Lesson 1 of 16 · Every word is one of three things
Noun, verb, particle
اِسْم · فِعْل · حَرْف
After this lesson: Sort any Arabic word into one of the three kinds and say why.
Arabic grammarians begin with a clean claim: every word in the language is a noun, a verb, or a particle. There is no fourth kind. A noun (ism) names something — a person, a thing, a quality, a place, a time. A verb (fiʿl) is an action tied to a time — done, being done, or commanded. A particle (ḥarf) means nothing on its own and only does a job between other words: in, from, not, indeed.
This matters because the three kinds take different endings and obey different rules. Almost every later lesson begins by asking: is this an ism or a fiʿl?
Take the opening of al-Fātiḥah. Al-ḥamdu is a noun — praise. Li is a particle — 'to, for'. Allāh is a noun. Rabb is a noun. There is no verb in the whole āyah, which is itself the point: praise belongs to Allah as a standing fact, not as something happening at one moment.
In the Qur'an
ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ ٱلْعَـٰلَمِينَ
al-ḥamdu li-llāhi rabbi l-ʿālamīn
All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of all the worlds.
Notice. Three nouns and one particle, and no verb at all — a sentence can be complete in Arabic without one.
قُلْ هُوَ ٱللَّهُ أَحَدٌ
qul huwa llāhu aḥad
Say: He is Allah, One.
Notice. Qul is a verb — a command. Huwa, Allāh and aḥad are all nouns.
Watch out. English calls huwa ('he') a pronoun and treats that as separate from nouns. In Arabic a pronoun counts as a kind of ism — it stands in the place of a noun and behaves like one.
Check yourself
Nothing is scored or saved here — answering is how the rule sticks. When you want a score, the same checks are drilled to mastery below.
In qul huwa llāhu aḥad, what kind of word is qul?
Why is li in li-llāh a particle rather than a noun?
Word morphology, grammar and syntax trees are shown by the Quranic Arabic Corpus (corpus.quran.com), the annotated linguistic resource developed at the University of Leeds.