بَابِthe door

Example sentences

• فَبَيْنَمَا أَنَا عِنْدَهُ جَالِسٌ إِذْ دَقَّ دَاقُ الْبَابِ

  While I was sitting with him, there came a knock at the door.

  الْبَابِ — the door. A definite noun completing the possessive pairing, the door whose knock it was, in the genitive shape. The second member of such a side-by-side pair takes the genitive ending.

  From: Wealth and Knowledge on Trial →

• دَعَوْتُ زَوْجَتَيَّ لِفَتْحِ الْبَابِ،

  I called my two wives to open the door.

  الْبَابِ — the door. A definite noun, marked by al-, and the owned half of 'the opening of the door': the action-noun before it governs it in the genitive, just as a verb would take an object, but in noun form. So the door is what would be opened, expressed through a possessive-style pairing rather than a full clause.

  From: A Night of Reckoning →

• فَلَمَّا كَانَ عَلَى بَابِ سُلَيْمَانِ

  When he was at the door of Sulaiman.

  بَاب — the door of. This noun opens a possessive pair, 'the door of so-and-so', sitting directly before its owner with no separate 'of'. It is also the first noun, so it stays bare of 'the' and takes its definiteness from the name that follows. Coming after the preposition, it also carries the post-preposition case.

  From: Stories of Prophetic Judgments →