Noon sakinah and tanween rules: izhar, idgham, iqlab and ikhfa, with their letters

What are the rules of noon sakinah and tanween?

The rules of noon sakinah and tanween are four ways of reading a silent noon — izhar, idgham, iqlab and ikhfa — and the letter after the noon decides which one applies.

A noon saakinah is a noon carrying a sukoon, the mark that shows a letter has no vowel. A tanween is the doubled vowel mark at the end of a word that gives the endings -an, -in and -un. The Madani Qaida, a widely used beginners’ primer published by Maktaba-tul-Madinah in Karachi, states the link plainly in its fifth lesson: “In fact Tanween is a ‘Noon Saakinah’ that is at the end of the word; this is why Tanween sounds like a ‘Noon Saakinah’.” Both are therefore treated as one case. The poem Tuhfat al-Atfal by Sulayman al-Jamzuri, a classical teaching poem in verse, opens the topic the same way: لِلنُّونِ إِنْ تَسْكُنْ وَلِلتَّنْوِينِ أَرْبَعُ أَحْكَامٍ, “the silent noon and the tanween have four rules”.

The four lists add up to 28 letters: 6 + 6 + 1 + 15. That sum is our own arithmetic from the two texts, and it is the useful point for a learner, since no letter that can follow a silent noon is left without a rule and none falls under two. Whether reciting with these rules is required in a given situation is a matter for scholars, and this article does not go into it; what follows is how each rule sounds and how it is learned.

What is izhar, and which six letters cause it?

Izhar means pronouncing the silent noon or tanween clearly, with no added nasal sound, whenever one of the 6 throat letters follows: hamza, haa, ‘ayn, Haa, ghayn and khaa.

The Madani Qaida, in its twelfth lesson, defines the rule by what does not happen: if a throat letter comes after a noon saakinah or tanween, “Ghunnah [nasalisation] will not be done”. The six letters are ء ه ع ح غ خ, listed in the order of the throat from deepest to shallowest, and Tuhfat al-Atfal gives the same six in the same order.

Izhar is the rule learners break by adding something, not by leaving something out. A reader who has just learned to nasalise often carries the hum into every silent noon. The correction is to stop the noon crisply, as an English speaker does at the end of the word “man”, and move straight to the throat.

What is idgham, and when is it read with ghunnah?

Idgham means merging the silent noon or tanween into the next letter when that letter is one of the 6 in yarmaloon; it carries a nasal sound before 4 of them and none before raa and laam.

The six letters are ي ر م ل و ن, and the made-up word yarmaloon (يَرْمَلُونَ) exists only to hold them. The Madani Qaida, in lesson 14, splits them in two: “In the case of ‘ر’ and ‘ل’ Idgham will be done without Ghunnah and in the case of the other 4 letters, Idgham will be done with Ghunnah.” Tuhfat al-Atfal gathers the four nasal letters into a second memory word, yanmoo (يَنْمُو): yaa, noon, meem and waw.

Idgham has one exception that every learner meets. It applies only when the noon ends one word and the merging letter begins the next. When both sit inside a single word, the noon is read clearly. The Madani Qaida, in lesson 20, names the case Izhar-e-Mutlaq and lists four words: دُنْيَا (dunya), بُنْيَانٌ (bunyaan), صِنْوَانٌ (sinwaan) and قِنْوَانٌ (qinwaan), adding: “do not do Ghunnah (nasalisation) in these four words.” Tuhfat al-Atfal makes the same exception with dunya and sinwaan as its examples.

Where these rules sit in a full tajweed course, after the points of articulation and before the finer rulings, is set out in online tajweed classes, and the throat and nasal sounds behind izhar and ghunnah are mapped in how to pronounce Arabic letters. Our beginners' course, which reaches these rules in its fourth stage, is on Noorani Qaida classes online.

What is iqlab, and how is it pronounced?

Iqlab means changing the silent noon or tanween into a meem sound, held with a nasal hum, whenever the letter baa follows; it is the only rule triggered by a single letter.

