Islam > Quran > Tajweed > Waqf and ibtida: premises
Updated on 04 October 2026 at 11:01 PM
📖 13 min readThe reader of the Noble Quran cannot recite the surah or the story in a single breath, while it is not permitted to take a breath between two words in a state of wasl (joining), nor in the middle of a word.
That is why it became necessary to choose a stop (Waqf) in order to breathe and rest, and it falls to the reader to accept a resumption (ibtida) after the breathing and the rest, on condition that this does not harm the meaning or the understanding, so that the inimitability of the Quran may appear clearly.
For all of this, the imams encouraged learning Waqf and ibtida and knowing them completely ¹.
The origin in this chapter is what Ibn Abi Mulaykah reported from Umm Salamah (may Allah be pleased with her) when she was asked about the recitation of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and his family). She said: the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and his family) recited in portions; he said: الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ, then he stopped, then الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ, then he stopped, and he recited مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ ².
In another version, she said: the recitation of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and his family): bismi Allahi ar-rahmani ar-rahim, الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ, الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ, مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ: he recited in portions, verse by verse ³.
The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and his family) taught his Companions in this way, and some imams even made the learning of Waqf an obligation; for it is established that Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (may Allah be pleased with him), when asked about the meaning of tarteel in the words of the Most High وَرَتِّلِ الْقُرْآنَ تَرْتِيلًا ¹, said: tarteel is the beautification of the letters and the knowledge of the stops ².
In reality, the knowledge of the stops is one of the most important requirements of tajwid in recitation. Among what proves this is what al-Hakim and al-Bayhaqi reported from Ibn 'Umar (may Allah be pleased with them both): we lived through a time in which one of us was given faith before the Quran; a surah would come down and he would learn what it made lawful and unlawful, its commands and its warnings, and what it was proper to stop on; then I saw men to whom the Quran came before faith, who recited from the opening of the Book to its end without knowing what concerned them by way of command or warning, nor what it was proper to stop on, يَنْثُرُه نَثْرَ الدَّقَل ³.
He (may Allah be pleased with him) thus compared their carelessness in recitation, in which they left it full of errors and without complete stops, to the scattering of dry, bad dates ⁴.
From all of this it appears that Waqf and ibtida were the object of the attention of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and his family) and of the Companions (may Allah be pleased with them), because of what results from them by way of clarification of the Quranic meanings for the listener. That is only possible if the reader of the Quran possesses a broad familiarity and a complete knowledge of the stops.
The early generations grasped the great importance of Waqf and ibtida, to the point of devoting entire works to them.
The knowledge of Waqf rests on the knowledge of the meanings of the verses and of their tafsir: that is why the scholars differed in classifying the stops, according to their differences in establishing the meanings. But all the categories they mentioned do not exclude one another: they go back to the four categories cited by Abu 'Amr ad-Dani and Ibn al-Jazari: taam (complete), kaafi (sufficient), hasan (good) and qabih (bad).
In tracing the scholars' words across these types and their examples, one finds that they examine the expression that precedes the place of the stop and the one that follows it, looking for three connections, or one of them, whose presence determines the type of the Waqf and its ruling:
If no connection by wording exists between the two expressions, if the proper meaning of each is complete in itself and does not need the other to become a profitable meaning, and if the second expression opens a new subject and context, the stop is taam. If the context remains one and the same subject, the stop is kaafi. If between the two expressions there is a connection by wording as well as a connection in meaning and in the general context, but the first expression constitutes by itself a profitable meaning, the stop is hasan. And if each of the two expressions needs the other, to the point that neither forms by itself a profitable meaning, the stop between the two is qabih.
It is that of which what precedes has no connection with what follows, neither by wording nor by meaning: the first expression is complete in every respect and independent of the other. Its example is the words of the Most High: أُوْلَئِكَ عَلَى هُدًى مِنْ رَبِّهِمْ وَأُوْلَئِكَ هُمُ الْمُفْلِحُونَ (surah al-Baqarah, 5). The stop on الْمُفْلِحُونَ is taam, for it is the end of the discourse on the believers, and what follows is a new discourse on another subject, that of the disbelievers and their situation with the Messenger and the Message; there is no connection, neither by wording nor by meaning, between the two expressions, as the opening of the second by إِنَّ shows.
