Phrases
Join two or more words so that together they give a meaning, and you have a مُرَكَّب (murakkab). When that meaning stops short of a full sentence, the construct is نَاقِص (nāqiṣ) — incomplete. It is a phrase.
The test is the one that decides a sentence: can the speaker stop there? كِتَابُ زَيْدٍ (kitābu zaydin), “Zayd's book”, is two words joined and saying more than either says alone — but the listener is still waiting. Nothing has been said about the book yet. That is a phrase.
A phrase is never the whole of a sentence; it is a building block inside one. Learn to see the phrases and a long āyah stops being a wall of words.
The books count the types of phrase differently. These six are the ones that carry almost all of the work in the Quran, and each has its own page.
| مُرَكَّب تَوْصِيفِيّ | Descriptive | a word and the word that describes it — رَجُلٌ صَالِحٌ |
| مُرَكَّب إِضَافِيّ | Possessive | one noun belonging to another — كِتَابُ زَيْدٍ |
| مُرَكَّب جَارِّيّ | Prepositional | a preposition and the noun it governs — فِي الْبَيْتِ |
| مُرَكَّب إِشَارِيّ | Demonstrative | a pointing word and what it points at — هَذَا الرَّجُلُ |
| مُرَكَّب عَطْفِيّ | Conjunctive | two words joined by a linking particle — الْأَبُ وَالْاِبْنُ |
| مُرَكَّب بَدَلِيّ | Substitution | a thing named twice, the second naming it exactly — أَخُوكَ عَلِيٌّ |
Two rules worth carrying: a مُضَاف never takes الْ and never takes tanwīn; and in a demonstrative phrase the thing pointed at must carry الْ — without it you no longer have a phrase but a complete sentence. هَذَا الرَّجُلُ is “this man”; هَذَا رَجُلٌ is “this is a man”.
Two more are named in the books and are worth recognising, though you will meet them far less often.
| مُرَكَّب عَدَدِيّ | Numerical | the numbers eleven to nineteen, two numerals fused into one — أَحَدَ عَشَرَ |
| مُرَكَّب مَزْجِيّ | Blended | two words fused into a single name — بَعْلَبَكّ, حَضْرَمَوْت |
Both behave as one word, and both are mabnī — their endings do not move.
A descriptive phrase only holds together if the describing word matches what it describes in four things: definiteness, gender, number and i'rab — the four properties of the ism, (DiGNI).
That is what the four properties are for. They are not a list to memorise; they are the rules by which words are allowed to join.
Six phrases, each on its own page below. Master these and you can take apart most of what you meet in a Quranic sentence.
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