Naḥw: Case Endings & Sentence Structure
Arabic marks the role of each word in a sentence using short vowel endings (iʿrāb). Master four markers and four sentence patterns, and you can parse any Quranic verse.
Why do endings matter?
In English, word order tells you who did what: "The man saw the boy"is different from "The boy saw the man." In Arabic, the ending vowel on each noun does this job. That means Arabic word order is flexible — the Quran regularly puts objects before subjects for emphasis.
There are 4 cases: rafʿ (nominative), naṣb (accusative), jarr (genitive), and jazm (jussive, for verbs only).
Rafʿ (Nominative)رَفْع
Marker: ḍamma (ُ) or ون
Subject (fāʿil) and predicate (khabar) of a nominal sentence
جَاءَ الرَّجُلُ
The man came
الرَّجُلُ — al-rajulُ is in rafʿ (nominative) because it is the subject (fāʿil) of the verb jāʾa.