Rules of Raa in Tajweed: When the Letter Is Heavy or Light

The rules of raa in Tajweed decide whether the letter ر is read heavy or light. In short: a raa with fathah (the short "a" vowel) or dammah (the short "u" vowel) is heavy, a raa with kasrah (the short "i" vowel) is light, and a raa with no vowel borrows its weight from the vowel before it. Everything after that is exceptions, and they are what make this the letter students ask about most. This article follows the reading of Hafs 'an 'Asim; other qira'at (transmitted readings) read the raa light in a number of places where Hafs reads it heavy.

Why raa needs its own rules

The seven isti'la letters (those pronounced with the back of the tongue raised) are heavy everywhere, and the rest are light everywhere, as our overview of tafkheem and tarqeeq explains. Raa belongs to neither group. It is made at the tip of the tongue, so it has no built-in heaviness, yet the vowel it carries reshapes the mouth enough that the letter swings between the two.

The letter also has a property called takreer (repetition, the tendency of the tongue tip to flutter), which readers are taught to restrain rather than to produce. A rolled raa is a fault in its own right, separate from heaviness, and is described among the sifaat of the letters.

Raa with a vowel of its own

When the raa carries its own vowel, that vowel decides everything and the letters around it do not matter.

• With fathah the raa is heavy: rabb, rahmah, ar-rahmaan.
• With dammah the raa is heavy: rusul, rooh, yansuru.
• With kasrah the raa is light: rijaal, rizq, rihlah.

A raa carrying shaddah (the doubling mark) follows the vowel on the shaddah in the same way: heavy in ar-rahmaan, light in ar-rijs. Tanween (the doubled vowel mark) counts as a vowel of its kind while you continue; when you stop it falls away and the stopping rules take over. If the vowel marks are new to you, our guide to the harakat comes first.

Raa without a vowel

A sakin raa (one carrying sukoon, no vowel) looks backwards. If the letter before it carries fathah or dammah, the raa is heavy: arsala, qur'aan, yarji'oon. If the letter before it carries kasrah, the raa is light: fir'awn, shirk.

Two exceptions turn a raa after kasrah heavy.

The kasrah is not original. If the kasrah before the raa sits on a hamzat al-wasl (the connecting hamzah that is pronounced only when you begin on it), or belongs to the previous word rather than to the raa's own word, the raa is read heavy. Starting on irji'ee in Surah Al-Fajr (89:28) gives a heavy raa, because the kasrah on the hamzah is a temporary starting vowel. The same applies to rabbi-rji'oon in Surah Al-Mu'minun (23:99), where the kasrah before the raa belongs to rabbi. Our article on hamzat al-wasl explains where those temporary vowels come from.

A heavy letter follows in the same word. If the sakin raa after an original kasrah is followed, within the same word, by one of the seven isti'la letters carrying fathah, the raa is heavy. The words usually listed are qirtaas (Surah Al-An'am 6:7), firqah (Surah At-Tawbah 9:122), irsaadan (Surah At-Tawbah 9:107) and mirsaad (Surah An-Naba 78:21 and Surah Al-Fajr 89:14).

Where the isti'la letter after the raa carries kasrah rather than fathah, as in the word firq in Surah Ash-Shu'ara (26:63), teachers say both a heavy and a light raa are transmitted in Hafs. Ask your teacher which they read and keep to it.

A raa with a vowel obeys its vowel; a raa without one obeys its neighbour; and when you stop, the neighbour is whatever is left standing.

Stopping on raa

Stopping makes the final letter sakin, and a raa read sakin because of a stop follows the same backward-looking rule, with one addition: if a sakin letter stands between the raa and the nearest vowel, you look past it. Our guide to stopping in the Quran covers where to pause.

• A vowel directly before the raa: follow it. Stopping on al-qamar gives a heavy raa; stopping on a raa preceded by kasrah gives a light one.
• Alif or a sakin waw before the raa: heavy, as in an-naar, an-noor and ghafoor.
• A sakin yaa before the raa: light, as in khabeer, qadeer and nadheer.
• Any other sakin letter between: look past it to the vowel before. Stopping on al-fajr (Surah Al-Fajr 89:1) gives a heavy raa, because the fathah on the faa is what counts. Stopping on al-hijr or as-sihr gives a light raa, because the letter before the sakin one carries kasrah.

A small number of words are read either way in Hafs when you stop on them; misr and qitr (Surah Saba 34:12) are the ones teachers mention most, because a kasrah sits before a heavy sakin letter. Ask your teacher which they transmit.

Continue instead of stopping and the raa's own vowel returns and decides again; the weight of a stopped raa belongs to the stop, not to the word.

A compact decision list

1. Does the raa carry its own vowel, or a shaddah with a vowel? Fathah or dammah: heavy. Kasrah: light. You are done.
2. Is it sakin while you continue reading? Look at the vowel before it. Fathah or dammah: heavy. Kasrah: light, unless the kasrah belongs to a hamzat al-wasl or the previous word, or an isti'la letter with fathah follows in the same word; in either case, heavy.
3. Is it sakin only because you stopped? Ignore any tanween or vowel it was carrying. A vowel before it: follow it. Alif or waw sakin before it: heavy. Yaa sakin before it: light. Another sakin letter before it: look past that letter to the vowel before.
4. Is it one of the few words teachers list as read both ways? Take one reading from your teacher and be consistent.

The whole list rests on seeing sukoon and shaddah at a glance; if those marks still slow you down, our article on sukoon and shaddah comes first.

Faults teachers correct most

The commonest is treating raa as always heavy, so that rijaal and fir'awn come out full. The second is the opposite, a thin raa everywhere, usually from a first language with only a light r. The third is rolling, which no rule about heaviness can rescue. Each is easy to hear and hard to feel, which is why raa is worth reading aloud to someone who can correct it.

Frequently asked questions

Is the raa in "bismillahir-rahmaan" heavy or light?

Heavy. The raa carries shaddah with fathah, and its own vowel is what counts, even though the letter before it carries kasrah. The vowel before a raa matters only when the raa has no vowel of its own, which is not the case here.

Why is the raa in "irji'ee" heavy when a kasrah comes before it?

Because that kasrah belongs to a connecting hamzah and exists only to let you start on the word. Teachers describe it as a temporary kasrah, and a temporary kasrah does not lighten a sakin raa. The same reasoning covers a kasrah that belongs to the previous word.

Does the raa change if I stop with a slight vowel sound?

Some stopping methods, such as rawm (a faint hint of the final vowel), keep the raa's own vowel partly audible, and teachers treat the raa as if that vowel were present. This is advanced territory and the details are best taken from a teacher rather than from a summary.

Do other qira'at read the raa the same way?

No. Some readings, most famously Warsh 'an Nafi', read a light raa in many positions where Hafs reads a heavy one. Everything in this article is specific to Hafs, and a recording in another reading will not match these rules in every word.

Is a rolled raa the same as a heavy raa?

They are separate matters. Heaviness is about the back of the tongue; rolling is about the tip repeating its tap. A heavy raa should still be a single tap, and a light raa should not become a flat English r.

Read a page of raa to someone who will stop you

The raa rules are short to state and slow to make automatic, and the fastest route is a listener who pauses you at every raa and asks why. That is what a lesson on our one-to-one Tajweed course looks like. Take a free trial class with a passage of your choosing, and your teacher will mark which raas you already read correctly and which rule you are missing.