fawātiḥ

fawātiḥ, letters of the alphabet appearing at the beginning of 29 of the sūrāhs (chapters) of the Muslim sacred scripture, the Qurʾān. The 14 letters thus designated occur singly and in various combinations of two to five. As the letters always stand separately (muqaṭṭaʿah), they do not form words and are read by their alphabetic names, as hā mīm, alif lām mīm, tā sīn mīm.

The original meaning and function of the fawātiḥ, which are associated principally with sūrāhs dating from the late Meccan period (before ad 622), has not been preserved. Scholars have given several theories for the fawātiḥ: the letters might be assigned mystical numerical values; or they could indicate abbreviations for the individual words of a sentence. Most popularly, since the sūrahs preceded by the same combination of letters are grouped together in the Qurʾān, a third theory might imply that these clusters were originally part of private Meccan manuscripts before they were assembled by Muḥammad’s secretary, Zayd ibn Thābit, into an authoritative recension; the fawātiḥ could then be construed as the initials of the Meccan owners.