in front of it. They then elongated the dot and began indicating doubling by writing “shadd” (doubling), and lengthening by writing “madd” (lengthening). They made the sign for hamzah resemble the letter ‘ayn, because hamzah is closely related to ‘ayn. They subsequently simplified these signs until the doubling mark resembled the head of the letter sīn and the lengthening mark became abbreviated. This is like the way administrative scribes abbreviate expressions for numbers and other things, or hadith scholars abbreviate akhbaranā (“he informed us”) and haddathanā (“he narrated to us”), writing the beginning and end of the expression in forms such as “anā” and “thanā.”

The scholars differed over whether adding vowel marks and dots to written copies of the Quran is disliked. There are two well-known positions, both reported from Imam Ahmad. Yet they do not dispute that, once a copy of the Quran has been supplied with vowel marks and dots, these must be treated with respect, just as the letters must be respected. Nor do they dispute that the ink used for the dots and vowel marks is created, just as the ink used for the letters is created. They likewise agree that vowel marks indicate grammatical inflections, while dots distinguish the letters, and that grammatical inflection is an integral part of Arabic speech.

It is reported that Abū Bakr and ‘Umar said:

“Preserving the Quran’s grammatical inflections is dearer to us than preserving some of its letters.”

There is no doubt that a dot or vowel mark, considered in isolation, has neither a ruling nor sanctity of its own, and they should not be discussed in isolation. Nor is there any doubt that the grammatical inflections of the Arabic Quran are an integral part of it and must receive careful attention. Vowel marks make its grammatical inflections clear: just as written letters indicate spoken letters, written vowel marks indicate spoken grammatical inflections.