لقد ضاع شعرى على بابكم كما ضاع عقد على خالصة‎

Laqad ẓāʿa shiʿrī ʿala bābikum, kamā ẓāʿa ʿiqdun ʿala K͟hāliṣah.

“Forsooth, my poetry is thrown away at your door, as the jewels are thrown away on the neck of K͟hāliṣah.”

When this was reported to Hārūn, he ordered Abū Nuwās to be called back. On re-entering the room, Abū Nuwās effaced the final stroke of the ع‎ in the word ضاع‎ (ẓāʿa, “is lost” or “thrown away”), changing it thereby into ضاء‎ (ẓāʾa), written with the Hamzah and entirely different in meaning. For when the K͟halīfah asked: “What have you written upon the door?” the answer was now:

“Truly, my poetry sparkles upon your door, as the jewels sparkle on the neck of K͟hāliṣah.”

The fact is, that both the letter ʿain and the Hamzah are different degrees of the distinct effort, which we all make with the muscles of the throat, in endeavouring to pronounce a vowel without a consonant. In the case of the ʿain, this effort is so strong for the Arabic organ of speech, that it partakes in itself of the nature of a consonant, and found, as such, from the first, a representative in the written alphabet, while the slighter effort, embodied in the Hamzah, was left to the utterance of the speaker. But when their language became the object of a favourite study with the learned Arabs, this difference not only called for a graphical expression, but led even to a further distinction between what is called Hamzatu ʾl-Qat̤ʿ or Hamzah of Disjunction, and Hamzatu ʾl-Waṣl or Hamzah of Conjunction. We will try shortly to explain this difference.

If we take the word امير‎ amīr, “a commander or chief,” the initial a remains the same, whether the word begins the sentence or is preceded by another word: we say أَميرٌ قالَ‎ amīrun qāla, “a commander said” (according to the Arabic construction literally “as for a commander, he said”), as well as قالَ أَميرٌ‎ qāla amīrun, “there said a commander” (in Arabic literally “he said, namely, a commander”). Here the Hamzah (ء‎), with the Alif (ا‎) as its prop and the fatḥah or a as its vowel, is called Hamzatu ʾl-Qat̤ʿ, because in the latter case it disjoins or cuts off, as it were, the initial a of the word amīrun from the final a of the word qāla; and the same holds good if the Hamzah is pronounced with i, as in إمارة‎ imārah, “commandership,” or with u, as in أُمراء‎ umarāʾ, “commanders,” plural of amīr. But it would be otherwise with the a of the article أَل‎ al, if joined with the word amīr. In أَلاميرُ قالَ‎ al-amīru qāla, “the commander said,” it would preserve its original sound, because it begins the sentence; but if we invert the order of words, we must drop it in pronunciation altogether, and only sound the final a of qāla instead, thus: qāla ʾl-amīru, “said the commander,” and the same would take place if the preceding word terminated in another vowel, as yaqūlu ʾl-amīru, “says the commander,” or bi-qauli ʾl-amīri, “by the word of the commander.” Here the Hamzah would no longer be written

but

(قالَ ٱلامير‎, etc.), and would be called Hamzatu ʾl-Waṣl or Hamzatu ʾṣ-Ṣilah, because it joins the two words together in closest connection.

In the article, as it has been stated above, and in the word aimān, “oath,” the original sound of the Hamzatu ʾl-Waṣl is fatḥah, a; it occurs besides in a few nouns, in several derived forms of the verb, and in the Imperative of the primitive triliteral verb, in all of which cases it is sounded with kasrah or i, except in the Imperative of those triliteral verbs whose aorist takes ẓammah or u for the vowel of the second radical, where the Hamzah is also pronounced with ẓammah (أُسكُتْ‎ uskut, “be silent”). But the reader must always keep in mind that it preserves this original pronunciation only at the beginning of a sentence; if it is preceded by any other word, the final vowel of that preceding word takes the place of the Hamzah, and if this word terminates in a consonant, the Hamzah is generally pronounced with i. We say generally, because the only exceptions are after the preposition من‎ min, where it is sounded with a, and after the pronominal affixes of the second and third person plural, كُم‎ kum and هُم‎ hum, where it takes u.