al-Baqarah— The Cow

Every reader lengthens the letters of الٓمٓ as madd lāzim: the sukūn that follows the letter of prolongation never goes away, in continuation or at a pause, so the vowel has to be stretched to reach it. Abū Jaʿfar alone separates the three letters with a brief silence (sakt), and he does the same in the other disconnected openings such as الٓمٓصٓ and كٓهيعٓصٓ, on the ground that they are spelt-out letters rather than a single word — joined on the page but separate in sense.

The hāʾ of فِيهِ is the pronoun hāʾ — the added hāʾ that stands for a single absent masculine. As a rule everyone lengthens it into a glide when it sits between two vowelled letters, and everyone shortens it when it sits between two silent ones. Here a silent letter precedes it and a vowelled one follows, which is the case the readers split over: Ibn Kathīr joins it to a long ī, فِيهِۦ, while the rest keep it short as Ḥafṣ does.

Al-Sūsī runs the hāʾ of فِيهِ straight into the hāʾ of هُدًى — the assimilation called idghām kabīr, because both letters are vowelled. The reason given is ease: sounding the same letter twice in a row from the same point of articulation is heavy on the ear. Yaʿqūb, who elsewhere follows al-Sūsī in this chapter, does not assimilate here.

The alif of هُدًى is only pronounced when you stop on the word; in continuation it drops out because of the two silent letters that meet. So the divergence over it is a pausal one: Ḥamzah, al-Kisāʾī and Khalaf bend the alif toward yāʾ (imālah), Warsh softens it part-way (taqlīl, with a second option reported from him), and Abū Jaʿfar does not follow Warsh here. The book records it in the prose rather than in the table, since it does not arise in continuous recitation.

This is a lone hamzah — one not paired with a second hamzah. Warsh turns a silent hamzah into a long vowel matching the vowel before it, but only when the hamzah is the first radical of the verb, as it is here: يُومِنُونَ. Al-Sūsī goes further and softens every silent hamzah, in continuation and at a pause alike, and Abū Jaʿfar agrees with him. Ḥamzah does the same, but only when he stops on the word.

Warsh thickens the lām of ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ. Thickening (taghlīẓ) means filling out the consonant itself, not its vowel; it is the same idea as tafkhīm and the opposite of tarqīq. Warsh applies it under three conditions: the lām must carry a fatḥah, it must be preceded by ṣād, ṭāʾ or ẓāʾ, and that preceding letter must itself be either vowelled with fatḥah or silent. Abū Jaʿfar, who normally follows the Madinan practice, keeps the lām light here.

Ibn Kathīr, Abū Jaʿfar, and Qālūn — the last with a second option — carry the plural mīm on into a w-glide when a vowelled letter follows: rzaqnāhumū. Everyone else leaves the mīm silent. The rule recurs constantly, so this one line accounts for a large share of what looks like divergence in the tables.

بِمَآ أُنزِلَ is a case of madd munfaṣil — a long vowel at the end of one word met by a hamzah at the start of the next. The readers differ only over how long to hold it, so the author drops the rows and leaves just the jamʿ numerals marking where each pass resumes.

Warsh moves the vowel of the hamzah back onto the silent lām before it and drops the hamzah altogether — wa-bi-l-ākhirah. Abū Jaʿfar does not follow him in this; Ibn Wardān applies naql only in ءَآلْـَٰٔنَ. Yaʿqūb, Khalaf and Ibn Jammāz pronounce the hamzah plainly. Khalaf ʿan Ḥamzah instead pauses momentarily on the lām before the hamzah (sakt), and Khallād is reported both ways — with the sakt and without it.

The plural mīm of هُمْ is carried into a w-glide by Qālūn (as one of his two options), Ibn Kathīr and Abū Jaʿfar; the rest leave it silent.