Passive in the Past

The passive voice in Modern Standard Arabic is used when the doer of the action is unknown, unimportant, or deliberately hidden.

1. Morphological Rules:

• Form I: The pattern is فُعِلَ. Example: كتبَ (he wrote) becomes كُتِبَ (it was written).
• Augmented Forms: Learn each pattern: عَلَّمَ → عُلِّمَ, أَكْرَمَ → أُكْرِمَ, شَاهَدَ → شُوهِدَ, تَعَلَّمَ → تُعُلِّمَ, and اِسْتَخْدَمَ → اُسْتُخْدِمَ. The last stem vowel becomes i; the earlier vowels and any long vowel depend on the pattern. Do not simply replace every preceding vowel with u.
• Hollow Verbs: Form I has قَالَ → قِيلَ and بَاعَ → بِيعَ. Form IV has أَقَامَ → أُقِيمَ. Weak roots therefore need their own paradigms rather than the sound-root template alone.
• Defective Verbs: Verbs ending in a weak letter like رمى change the final letter to a ya (e.g., رُمِيَ).
• Doubled Verbs: In verbs with a shadda like ردَّ, the first radical takes a damma while the shadda remains (e.g., رُدَّ). Note that the expected kasra on the penultimate radical is phonologically suppressed or hidden by the gemination.

2. The Deputy Subject (نائب الفاعل):
When a verb becomes passive, the original direct object is promoted to the role of deputy subject. It must now take the nominative case (usually ending in -u). The verb agrees in gender with this new subject. In the ordinary verb-first construction, it remains singular before a following dual or plural noun: كُرِّمَ المُعَلِّمُونَ (the teachers were honored). With the noun first, the predicate verb has full agreement: المُعَلِّمُونَ كُرِّمُوا. Compare كُرِّمَتِ المُعَلِّمَاتُ with المُعَلِّمَاتُ كُرِّمْنَ. Nonhuman plurals ordinarily take feminine singular agreement: فُتِحَتِ الأَبْوَابُ (the doors were opened).

3. Intransitive Verbs:
Intransitive verbs need an eligible complement for an impersonal passive, such as a prepositional phrase an adverbial, or an eligible cognate verbal noun. That complement then functions as the deputy subject (e.g., نُظِرَ في الأمرِ - The matter was looked into).

4. Mentioning the Agent:
The active grammatical subject is omitted from the passive construction. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) frequently uses the phrase مِن قِبَل (by) or بواسطة (by means of) to include the agent, especially in journalistic contexts.

5. Register:
This form is essential to become proficient in formal writing and news, but is rarely used in spoken dialects, which prefer reflexive forms like Form VII to express passive meanings.