And some of them said: For every book there is a secret, and the secret of the Qur'an is its opening letters.

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As for the scholars of the Arabic language, they differed regarding the meaning of that. Some of them said: They are letters of the alphabet; mentioning those that were mentioned at the beginnings of the surahs made it unnecessary to mention the rest of them, which complete the twenty-eight letters, just as a speaker—in reporting about someone that he is learning the twenty-eight letters of the alphabet—contented himself with mentioning "a-b-t-th" instead of mentioning the remainder of its letters that complete the twenty-eight. He said: For that reason, {that Book} was in the nominative case (rufiʿa), because the meaning of the statement is: Alif, Lām, and Mīm are among the disjoined letters; that Book which I revealed to you, compiled together, there is no doubt in it.

If a questioner says: "a-b-t-th" has become like a name for the letters of the alphabet, just as "al-Hamd" was a name for the opening of the Book.

It is said to him: Since it was permissible for a speaker to say, "My son is in Ṭāʾ-Ẓāʾ," and it would be known from his saying that, if he said it, that he intended to inform about his son that he is learning the disjoined letters, it is known thereby that "a-b-t-th" is not a proper name for them, even if it is more preferred in mention than the rest of them (1). He said: The distinction was made between mentioning the letters of the alphabet in the openings of the surahs—mentioning them at their beginnings in varied forms—and mentioning them when mentioned by their beginnings, which are "a-b-t-th", in joined order, so as to differentiate between reporting about them when the intention—by mentioning what was mentioned of them in varied forms—is to indicate continuous speech, and when the intention—by mentioning what was mentioned of them in joined order—is to indicate the disjoined letters themselves. And they cited as evidence—to permit a speaker saying, "My son is in Ṭāʾ-Ẓāʾ" and the like, as a report that he is learning the letters of the alphabet, and that this saying of his in expression stands in place of his saying, "My son is in a-b-t-th"—the rajaz poetry of one of the rajaz poets of Banū Asad:

When I saw her affair was in ḥuṭṭī ... and she persisted in lying and denying ... I grabbed her by locks