are kept as such and names without al- are also kept as such; the connotation of this al- is ignored. When it comes to alphabetic ordering, some sources will list names according to the al- while others will ignore it. Extra Al- is sometimes prefixed to words without giving any grammatical benefit. This may occur in poetry, in which case the purpose may be to maintain metre, rhythm, or rhyme. It may also occur elsewhere to give a rhetorical benefit. For example, the al- attached to the relative pronoun al-ladhī (that/which/etc) is considered to be extra (), because relative pronouns are already definite and there is no use for the al-. Al- is perpetually and necessarily attached to this word in most Arabic dialects. Thus its purpose is not a lexical or grammatical one, but a rhetorical one. In the above example, the extra al- is necessary. There are other cases where it is extra but not necessary. An example is in the following phrase: The word “awwal” (first) is considered “ḥāl” (a type of object in grammar) in the above phrase. This type of object is typically indefinite according to most classical and modern grammarians. So the al- attached to it is unnecessarily extra. Miscellaneous Jamīl Shāmi asserts that there is a type of al- that connotes the essence of something. For example, "And we made from water every living thing ..." (Qur'an 21:30) can be translated as "And we made from the essence of water (i.e., from the compound H2O) every living thing ..." Shāmi also cites a usage of al- as an interrogative particle. For example, al fa‘alta (did you do it?). Notice that the al- stands alone and un-prefixed here. Grammar At the beginning of particles (ḥarf) and verbs (fi‘l) Al- is a particle (ḥarf) in the Arabic language. Like most (but not all) particles, it is not prefixed to other particles. That is because particles are never in need of any of the lexical meanings or grammatical inflections provided by al-. Similarly, al- is not prefixed to verbs. However, it has been seen on verbs in poetry, as in the following couplets by Dhu al-Kharq al-Tahawi (ذو الخرق الطهوي): Several opinions exist to explain this aberrant al-. The following is a precis of different Arabic scholars' views as given in Khizanat al-Adab. One view is that al- is a relative pronoun here, similar to alladhī