Likewise in al-Fatihah: الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ، الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ، مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ، إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ وَإِيَّاكَ نَسْتَعِينُ، اهْدِنَا الصِّرَاطَ الْمُسْتَقِيمَ (surah al-Fatihah, 2-6): the stop on يَوْمِ الدِّينِ and the stop on نَسْتَعِينُ are both a taam Waqf.
It is that of which what precedes has no connection by wording with what follows, each of the two expressions being a profitable sentence in itself, while a connection remains in the general meaning and in the context of the subject. Its example: إِنَّ الْمُلُوكَ إِذَا دَخَلُوا قَرْيَةً أَفْسَدُوهَا وَجَعَلُوا أَعِزَّةَ أَهْلِهَا أَذِلَّةً وَكَذَلِكَ يَفْعَلُونَ (surah an-Naml, 34). The stop on أَذِلَّةً is kaafi: there is no connection by wording between the two sentences and each is profitable in itself, but the context of the subject is connected, for the first sentence is the speech of Balqis, which ends at the place of the stop, and the second is the speech of Allah confirming her. Many scholars make it a taam Waqf, since the speech of Balqis ends there and what follows is another speech; but reflection shows that it belongs to the kaafi, because of the connection between the two expressions in the context of the subject, as Mulla 'Ali al-Qari mentioned in his commentary on al-Muqaddima al-Jazariyya.
Likewise: فِي قُلُوبِهِمْ مَرَضٌ فَزَادَهُمْ اللَّهُ مَرَضًا وَلَهُمْ عَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌ بِمَا كَانُوا يَكْذِبُونَ (surah al-Baqarah, 10). The stop on مَرَضًا is kaafi, for there is no connection by wording between the two expressions when the waaw is taken as a waaw of a new statement, whereas the context of the subject is one: the discourse on the hypocrites, their state, and the painful punishment Allah prepared for them.
It is that of which what precedes is connected to what follows by wording and by the context of the subject, but where the first sentence is profitable in itself, while the second is not and is only completed by the first, because of the connection by wording. Its example: الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ (surah al-Fatihah, 2). The stop on الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ is hasan, for it is a profitable sentence; but the resumption by what follows is not fitting, for it is only completed by the first sentence, because of the connection by wording: رَبِّ is an attribute and the thing described is الله, and the attribute cannot be separated from the thing described; that is why the reader, if he wants to resume the recitation, repeats the first sentence.
Likewise: يُخْرِجُونَ الرَّسُولَ وَإِيَّاكُمْ أَنْ تُؤْمِنُوا بِاللَّهِ رَبِّكُمْ (surah al-Mumtahanah, 1). The stop on الرَّسُولَ is hasan, for it is a profitable sentence; but the resumption by what follows is not fitting: it even belongs to the qabih resumption, for it corrupts the meaning.
It is that of which what precedes is connected to what follows by wording and by meaning, with a connection so strong that neither of the two sentences forms by itself a profitable sentence. This stop is graded, and the worst is the one that introduces disorder into the meaning or gives the impression of a false meaning. The badness exists likewise in resuming (ibtida). Among the bad stops:
Among the bad resumptions: ... يَدُ اللَّهِ مَغْلُولَةٌ (surah al-Ma'idah, 64), ... إِنَّ اللَّهَ فَقِيرٌ وَنَحْنُ أَغْنِيَاءُ (surah Al 'Imran, 181), ... الْمَسِيحُ ابْنُ اللَّهِ and ... عُزَيْرٌ ابْنُ اللَّهِ (surah at-Tawbah, 30), ... إِنَّ اللَّهَ ثَالِثُ ثَلاثَةٍ (surah al-Ma'idah, 73).
All of that, and its likes, is manifest badness: it alters the meaning, corrupts it and gives the impression of another meaning than the one intended. One must therefore guard against it: if the reader does it deliberately, he sins, and it may even lead him to disbelief.
