FAWATIH

(Arabicprefatory ones) also called hawamim (the letters ha and mim), or huruf al-muqatta'ah (Arabic: the detached letters) letters of the alphabet appearing at the beginning of 29 of the surahs (chapters) of the Muslim sacred scripture, the Qur'an. The 14 letters thus designated occur singly and in various combinations of two to five. As the letters always stand separately (muqatta'ah), they do not form words and are read by their alphabetic names, as ha mim, alif lam mim, ta sin mim. The original meaning and function of the fawatih, which are associated principally with surahs dating from the late Meccan period (before AD 622), has not been preserved. Scholars have given several theories for the fawatih: the letters might be assigned mystical numerical values; or they could indicate abbreviations for the individual words of a sentence. Most popularly, since the surahs preceded by the same combination of letters are grouped together in the Qur'an, a third theory might imply that these clusters were originally part of private Meccan manuscripts before they were assembled by Muhammad's secretary, Zayd ibn Thabit, into an authoritative recension; the fawatih could then be construed as the initials of the Meccan owners.