Supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft at Freie Universität Berlin, Seminar for Semitic and Arabic Studies.

Project Lead: Prof. Dr. Angelika Neuwirth, Dr. Ulrike-Rebekka Nieten

Research Fellow: Dr. Stephanie Schewe

Reciters: Priest and Malfono Murat Üzel (Syriac Orthodox Church, Berlin), Imam Aḥmad al-Arabī (al-Azhar University, Cairo), Imam Muˁāḏ as-Saḥābī (Madrasa Ibn al-Qāḍī li l-Qirāˀāt, Rabat, Salé)

Project summary:

1) Music, Grammar and Rhetoric in Syriac-Aramaic Recitation. (Dr. Ulrike-Rebekka Nieten)

2) The Role of Rhetoric in Qurʾān Recitation: Linguistic and Musicological Investigations. (Dr. Stephanie Schewe)

This project, in its two parts, investigated and compared regularities of Syriac and Quranic recitation, because the musical performance practice of holy texts is very similar in both traditions. The realization of the project consisted of the following steps:

The recitations of different reciters were recorded, transcribed and noted. This formed the subject matter. Recitations were studied using philological and musicological methods, so that links between performance practices and descriptions of accents of Syriac grammarians and taǧwīd-rules of Arabic scholars could be established.

Research results for recitation of holy texts in the Syriac rite (Ṭūr ʿAbdīn) and Qurʾān recitation (Kairo, Rabat) show the interrelation of music, grammar, metrics and rhetoric. Holy texts were to be conveyed to a non-reading audience. The presentation was for a listening community. In order to avoid misunderstandings, it was precisely regulated and even ‘enacted’.

In Syriac we find the emergence of notational system developed along grammatical and rhetorical criteria, including indication of verse beginning and verse end. The musically multifaceted execution is even amplified in the modes of performance of the Qurʾān. We were able to gain significant insights into the workings of the Syriac accent system with reference to the Syriac practice of recitation. It became also apparent, that grammatical and rhetorical phenomena had a formative impact on Islamic recitation practice.

The results of the DFG-project are being published in the series Musica Sacra Orientalis, vols. 1 and 2, Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden (print in progress).