Order of Words in the Concordance

The references and text excerpts in this concordance are grouped according to syntactical forms that appear in them (syntactical forms are words exactly as they appear in the text; cf. section 4 for a definition of a syntactical form). This means that all the verses that contain any one of  the 85,690 syntactical forms of the Bible and the Qur'an are listed together under one entry: first Old Testament verses, then New Testament verses and finally Qur'anic verses.

The syntactical forms (i.e. the different lexical entries of the concordance) are in turn ordered grammatically according to the following order:

I. All the syntactical forms that belong to one root are grouped together. The roots appear in their alphabetical order.

II. Within each root-group the syntactical forms that belong to one stem form (if it can be defined for a given syntactical form) are grouped together. The stem forms for roots with three radicals (the majority of all roots) are listed in the traditional order of  Arabic grammar: stem form I ( fa'ala), stem form II (fa''ala), stem form III (faa'ala), stem form IV ('af'ala), stem form V (tafa''ala), stem form VI (tafaa'ala), stem form VII ('infa'ala ), stem form VIII ('ifta'ala), stem form IX ('if'alla) and stem form X ('istaf'ala).

III. Within each stem-form-group the syntactical forms come in the following order: first the verbs , next the nouns, then the particles and finally the proper names. Each of these groups of syntactical forms follows its own ordering prinicples:

A) The verbs are grouped according to their verbal forms: first the perfect active forms (maaDii ma'luum) and perfect passive forms (maaDii majhuul), then the imperfect active forms (muDaari' ma'luum) and imperfect passive forms (muDaari' majhuul) and finally the imperative forms (al-'amr).

(i) The syntactical forms of a given verbal-form-group are divided into subgroups according to the grammatical person of the verbal form. The ordering of the persons follows that of traditional Arabic grammar: third person (al-ghaa'ib), then second person (al-mukhaaTab) and finally the first person ( al-mutakallim).

(ii) The syntactical forms of a given person-group are divided into subgroups according to the grammatical gender of that verbal form: first all the masculines ( al-mudhakkar) and then all the feminines (al-mu'annath).

(iii) The syntactical forms of a given gender-group are divided into subgroups according to the grammatical number of that verbal form: first the singular (al-mufrad), then the dual (al-muthannaa) and finally the plural (al-jam').

(iv) The syntactical forms of a given grammatical-number-group are listed alphabetically: first according to the order of their constituent consonants and then, i.e. for different syntactical forms composed of exactly the same consonants (a gimmination [shaddah] is considered as a reduplication of the gemminated letter), according to the following (arbitrarily chosen) order of vowel signs: sukuun (no vowel sign), fatHa (-a), kasra (-i), Damma (-u), fatHatain (-an), kasratain (-in), Dammatain (-un), hamzat al-waSl (-), madda (-aa) and alif Sagiira (-aa).

B) The nouns are grouped according to their nominal forms: first the infinitives (al-maSdar), then the active participle forms (al-faa'il) and passive participle forms ( al-maf'uul bihi), and finally all other nominal forms. The latter are grouped according to the order in which they appear in: Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, ed. by J.M. Cowan , (New York: Spoken Language Services Inc., 3rd ed. 1976).

(i) The syntactical forms of a given nominal-form-group are divided into subgroups according to the grammatical gender of that nominal form: first all the masculines (al-mudhakkar ) and then all the feminines (al-mu'annath).

(ii) The syntactical forms of a given gender-group are divided into subgroups according to the grammatical number of that nominal form: first the singular (al-mufrad), then the dual (al-muthannaa) and finally the plural (al-jam').

(iii) The syntactical forms of a given grammatical-number-group are listed alphabetically: first according to the order of their constituent consonants and then, i.e. for different syntactical forms composed of exactly the same consonants (a gimmination [shaddah] is considered as a reduplication of the gemminated letter), according to the following (arbitrarily chosen) order of vowel signs: sukuun (no vowel sign), fatHa (-a), kasra (-i), Damma (-u), fatHatain (-an), kasratain (-in), Dammatain (-un), hamzat al-waSl (-), madda (-aa) and alif Sagiira (-aa).
 

C) The syntactical forms whose core word is constituted by a particle are listed alphabetically: first accroding to the order of their constituent consonants and then, i.e. for different syntactical forms composed of exactly the same consonants (a gimmination [shaddah] is considered as a reduplication of the gemminated letter), according to the following (arbitrarily chosen) order of vowel signs: sukuun (no vowel sign), fatHa (-a), kasra (-i), Damma (-u), fatHatain (-an), kasratain (-in), Dammatain (-un), hamzat al-waSl (-), madda (-aa) and alif Sagiira (-aa).

D) The syntactical forms whose core word is constituted by a proper name are listed according to the following order (Note: in Arabic proper names may imply a grammatical declension):

(i) The syntactical forms of a given proper-name-group are divided (where applicable) into subgroups according to the grammatical gender of the proper-name-forms involved: first all the masculines (al-mudhakkar) and then all the feminines (al-mu'annath).

(ii) The syntactical forms of a given gender-group are divided (where applicable) into subgroups according to the grammatical number of the proper-name-forms involved: first the singular (al-mufrad), then the dual (al-muthannaa) and finally the plural (al-jam').

(iii) The syntactical forms of a given grammatical-number-group are listed alphabetically: first according to the order of their constituent consonants and then, i.e. for different syntactical forms composed of exactly the same consonants (a gimmination [shaddah] is considered as a reduplication of the gemminated letter), according to the following (arbitrarily chosen) order of vowel signs: sukuun (no vowel sign), fatHa (-a), kasra (-i), Damma (-u), fatHatain (-an), kasratain (-in), Dammatain (-un), hamzat al-waSl (-), madda (-aa) and alif Sagiira (-aa).