(Madras, India, 1922). An English translation of his Marathi
work is available in Srimad-Bhagavadg ̄ıta ̄-Rahasya, edited by
B. S. Sukthanankar (Poona, India, 1965).
AINSLIE T. EMBREE (2005)TILA ̄WAH. Recitation of the sacred words of scripture
in Islamic contexts of prayer, liturgy, and public performance
is designated by the Arabic terms tila ̄wah and qira ̄Dah. The
very name of Muslim scripture, QurDa ̄n, is a cognate of
qira ̄Dah from the finite verb qaraEa, which means “he read,”
in the sense of “recited.” Tila ̄wah is the more general term
for QurDa ̄n recitation, and its root carries the double sense
of “to recite” and “to follow.” Thus, the Muslim concept of
scripture entails the notion of divine speech meant to be re-
cited, as indeed is the case with several other scriptures, such
as the Hindu Vedas and the Jewish Torah. The sacred arche-
type of Muslim scripture is the Preserved Tablet (lawh:
mah:fu ̄z:, surah 85:22) or Mother of the Book (umm al-kita ̄b,
13:39, 43:4), the heavenly inscription of God’s word from
which it is believed that scriptures had been sent down to
other prophets (e.g., the torah to Moses and the gospel to
Jesus) and ultimately from which the angel Gabriel recited
the Arabic QurDa ̄n to Muh:ammad. This notion of divine
speech, preserved and transmitted in heaven and on earth in
both written and oral forms, can be traced among Semites
to ancient Near Eastern cosmologies. In both its inscribed
and its recited Arabic forms, the QurDa ̄n lies at the heart of
Islamic symbolism, ritual, and social experience—indeed,
even among many non-Arabic-speaking Muslims.
The tendency of Western scholars to concentrate on
problems of textual history and interpretation to the neglect
of the contextual modes of oral transmission and perfor-
mance has resulted in a general failure to appreciate the sig-
nificance of tila ̄wah in Islamic society. Although the textual
form of the QurDa ̄n is paramount in such areas of classical
Muslim scholarship as law (fiqh), theology (kala ̄m), grammar
(nah:w), and scriptural commentary (tafs ̄ır), it is in its oral
form that most Muslims down to the present have learned
the QurDa ̄n.
TILA ̄WAH AND THE QUESTION OF CANON. In Islam, the
problem of establishing an authoritative text was not a ques-
tion, as it was in Judaism and Christianity, of authorized
councils deciding which writings were inspired or otherwise
authentic. Materials for the body of scripture (kita ̄b, “book,
writing”) were from the beginning regarded as simply and
exclusively the accurate preservation of Muh:ammad’s recita-
tion of God’s speech, which tradition affirms had circulated
orally, and in a less well-assembled form in writing, among
contemporaries of the Prophet. Of greater significance was
the question of collecting—implying also the arranging—of
the Prophet’s recitation of su ̄rahs and a ̄yahs (“chapters” and
“verses”). Tradition assigns the beginning of this task to the
Prophet himself and stipulates further that the QurDanic text
was rehearsed in the presence of the angel Gabriel periodical-
ly until the revelation ended at the time of Muh:ammad’s
death (632 CE). It is also held that through his secretary,
Zayd ibn Tha ̄bit (and others), Muh:ammad had at least some
of the QurDa ̄n written down during his own lifetime. Various
copies (mas:a ̄h:if, sg., mas:h:af) of these and the transcription
of others were collected by the first two caliphs
(Muh:ammad’s successors as head of the community). Islam-
ic tradition regards the definitive collection ordered by the
third caliph EUthma ̄n (d. 656), however, as the official copy
to which all authoritative copies since that time are traced.As is often the case when the texts of sacred speech as-
sume written form prior to the development of widespread
functional literacy, the scriptio defectiva of the earliest tran-
scriptions of the QurDa ̄n did not present the full and unam-
biguous script that was later developed for the enunciation,
phrasing, and punctuation of each vocable, and it did not
provide for other matters of enormous significance for mean-
ing and consistency in oral recitation, such as guidance for
phrasing and pauses. Scriptio plena, the full and precise sys-
tem of writing, had neither fully evolved nor was it really
necessary in the early stages when the “text” was transmitted
primarily in oral form. As a result, slightly different variant
readings (recitations) of the written QurDanic text have exist-
ed and been accepted since the formative period of Islam.
Tenth-century QurDa ̄n scholars, the most famous of
whom was Ibn Muja ̄hid (859–935), analyzed and evaluated
the existing variant readings of their day and established the
orthodox systems of reciting from the written text attributed
to the caliph EUthma ̄n (r. 644–656). Tradition accounts for
the variations among the reciters, as Ibn Muja ̄hid’s work
shows, on the basis of a report (h:ad ̄ıth) that Muh:ammad had
been given the QurDa ̄n to recite according to seven ah:ruf
(“letters”), a term that is sometimes taken to mean the dia-
lects spoken by Arab tribes contemporary with the Prophet.
In this view, God revealed the QurDa ̄n to Muh:ammad in the
seven dialects of Arabic understood by the various tribes in
Arabia, and these phonetic variations account for the differ-
ent qira ̄Da ̄t of the text of EUthma ̄n. The connotation of ah:ruf
as “dialects” is controversial among Islamicists, however. Ibn
Muja ̄hid’s work, Kita ̄b al-sabEah (The Seven Recitations),
identified the most renowned orthodox eighth-century recit-
ers of the QurDa ̄n, and although later authorities boosted to
ten and fourteen the number of acceptable recitation sys-
tems, Ibn Muja ̄hid’s seven remain the most widely recog-
nized among Muslims today. Disciples of the seven charter
reciters promulgated slight variations from their masters;
these seven secondary transmitters are known as ra ̄w ̄ıs, and
their traditions of recitation have also survived and found ac-
ceptance in the Muslim community.Thus, for example, in the postscript to the official edi-
tion of the QurDa ̄n printed in Egypt, the editors state that
the basic orthography is that of EUthma ̄n’s copy and that it
reflects the phonetic qualities of the oral transmission by the
ra ̄w ̄ı H:afs: (d. 805), whose master was the reciter (qa ̄riD,
muqriD) EA ̄s:im (d. 744)—one of Ibn Muja ̄hid’s seven. Many9200 TILA ̄WAH