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Badal: Something that Stands in for Something Else
By ArabicTree | May 3, 2008
البَدَل–badal–means “something that stands in for something else,” or “something that replaces something else.”
The rules for badal are:
- The badal itself must be an ismul-ishaarah (demonstrative pronoun)–such as haadhaa.
- The word after the badal must be a common-noun (not a proper name)
- The word after the badal must be definite (with alif-lam, usually)
And that word–the definite common-noun that follows the badal–is the word that the badal stands in for.
So if you say:
(This house is big.) In this sentence, haadha is the badal–it’s ismul-ishaarah, it’s followed by a common noun (bayt) that’s definite with alif-lam.
Another example is:
(These hujjaaj–pilgrims–are from America.) The badal here is haoolaai; it’s ismul-isharah, and it’s followed by a common noun (hujjaaj) that’s definite with alif-lam.
But why do we care about which word is badal? Why does it mater,grammatically?
Check out this sentence:
(Your pen is in this bag.) The badal here is haadhihi; it’s ismul-ishaarah, and it’s followed by a common-noun (haqiybah) that’s definite with alif-lam.
And notice that the badal never changes case–rather, the word that the badal is standing in for takes its case.
Like here–the badal is haadhihi, and the word it’s standing in for is haqiybah. And haqiybah is majruwr, because of fiy–fiy affects haadhihi, and haadhihi is badal–so it passes on themajruwr case to haqiybah!
Here’s another example to demonstrate that:
(I recited this surah in Salaatil-Fajr). The badal here is haadhihi–ismul-ishaarah, followed by a common noun with alif-lam. The badal stands in for surah.
And here, surah is mansoob. Why? Because of qara’a–qara’a has a mafool, haadhihi. But because haadhihi is badal for surah, surah becomes mansoob, not haadhihi.
And that’s badal!–something that stands in for something else. You can think of badal as a rubber ball–whatever case hits it, bounces onto the next word (that it affects).
To recap:
- The badal word is an ismul-ishaara that is followed by a definite common noun. That noun is what the badal stands in for.
- The badal passes its case to the word it stands in for–like a rubber ball, it passes the case to the word it stands in for.
What ayaat of the Qur’an have badal in them? Post some in the comments insha’Allah (quoting the verse and pointing out the badal).
May 7th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Shouldn’t هاأُلاإ be written as هؤلاء , and هاذا & هاذه as هذا & هذه respectively? I think that “badl” is pronounced as “badal”.
Other than that, I think it is a very informative lesson.
May 13th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Yes, haoolaai was spelt wrong, jazakumullahu khayran. For haadhaa and haadhihi, the alif after the ha is usually written as a small alif; for the sake of clarity, we include that! And yes, it should be “badal”, not “badl”
June 15th, 2008 at 3:20 am
How about Surah Baqarah ayat 2?
ذَلِكَ الْكِتَابُ لاَ رَيْبَ فِيهِ هُدًى لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ
with ذَلِكَ الْكِتَابُ as the badal.