MUSLIMS: THE COMMUNITYprostrate on their faces in tearful prayer or while arranged in rows,
supported by standing posts or tied to the walls or to the ceiling to
keep them on their feet all night. 54
The earliest devotional exercises among Muslim converts at Makka
resembled these practices. Sura 25:64 speaks of "those who spend the
night before their Lord, prostrate and standing." Some of them were
said to keep themselves awake by tying themselves to a fixed object
with a rope.^55 While Mul}ammad was still at Makka, times for worship
were established between sunset and dark, during nightly vigils, and
at dawn with the recitation of the Qur'an. This worship served as a
good work that would annul evil deeds. Mul}ammad was told to be
neither loud-voiced nor silent in worship, but in between.^56 At Madina
the times for private worship were set at dawn, noon, and night, with
public congregational worship at noon on Fridays announced by a
call to worship.57 Ritual worship consisted of a series of prostrations
in which worshipers knelt and put their hands and then their foreheads
on the ground.
Muslims shared repeated daily worship with several other contem-
porary traditions. Magians worshiped five times each day, Manichaean
Hearers four times, and Sabians three times. The five daily times of
worship, which very soon became standard for Muslims, are usually
traced to a Magian source. This is likely to be the case, since Muslims
saw to it that daytime worship did not coincide exactly with the
stations of the sun.58 Two points should be made here. First, in spite
of the similarity of Islamic ritual worship to widespread current prac-
tices, Muslims appear to have made minor variations intentionally in
order to distinguish their form of worship from that of non-Muslims.
Second, just as in several other contemporary religious communities,
recurring times of worship throughout each day provided an order
and rhythm to daily life for Muslims.
54 Brooks, "Lives of the Eastern Saints," pp. 611-12; Goitein, Jews and Arabs, p.
57; Viiiibus, History of Asceticism, 11, 291.
ss Abbott, Literary Papyri, 11, 265.
56 Qur'an, 11:114; 17:78; 73:2-4, 6.
57 Ibid., 2:37, 125; 4:102-3; 24:58; 62:9.
58 M. Khadduri, Islamic Jurisprudence: Shafi'f's Risala (Baltimore, 1961), p. 230.
Suggestions that the five daily times of worship for Muslims have a Magian origin go
back to I. Goldziher, "Islamisme et Parsisme,"· Revue de l'histoire des religions 43
(1901), 15.