The Art of Reciting the Qur'an

277 Pages·2001·12.68 MB·English

by  Kristina Nelson

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Kristina Nelson
The American University in Cairo Press
Cairo New York
First published in Egypt in 2001 by
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Sharia Kasr el Ami, Cairo, Egypt
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
www.aucpress.com
Copyright © 1985 by the University of Texas Press
This edition published by special arrangement with the
University of Texas Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-
copying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the copyright owner.
Dar el Kutub No. 9212/00
ISBN 977 424 594 6
Printed in Egypt
Contents
Transcription Tables vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xiii
1. The Text: The Qur3an 1
History of the Revelation and Compilation
of the Written Text 1
Nature of the Text 3
External Form of the Text 4
Content, Language, and Style 5
2. Tajwid 14
Introduction 14
Material of Tajwid 18
Sound of Tajwid 21
3. The Samdc Polemic 32
4. The Ideal Recitation of the Qur3an 52
Issues 53
Terminology 68
Huzn 89
5. The Sound of the Qur3anic Recitation 101
Introduction 101
Murattal 105
Mujawwad 110
6. Maintaining the Ideal Recitation of the Qur°an 136
7. Overlap and Separation: The Dynamics of Perception
and Response 153
Introduction 153
The Overlap of Music and Recitation 157
The Separation of Music and Recitation 173
Conclusion 188
Appendix A. Consultants 192
Appendix B. The Seven Ahruf and the QiraPat 199
Notes 202
Selected Bibliography 225
Postscript 235
Index 240
Transcription Tables
Several conventions are applied: i. omission of the word-initial
glottal stop (e.g., al-sawt tor3al-sawt, Abu ior'Abu) except in the
context of recited Qur'anic Arabic; 2. indication of the elision of
the glottal stop of the definite article (e.g., fi 1-bayt for fi al-bayt);
3. in titles, proper names, and uncontextualized phrases the defi-
nite article is transcribed al (e.g., sifdt al-huruf for sifdtu 1-huruf
and Labib al-Sacid for Labibu l-Sacid 4. the td3 marbutah (at) in
;
construct is transcribed at. otherwise it is transcribed ah (e.g.,
surat al-Baqarah for surah al-Baqarah, al-majallah al-musiqiy-
yah for al-majallatu 1-musiqiyyah); 5. in spoken Egyptian Arabic
the ah of the td3 marbutah is transcribed a (e.g., nagama for
nagamah).
Words that have a certain frequency in English (Qur'an,
Ramadan, al-Azhar, Mohammad) are not given diacritics except in
the context of quotations transcribed from Arabic. Further, the
names of Arab authors published in Western languages are spelled
as they appear in their respective publications.
Table i applies to all literary references and to proper names.
Tables i and 2 reflect the sound of recited Qur'anic Arabic. Tables i
and 3 reflect spoken Egyptian Arabic. The transcription of inter-
views and comments often reflects the speaker's mixing of literary
and colloquial pronunciations. Also, transcriptions of both recited
Qur'anic Arabic and spoken Egyptian Arabic show the elision of
the /!/ of the definite article (e.g., as-sawt and is-sot, respectively).
viii Transcription Tables
Table 1. Transliteration of Literary References and Proper Names
3 c z q 1
b s k u
t i
S a
t S m i
i d n u
h t h ay
x g w aw
d c y 3-
d ah/at
g
r f a
Table 2. Transliteration of Recited Qur'anic Arabic
Table 1 pJus t^e following:
r single tap /r/, unrolled /r/ ~~ nasalization (ghunnah)
z voiced, dorso-alveolar spirant 3 schwa
a low, back, slightly rounded vowel ( ) partial assimilation
1 pharyngealized III
e medium high, medium front vowel
Table 3. Transliteration of Spoken Egyptian Arabic
Table 1 plus the following:
e medium high, medium front vowel
6 middle, moderately rounded, back vowel
g voiced palative stop
z pharyngealized /z/
1 pharyngealized /!/
Acknowledgments
This book is based on my dissertation at the University of Califor-
nia at Berkeley. I conceived the desire and intent to study the reci-
tation of the Qur'an some years ago, and I am extremely grateful to
everyone in Berkeley and in Egypt who helped me to actualize the
project. In particular, I thank Professor Mounah Khouri, who started
me on the path of Arabic studies. I am also indebted to Professor
Bonnie Wade for opening to me the new scholarly vistas of ethno-
musicology and the social sciences in general and for helping me to
form and sharpen the concept of this dissertation into a viable piece
of research.
The research could never have been accomplished without the
generous financial support of the Social Science Research Council
and the HEW Office of Education Fulbright-Hays Research Abroad
Program and the letters of encouragement and support I received
from their administrators.
In Egypt the list is long: everyone I met in the course of my re-
search was extremely helpful and generous with time, information,
and hospitality. I would particularly like to thank the professional
reciters I interviewed (who are listed by name in Appendix A). They
are all prominent and busy men who, without exception, were
gracious and generous in sharing their knowledge, experience, tal-
ent, and enthusiasm, inviting me into their homes and to their
performances.
The administrators and staff of the religious radio station Idacat
al-Qur'an al-Karim also showed great interest in the research: not
only were they helpful and cooperative in interviews and requests
for information on schedules, performances, and the like, but they
often anticipated my requests, initiating some introductions and fa-