T. B. Irving, The Qur’an: The First American Version; Translated and Commentary (1985)
Western scholars who have approached this matter of Qurʾānic recital, and we refer you to them for the time being; the late Professor Mercier’s liturgical preface on prosody to his anthology in some ways is better than Arberry’s which is expressed in the Introduction to his first or shorter version; The Koran.
In pre-literary times, and especially before the invention of the printing press, public recitation was the way most scriptures were taught and memorized. Chanting was performed in a printless culture so that others could hear the sacred text, and thus participate in “reading” it. We should try to capture this effect again. Before the invention of the electric light, the motion picture and other mechanical contrivances which entertain us today, novels and scriptures were read in North America and other Western countries by families, especially on long winter nights. In the same way a tradition of recitation and schools to teach this method grew up within Islam and other religions. The ḥāfiḍh and the qāriʾ who memorize and recite the Qurʾān belong to an honorable profession in Islamic countries, and today phonograph records and cassettes are made of their art. As the liturgy was worked out, the chant developed just as the Gregorian chant did in Catholic countries. This had probably been worked out originally in the cities of Mecca and Madīna, the twin Ḥaramayn of Islam.
Few musical instruments are mentioned in the Qurʾān, only the trumpet (aṣ-ṣūr) in 18:99 and bugle (an-nāqūr) in 74:8. None are rhythmic or percussive although some drums may have existed, and they are easy to improvise. Much rhythm in the Middle East is maintained by hand-clapping anyhow. The Ṣūfī orders later on and the craft guilds which supported them, eventually gave us the so-called “whirling dervishes” who sought to find God and recall Him in their ecstasy.
The lilt of the Qurʾānic style makes it easy to read and recite: “We have made the Qurʾān easy to memorize” (54:17 ff). Rhymed prose meets the ear just as paragraphs, lines of verse and punctuation marks meet the eye in reading the printed page. In divine worship these indications become a part of ritual; the image or visual formulae are thus important. Worship means devotion, as this is seen in the verb to ‘devote’ oneself, to give a vow to, for it means to render the sort of ‘service’ which we find outlined in The Opening chapter of the Qurʾān itself, the Fātiḥa (1:5): “You do we worship and You do we call on for help”. The Universe moves on rhythm, which is part of its reality. Consciousness and the Unseen show that God is ineffable Intelligence, al-ʿaql: “Whenever We do read it, follow in its reading,” we are told in 75:18, for the Qurʾān has reached us in clear Arabic (12:2-3, 43:2-3 etc.).
The poetry of the early Muslims came from the Badū or Beduin, who had little formal culture or education; they preserved what their ancestors had taught them to remember in their great odes, even though the Prophet himself was declared not to be a poet, and rejected the term (52:29 and 69:41). Cadence and rhythm mold the phrase and sentence; God’s hovering spirit can thus be sensed. Phonograph records, tapes or cassettes now help in learning to chant, either for listening or in order to learn the passage by heart; they provide the best contemporary way for the uninitiated to hear this art.
