A thread on hamzah spellings. This is a topic where I see there is a lot of confusion because people project modern spelling conventions onto the pre-modern period and then derive nonsensical linguistic conclusions from it. To remedy that, here's some things you gotta know!

There is a fairly start difference between the Maghreb and the Mashreq when it comes to dealing with the word-initial hamzah. Most of us are used to seeing a hamzah above the ʾalif for both ʾa and ʾu, and hamzah below stands for ʾi. This is the Mashreqi manner.

Very often just placing a fatḥah, ḍammah or kasrah on the ʾalif will suffice, and this is common in Ottoman Naskh Muṣḥafs. In Maghrebi Qurans however, the ḍammah is marked with a hamzah sign IN THE MIDDLE of the ʾalif.

This actually continues an an ancient Kufi practice that would place the ḍammah that denotes the hamzah on the baseline after the ʾalif. This will be familiar to those who know modern Nāfiʿ print editions of the Quran, but it rarely gets described for Classical prose texts.

Another typical difference between the Mashreq and the Maghreb is the manner in which hamzah followed by long ā is written. In the Mashreq usually a maddah sign on the ʾalif is used for that (some manuscripts avoid that, needs further research). Maghreb uses a baseline hamzah

So does this mean that Maghrebi writing doesn't use the maddah sign at all? No! It uses it quite regularly when a long vowel precedes the hamzah, a place where it is also (much more) common for Mashreqi manuscripts. This rarely gets adequately described.

In somewhat defective writing, such maddah signs can be of vital importance. If a maddah sign stands on top of a long vowel, you KNOW that a hamzah follows (or a long consonant) even when it is not explicitly written.

For example: al-kisāʾiyy and qirāʾah, without hamzah signs

You may have been taught that if a yāʾ is the seat of the hamzah, you are to remove its dots. This spelling rule often gets imposed on medieval manuscripts (to my great annoyance), but this is wrong. Nothing wrong with keeping the dots.

You may have also learned that a hamzah that directly follows a consonant should have as a seat an ʾalif if fatḥah follows, yāʾ if kasrah follows and wāw if ḍammah follows.

But in medieval manuscripts usually there is no seat at all, for example: yasʾalūna.

And finally, if you're not careful, you might miss the memo that in the Maghreb, scribes might not always agree with what words are supposed to have a hamzah compared to what you've been taught.

Thus: an-nubūʾah "prophecy", not an-nubuwwah
mūminīna "believers" not muʾminīna

There is also a difference between how the ʾalif al-waṣl is written in the maghreb compared to the mashreq. But I'll leave that as an excersize to the reader to find out.

Those who are familiar with maghrebi print Qurans will find it to be familiar. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b11001459v/f6.item.zoom

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