The Madani Qaida describes the rule in its review questions: if baa comes after a noon saakinah or tanween, “change the Noon Saakinah or Tanween into a Meem and do Ikhfa i.e. pronounce with nasalisation.” Tuhfat al-Atfal says the same in half a line: مِيمًا بِغُنَّةٍ مَعَ الإِخْفَاءِ, “a meem, with ghunnah and hiding”.

English speakers find iqlab easier than expected: say “input” quickly and the n drifts towards an m. The work is in the length. The lips close lightly for the meem, the sound is held in the nose for its full length, and only then does the baa open. Pressing the lips hard and releasing at once produces a plain m with no ghunnah, which is the usual fault.

What are the 15 ikhfa letters, and how do you remember them?

The 15 ikhfa letters are taa, thaa, jeem, daal, dhaal, zay, seen, sheen, saad, daad, Taa, Zaa, faa, qaaf and kaaf; before any of them a silent noon is hidden and nasalised.

The Madani Qaida lists them in lesson 12 as ت ث ج د ذ ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ف ق ك and states that with these letters “Ghunnah [nasalisation] will be done”. In ikhfa the noon is neither said clearly nor merged. Teachers usually describe the tongue as not pressing fully on the noon’s point, so the n-sound sits in the nose while the mouth is already shaping the next letter. The easiest way to hold 15 letters in memory is the mnemonic verse in Tuhfat al-Atfal: each of its 15 words begins with one ikhfa letter.

A shortcut works as well as the verse for many learners: memorise the 6 throat letters, the 6 of yarmaloon and baa, 13 letters in all, and treat everything else as ikhfa. Common examples are أَنْتُمْ (antum), where the rule applies inside one word, and مِنْ قَبْلِ (min qabli) and مَنْ كَانَ (man kāna) across two. The precise quality of the hidden noon shifts slightly with the letter after it, and that fine detail is learned by ear in lessons rather than from a table.

What mistakes do learners make most with noon sakinah?

The most common noon sakinah mistakes concern the nose, not the letters: nasalising before throat letters, cutting the nasal sound short in ikhfa and idgham, and merging inside one word.

A learner can know all four letter lists and still read every rule wrongly, because the faults are faults of timing. The table below is our own teaching guidance rather than a measured survey; we keep no count of how often each fault occurs, and we will not invent one.

Two of these faults are only audible from outside. A reader cannot easily hear their own ghunnah cut short, and a learner reading alone almost always believes their ikhfa is correct. A weekly recording helps; a teacher who corrects the line in the moment is faster. The order in which a tajweed course fixes faults, letters first and rules afterwards, is set out in online tajweed classes, and the nasal cavity and the other points where letters are produced are mapped in how to pronounce Arabic letters.

When should a learner study the noon sakinah rules?

A learner should study the noon sakinah rules once they can read vowelled words with sukoon and shaddah without spelling them out; in most beginners’ primers they arrive near the end.

The Madani Qaida teaches the four rules in two halves, izhar and ikhfa in lesson 12 and idgham and iqlab in lesson 14, with the shaddah in lesson 13 between them, inside a book of 22 lessons. The Noorani Qaida lesson list on our Noorani Qaida guide introduces noon saakinah, tanween, meem saakinah and qalqalah together in lesson 16 of 17, by application inside verses rather than as a table. The comparison between the two books, lesson by lesson, is in Madani Qaida vs Noorani Qaida.

Correction matters more here than reading about the rules. The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), a UK education charity, reviewed 123 studies and reports approximately five additional months’ progress from one-to-one tuition, rating the evidence moderate. The same review states that “studies comparing one to one with small group tuition show mixed results”, and in some studies groups of two or three did equally well. The review concerns school subjects, not Quran recitation, so it supports correction by a person rather than any particular course. Our beginners’ course, where these rules come in its fourth stage and are practised inside verses, is described on Noorani Qaida classes online.