It is also bad any stop that separates two parts of the meaning connected by wording, such as separating إِنَّ, its noun and its predicate, the state (hal) and the one who has it, the relative noun and its clause, the prepositional phrase and what is connected to it, and the verb, its subject and its object.
Just as the stop and the resumption can be bad in certain places, wasl (joining) is sometimes bad, and the stop then becomes obligatory: that is when the joining leads to disorder in the meaning or to the impression of another meaning. Its example: فَتَوَلَّ عَنْهُمْ يَوْمَ يَدْعُ الدَّاعِ إِلَى شَيْءٍ نُكُرٍ خُشَّعًا أَبْصَارُهُمْ يَخْرُجُونَ (surah al-Qamar, 8). The stop on عَنْهُمْ is obligatory: if one joined, the adverb of time يَوْمَ could be connected to the imperative verb فَتَوَلَّ, and the meaning would be corrupted.
Likewise: إِنَّمَا يَسْتَجِيبُ الَّذِينَ يَسْمَعُونَ وَالْمَوْتَى يَبْعَثُهُمُ اللَّهُ (surah al-An'am, 36). The stop on يَسْمَعُونَ is obligatory: if one joined, the dead would be associated with those who hear in the quality of responding, or that false meaning would be heard by the listener. To clarify the meanings and separate those that differ, it is fitting, indeed obligatory, to stop in such places.
The type of a Waqf and its ruling can vary with the variation of the tafsir, the qira'ah and the i'rab. Example in the variation of tafsir: وَمَا يَعْلَمُ تَأْوِيلَهُ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَالرَّاسِخُونَ فِي الْعِلْمِ يَقُولُونَ آمَنَّا بِهِ (surah Al 'Imran, 7). According to the tafsir according to which the knowledge of the ambiguous belongs to Allah alone and those firmly grounded in knowledge do not know its meaning but believe in it, a tafsir reported from Ibn 'Abbas, Ibn Mas'ud and 'A'ishah (may Allah be pleased with them), which is the position of Abu Hanifah and most of the people of hadith, and the soundest view: the stop on إِلاَّ اللَّهُ is kaafi. According to the other tafsir, according to which those firmly grounded in knowledge know the meaning of the ambiguous, so that they are coordinated with the Name of Majesty of Allah, this stop is not kaafi: this is the recitation of the readers Nafi', al-Kisa'i and Ya'qub, reported also from Ibn 'Abbas, and held by Mujahid, al-Qasim ibn Muhammad and others. And it is permissible to analyze the faa' as a faa' of a new statement (isti'naaf), a view that is set aside, on which the stop becomes simply permitted.
Example in the variation of recitations (qira'ah): وَإِذْ جَعَلْنَا الْبَيْتَ مَثَابَةً لِلنَّاسِ وَأَمْنًا، وَاتَّخِذُوا مِنْ مَقَامِ إِبْرَاهِيمَ مُصَلًّى (surah al-Baqarah, 125). The stop on وَأَمْنًا is kaafi with the recitation with kasrah وَاتَّخِذُوا, for the second expression then becomes a new statement; and it is not kaafi with the recitation with fathah وَاتَّخَذُوا, for the second expression then becomes coordinated with what precedes.
Example in the variation of i'rab: الم، ذَلِكَ الْكِتَابُ لا رَيْبَ فِيهِ (surah al-Baqarah, 1-2). The stop on الم is taam according to the assumption of an implied subject (mubtada') or predicate (khabar), that is: "this is the meem", or "the meem is this", what follows then being a new statement; and it is not taam if the phrase following الم is analyzed as the predicate (khabar) of it.
We have seen that the scholars differed in classifying the Waqf, without departing from the four categories cited above. In the mushaaf, they went into detail beyond that: most adopted the classification of as-Sijawandi, who divided the stops into five categories: laazim (obligatory), mutlaq (absolute), ja'iz (permitted), mujaawaz li-wajh (permitted for one of the readings) and murakhkhas li-daroorah (permitted out of necessity). To each of these categories corresponds a symbol. Here are these symbols: