In reading Arabic from transliteration for the purpose of scanning poetry, we have therefore in the first instance to keep in mind that no Arabic word or syllable can begin with a vowel.  Where our mode of rendering Arabic in the Roman character would make this appear to be the case, either Hamzah (silent h), or ‘Ayn (represented by the sign’) is the real initial, and the only element to be taken in account as a letter.  It follows as a self-evident corollary that wherever a single consonant stands between two vowels, it never closes the previous syllable, but always opens the next one.  Our word “Akamu,” for instance, can only be divided into the syllables:  A (properly Ha)-ka-mu, never into Ak-a-mu or Ak-am-u.

It has been stated above that the syllable ka is closed by the letter Alif after Fathah, in the same way as the syllable mu is closed by the letter Waw, and I may add now, as the word fi is closed by the letter Ya (y).  To make this perfectly clear, I must repeat that the Arabic Alphabet, as it was originally written, deals only with consonants.  The signs for the short vowel-sounds were added later for a special purpose, and are generally not represented even in printed books, e.g. in the various editions of The Nights, where only quotations from the Koran or poetical passages are provided with the vowel-points.  But among those consonants there are three, called weak letters (Huruf al-’illah), which have a particular organic affinity to these vowel sounds:  the guttural Hamzah, which is akin to a, the palatal Ya, which is related to i, and the labial Waw, which is homogeneous with u.  Where any of the weak letters follows a vowel of its own class, either at the end of a word or being itself followed by another consonant, it draws out or lengthens the preceding vowel and is in this sense called a letter of prolongation (Harf al-Madd).  Thus, bearing in mind that the Hamzah is in reality a silent h, the syllable ka might be written kah, similarly to the German word “sah,” where the h is not pronounced either, but imparts a lengthened sound to the a.  In like manner mu and fi are written in Arabic muw and fiy respectively, and form long quantities not because they contain a vowel long by nature, but because their initial “Muharrakah” is followed by a “Sakinah,” exactly as in the previously mentioned syllables taf, fun, mus.[FN#449] In the Roman transliteration, Akamu forms a word of five letters, two of which are consonants, and three vowels; in Arabic it represents the combination H(a)k(a)hm(u)w, consisting also of five letters but all consonants, the intervening vowels being expressed in writing either merely by superadded external signs, or more frequently not at all.  Metrically it represents one short and two long quantities (U — -), forming in Latin a trisyllable foot, called Bacchius, and in Arabic a quinqueliteral “Rukn” (pillar) or “Juz” (part, portion), the technical designation for which we shall introduce presently.