fatiha and pauses at the end of verse 7 (…الضالين). In the next breath she begins a new recitation with 'Bismillah.' During her recitation she reads 'an'amta' with clear noon, and at 'min sharri' she merges the noon into the shin. The teacher notes three points: (a) the noon of 'an'amta' followed by ta, (b) the noon of 'min' followed by shin, (c) the meem of 'alayhim' followed by waw. She asks for a ruling on each.
1. Rule on points (a), (b), and (c) with the governing tajweed principle for each.
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(a) 'an'amta: noon sakinah followed by ta' - ta' is one of the letters of izhar (throat letters are izhar; but ta' is not a throat letter - it is a letter of idgham without ghunnah? No). Correction: the letters of izhar halqi are the six throat letters. Ta' is not among them; noon before ta' is izhar mutlaq (clear noon) because ta' is not a letter of idgham, iqlab, or ikhfa. So the student is correct to read it clearly. (b) min sharri: noon sakinah + shin. Shin is a letter of ikhfa' (one of the 15 ikhfa' letters), not idgham. The student merged it, which is wrong; she must read with ikhfa' - a light nasalized concealment, not full merging. (c) 'alayhim wa-: meem sakinah + waw = izhar shafawi (clear meem), since waw is not meem or ba'. The student must not nasalize into the waw.
2. Explain the difference between the student's error at (b) and the correct rule, using the letter categories.
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The student confused idgham with ikhfa'. The rules for noon sakinah and tanween depend on the following letter:
- Idgham applies only to six letters: ya, ra, mim, lam, waw, nun (with ghunnah for ya/nun/mim/waw, without for lam/ra).
- Ikhfa' applies to the remaining 15 letters, including shin. Since shin is not in the idgham set, merging at 'min sharri' is an error; the correct reading is ikhfa' with ghunnah for about two counts. The judgment tested is letter-category mapping, not memorized labels.
3. Does pausing at 'al-Dallin' and restarting with 'Bismillah' affect the rulings above?
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No. Pausing at a verse end (waqf) and restarting with Bismillah is a breath and beginning matter, not a tajweed rule for noon or meem. The rulings at (a), (b), (c) depend only on the adjacent letters within the connected recitation, so they are unchanged. However, the student should observe waqf rules at 'al-Dallin' (madd 'arid li-al-sukun on the final noon) before the new breath. The judgment tested: separating waqf/ibtida' rules from noon/meem sakinah rules.