How does idaafa work?

The Idaafa construction is how we do possession in Arabic.

In English, we can express possession in two different ways: "the woman's book" or "the book of the woman". Arabic has a structure called idaafa to express this - and it's easiest to think it of it in terms of "of"

A simple Idaafa:

Arabic: كتاب المرأة Literally: book - the woman Translation: the book of the woman/ the woman's book

So what do we have here? There are two nouns, and only the second one has the definite article ال (the). This pattern [INDEFINITE NOUN – DEFINITE NOUN] is how we recognise an idaafa.

Although the first noun doesn’t have ال, we understand the whole phrase as definite. The ordering of the two nouns follows the 'of' order in English.