Jewish & Islamic Prayer
Reply #1 - October 13, 2014, 06:10 PM
An interesting subject that I wish I knew more about. Unfortunately the subject of prayer rituals in the Middle East during this time period is extremely complex and difficult. As far as I can tell, Islamic prayer seems to have many syncretic features that borrowed from a lot of regional cultures, as well as its own innovations.
Even the Qur'anic word for prayer -- salaat -- is a Syriacism. Strangely, the Qur'anic rasm spells salaat as "slwt," with a medial waw. Why the 'waw' when Muslim tradition recites this word as having a long "a" in that place? If written in Arabic as we know it, there should either be no vowel written in the rasm (it it was defectively written as slt) or an alif should be there (written in full as slaat). But instead 'salat' seems to be written in the rasm in a Syriac-ish pronunciation of slwt, i.e. a long "u" as designated by the 'waw.' It's very mysterious ... as written, the word seems to be neither Classical Arabic nor Judaic.
Also, the 'five times a day' aspect of the Islamic prayer ritual appears to have been lifted from competition with the Zoroastrians long after Mohammed -- it's a Persian-ism that has affected the ritual. Thus the Qur'an, and Qur'anist, reference to prayer three times a day.
Finally I would copy a whole paragraph from Fred Donner on a related point:
"A third question relating to the nature of the “Ur-Qur’an” is whether it originated as a liturgical text. Numerous students, as diverse as Neuwirth and Wansbrough, allege the liturgical functions of various Qur’anic passages, and almost everyone who discusses the Qur’an notes that the very word Qur’an is derived from Syriac qeryana, “recitation, liturgy.” But if the “Ur-Qur’an” (or, to use a Wansbrough-friendly formulation, the eventual Qur’an and its presumed Vorlagen) arose to meet liturgical needs in the community, how can we explain the fact that the Islamic ritual prayer/salat requires strikingly little recitation of the Qur’an? Other than the fatiha, recitation of only one long or three short verses of the Qur’an is required, and selection of which verses to recite is left to the individual. Moreover, it is striking that Islam knows no liturgical calendar prescribing specific recitations during prayer for particular seasons of the year, such as is found in Christianity or Judaism. Certainly there is no lack of suitable episodes that one might have used as occasions for such specific liturgical readings, such as the hajj, Ramadan, laylat al-qadr, mi ‘raj, hijra, and so on. The only recitation required in ritual prayer is that of the fatiha, but many scholars (including some early Muslim ones) considered the fatiha not actually to be part of the Qur’an, but rather considered it a prayer that was added to the beginning of Qur’an codices. So the evidence seems to suggest not that the Qur’an originated as prayer liturgy, but rather that a few elements drawn from the prayer liturgy were used to embellish the Qur’an. The implication is that the Islamic prayer ritual and the Qur’an text, whatever it originally was, developed independently."
Fascinating stuff ...
Topic: Jewish & Islamic Prayer