Islam > Quran > Tajweed > Questions: Waqf, Rawm and Ishmaam
Updated on 04 October 2026 at 11:01 PM
📖 4 min readWhen stopping on a word ending, three modes present themselves: the pure sukoon, the Rawm and the Ishmaam. The Rawm consists in giving two thirds of the vowel; the Ishmaam consists in rounding the lips after the sukoon of the letter, as a sign of its dhammah; the pure sukoon is the stop free of Rawm and Ishmaam.
The original in stopping is stopping with the pure sukoon, that is, free of Rawm and Ishmaam: it is the first of the ways cited in each of the categories of stopping, and the Rawm and the Ishmaam are only admitted there as additional ways whose purpose is to indicate the original vowel of the letter on which one stops.
The Rawm is the partial cutting of the vowel with a fleeting sound: two thirds of the vowel are given, and some express it by the term Ikhfa. It takes the ruling of wasl and is only done with qasr: it is specific to what ends with a kasrah or a dhammah, never with a fathah. It occurs only when stopping at the end of the word. Illustration: the raa of وَالْعَصْرِ and the word الرَّحِيمِ when stopping with Rawm.
The Rawm and the Ikhtilaas are one and the same mode: the Rawm, that is, the partial cutting of the vowel, which some call al-Ikhtilaas, as established in the quotation of "Nihayat al-Qawl al-Mufid" in the chapter on the two types of Ikhfa.
The Ishmaam is the rounding of the two lips after the sukoon of the letter, as a sign that its origin is dhammah: for example in تَأْمَنَّا of Yusuf, the Idghaam with Ishmaam, in which the two lips are closed at the same time as the pronunciation of the first sakina noon. The module mentions its use in the 'arid marfoo' Madd, the muttasil with a dropped hamza and تَأْمَنَّا; the detailed division of its types is not laid out in this module; see the book Qawa'id al-Tajwid on the recitation of Hafs. The benefit of the Rawm and the Ishmaam is to indicate the original vowel of the letter on which one stops: the Ishmaam that the vowel is a dhammah, and the Rawm likewise for the kasrah or the dhammah.
Review: Ikhfa Shafawi, Madd 'Arid li-s-Sukoon and Mutamathilayn
The Rawm is specific to what ends with a kasrah or a dhammah, and the Ishmaam is specific to what ends with a dhammah: therefore everything that ends with a fathah, that is, the mansub, like الْمُسْتَقِيمَ and الْعَالَمِينَ, stops with the pure sukoon only, free of Rawm and Ishmaam, with qasr, tawassut or ishba'.
The Haa of the pronoun designating the absent singular has as its origin indeclinability on dhammah, as in لَهُ and مِنْهُ, unless a kasrah precedes it, as in بِهِ, or a sakina yaa, as in عَلَيْهِ: it is then given kasrah. It therefore occurs in two forms: with dhammah, joined in wasl by a waaw lengthened by two counts, and with kasrah, joined by a yaa lengthened by two counts; that is the Madd Silah, marked by a small waaw or a small yaa after the Haa. If a hamza comes after it, the Madd belongs to Madd Munfasil.
This concept is not detailed in this module; see the book Qawa'id al-Tajwid on the recitation of Hafs.