The Measure of Recitation

This communication takes place in earnest when the heart is present, in khushūʿ, and when the etiquette of ṣalāh is followed in full — a proper wuḍūʾ, and every pillar and condition of the prayer correctly fulfilled. Kept in this way, ṣalāh carries an additional reward beyond the prayer itself. The ninth of the twelve forms of worship contained within it is qirāʾah, the recitation of the Qur'an within the prayer. In most prayers it is read aloud, jahran — in the farḍ of Fajr, in Jumuʿah, in the two ʿĪds, in Witr — and in the first two rakʿahs of every prayer, including the first two of Ẓuhr and ʿAṣr, where it continues silently, and the first two of Maghrib and ʿIshāʾ, read aloud. In every case the Fātiḥah must be recited, together with some further recitation: ṣalāh without qirāʾah is not valid, and this holds even for someone unable to stand for qiyām through illness and praying seated — so long as there is a legitimate, sharʿī excuse, someone without legs, someone genuinely bedridden, the prayer is still owed, and some portion of the Qur'an must still be recited within it.

As to how much, there is ikhtilāf among the imams and the schools: some set a bare minimum, others hold that the minimum is not enough and that, by their ijtihād, a certain amount is required. Whichever school one follows, these rules are to be learned from its books of fiqh. According to Imam al-Aʿẓam Abū Ḥanīfah (may Allah have mercy on him), at least two verses must be recited, which may be as brief as two words if each is itself a complete āyah; his student Imam Abū Yūsuf, himself a mujtahid within the Ḥanafī school, holds that three short verses are required, or their equivalent in length — a single long āyah, such as those of Sūrat al-Baqarah, where one āyah may run to a full page, or half a page, is more than sufficient. It is for this reason that a Turkish imam leading tarāwīḥ was once heard, after the Fātiḥah, to open Sūrat al-Raḥmān — al-Raḥmān, ʿallama al-Qurʾān, khalaqa al-insān — and then, after only its recurring refrain on the two easts and the two wests and the favours of the Lord that cannot be denied, to call Allāhu akbar and move straight on. Someone expecting a much longer recitation, perhaps half a page, was left asking what had happened, only to be told that three short verses, and rather quick ones at that, had already been read, and the matter was finished. An entire night of tarāwīḥ can be completed in thirty minutes at this pace, particularly behind imams who race through it in this fashion; prayer conducted at such speed earns the label tarāwīḥ in name only, since the word itself means to take matters easily, not tarābīk — a rush.

A technical distinction applies here as well, since a word, a kalimah, can sometimes be no more than a single letter in the Qur'an. Certain sūrahs open with disconnected letters, ḥurūf muqaṭṭaʿāt — alif, lām, mīm; yā, sīn; ṭā, hā — whose meaning Allah knows; His Prophet (peace be upon him) knows it if Allah informed him; and no one else knows it. The interpretations the scholars offer are conjecture, and the position taken is Allāhu aʿlam, Allah knows best. These letters cannot serve as the recitation on their own: reciting only the name of a sūrah such as Yā-Sīn, letter by letter, after the Fātiḥah does not constitute valid qirāʾah. The verses that follow such letters must be recited as well.