What Is Alif? The First Letter of the Arabic Alphabet, Explained
ا(alif) is the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. On the page it's about as simple as a letter can look — just a single vertical stroke — but that simplicity hides a genuinely confusing point for beginners: alif usually doesn't represent a consonant sound at all.
Unlike almost every other Arabic letter, it also never connects to the letter that follows it — even in the middle of a word, whatever comes after an alif starts on its own, disconnected.
So what does alif actually do?
On its own, plain alif (ا) is a long vowel marker— it stretches the a sound that came before it into a long ā, the way the two a's work in كِتَاب(kitāb, "book"). It doesn't add a consonant sound of its own.
The actual consonant — a glottal stop, the catch in your throat in the middle of "uh-oh" — belongs to a completely different character called hamza (ء). Hamza is often written sitting on top of or underneath an alif, which is exactly why the two get mixed up.
The four alif shapes you'll actually see
This is the part that trips people up — "alif" can refer to any of four related characters, and each one behaves differently:
No hamza. Marks a long ā vowel — it doesn’t carry its own consonant sound.
A glottal-stop consonant followed by a short a or u sound, e.g. أَب (ab, "father").
A glottal stop followed by a short i sound, e.g. إِلَى (ilā, "to").
A glottal stop immediately followed by a long ā — used instead of writing two alifs in a row.
Its shape never changes
Most Arabic letters have up to four forms depending on where they sit in a word. Alif only really has one: a plain vertical stroke, because it never connects forward. Whatever letter follows it always starts a fresh, disconnected shape — one of the quickest ways to spot an alif inside a longer word. See the full isolated/initial/medial/final breakdown on the alif letter reference.
Alif in common words
- أَلِفalifthe letter itself
- كِتَابkitābbook
- السَّلَامas-salāmpeace
- أَبabfather
- إِلَىilāto / towards
- آسِفāsifsorry
A quick way to keep it straight
If you see a plain vertical stroke with nothing sitting on it (ا), it's just stretching the vowel before it — read straight through it. If it has a little ء perched on top or underneath (أ إ آ), that's hamza doing the real consonant work — alif is just its seat.
Once you can tell those two jobs apart, alif stops being confusing and becomes one of the easiest letters in the alphabet to read.