Living with the Living Qur’ān
Since I do not have time nor anything in particular to post right now, I decided to keep myself entertained. This is a paper that I wrote for my English Comp class.
My parents had a wish: to have a Hāfidh (alternatively spelled Hāfiz) in the family, one of the preservers of the Holy Book of Qur’ān. And I, being the eldest at seven, was the one chosen to realize it, a choice that was to fundamentally shape the style of my life.
Ever since its revelation started more than fourteen centuries ago, countless number of people, children and adults, both male and female, have engaged in the process of Tahfīdh, or preservation, to preserve the Holy Book of Islam in exactly the same manner in which it was revealed. Making sure that even if all the written copies of the Book are somehow extinct, hundreds and thousands of Huffādh (plural of Hāfidh), or preservers, will be ready to dictate it in its entirety and exactness from their memory.
At roughly 600 pages of Arabic text and 1.6 billion potential readers (every Muslim being a potential reader), Qur’ān can rightly be claimed to be the most published and read book in the world. The content is divided into 114 chapters of different lengths, each of which is called a Sūrah. Every Sūrah is in turn divided into a collection of verses, or Āyahs. Apart from the Sūrah division, to make reading and estimation simpler, the Book has 30 volumes of almost equal lengths, each being called a Juz. That might give an idea of what I was looking at: I was to memorize a book of that volume by heart and in a language that I was completely unfamiliar with – a phenomenal undertaking to me, but just an exciting trip to a seven-year old mind.
The trip started as I was sent to a special school meant for Qur’ānic learning. This school was located in a small building, with separate classrooms for students at different stages of the memorization process. The teacher and pupils, mostly young boys, sat on the floor behind short desks set in a rectangular or circular order, moving back and forth in rhythm as they recited from the rhyming Āyahs of the Holy Qur’ān.
Now, Arabic is a difficult language to pronounce, and the verses of Qur’ān are to be pronounced exactly in the fashion of the native Arabs. Arabic not being my native language, nor being in the list of languages that I knew (then, a short list at one item), the first step was to learn reading fluently and master the art of pronouncing Arabic words. This is traditionally managed by a guide book called the Qā’idah (literally, base), and does not include understanding the language itself. By going through the Qā’idah with my teacher, which in itself took quite a lot of time, I finally could read and pronounce Arabic words in the best way, and could thus be proceeded to the actual task: that of memorizing the actual Book. I can still recall the excitement that it promised. After having spent much time watching others take lessons from the Holy Book, and not being quite able to do so, the desire for it was as real as that of a child who longs to grow up in a flash. What the child does not understand, is the responsibility that essentially follows knowledge and authority.
Memorizing the Book was, needless to say, a tedious job, and at any rate, not a short one either. Due to this demanding nature, the school administration required us to attend classes from morning to night. We used to have lessons to memorize each day, the length of which started off with short passages, but increased as we advanced further. As a typical day would kick off, we would have a test of the lesson from yesterday, a revision of parts we have memorized so far, and finally a reading of the lesson for the next day. There were essentially breaks for prayers, meals, naps and games – which were a relief – but most of our time was reserved for the process of memorization and revision. As we would get back home tired and exhausted, happy to be with our families once again, our minds would still be on getting up early for the next day and preparing for the next lesson. A sense of responsibility started to grow, preparing us, unconsciously perhaps, for a greater one that was to come.
Any account of an educational process is incomplete without a mention of its educators. The very sensitive and arduous nature of the memorization process required our teachers to be quite strict – which of course we failed to realize at that point – and sometimes even to adopt traditional punishment techniques such as requiring a student to stand as he recited. But as a rule, they were nice and respectable people, highly learned themselves in the art of Qur’ānic recitation and memorization.
And so it went on for more than 2 years: lesson, revision, lesson again, and occasional punishments, until I finally was a Hāfidh: I had memorized the Holy Book of Qur’ān completely by heart, making my parents and family proud, but that was not the end of it. For me, Tahfīz has greatly shaped my life and what I am to be. It is now as important a part of me as is my brain. Wherever I go and introduce myself accordingly, I am received with awe. Most of my Muslim fellows hold me in high regards because of it. Though a privilege and an accomplishment it may seem, I have discovered that it in fact is a great responsibility. I am expected to possess more religious knowledge and practice than the people around me. As a Hāfidh, I am to live up to the standards of the Muslim community. I have to be more careful with my actions, because if any of my actions goes against the principles of Islam, my being a Hāfidh is considered a reason enough for me to have refrained from it. And most important of all, I am to repeat what I have memorized over and over again, lest I might lose it – for a person who forgets the Āyahs of the Qur’ān after knowing them, will be resurrected blind on the Day of Judgment. I do not consider it an accomplishment either. Instead, I attribute it all to the Grace of Allāh, my Creator and Sustainer, who made such a seemingly impossible a task, possible for me and many others, and still is making it possible.
This tradition of Tahfīz is one of the factors that have kept the Holy Book of Qur’ān alive and preserved in the exact form as it was four hundred and a thousand years ago. Not a single person in the world can claim otherwise, or he’ll have countless Huffādh and a similar number of matching copies of the Book from all over the world, along with the original manuscripts dating back to as early as a year after the Prophet (May Peace and Blessings of Allāh be upon him) himself, and yet accompanied by a complete history of the preservation process to counter their claim. It is a specialty indeed, a unique phenomenon. For that is what it is meant to be, Qur’ān: a Book to be read over and over again, forever to come, and after it.
My parents had a wish: to have a Hāfidh (alternatively spelled Hāfiz) in the family, one of the preservers of the Holy Book of Qur’ān. And I, being the eldest at seven, was the one chosen to realize it, a choice that was to fundamentally shape the style of my life.
Ever since its revelation started more than fourteen centuries ago, countless number of people, children and adults, both male and female, have engaged in the process of Tahfīdh, or preservation, to preserve the Holy Book of Islam in exactly the same manner in which it was revealed. Making sure that even if all the written copies of the Book are somehow extinct, hundreds and thousands of Huffādh (plural of Hāfidh), or preservers, will be ready to dictate it in its entirety and exactness from their memory.
At roughly 600 pages of Arabic text and 1.6 billion potential readers (every Muslim being a potential reader), Qur’ān can rightly be claimed to be the most published and read book in the world. The content is divided into 114 chapters of different lengths, each of which is called a Sūrah. Every Sūrah is in turn divided into a collection of verses, or Āyahs. Apart from the Sūrah division, to make reading and estimation simpler, the Book has 30 volumes of almost equal lengths, each being called a Juz. That might give an idea of what I was looking at: I was to memorize a book of that volume by heart and in a language that I was completely unfamiliar with – a phenomenal undertaking to me, but just an exciting trip to a seven-year old mind.
The trip started as I was sent to a special school meant for Qur’ānic learning. This school was located in a small building, with separate classrooms for students at different stages of the memorization process. The teacher and pupils, mostly young boys, sat on the floor behind short desks set in a rectangular or circular order, moving back and forth in rhythm as they recited from the rhyming Āyahs of the Holy Qur’ān.
Now, Arabic is a difficult language to pronounce, and the verses of Qur’ān are to be pronounced exactly in the fashion of the native Arabs. Arabic not being my native language, nor being in the list of languages that I knew (then, a short list at one item), the first step was to learn reading fluently and master the art of pronouncing Arabic words. This is traditionally managed by a guide book called the Qā’idah (literally, base), and does not include understanding the language itself. By going through the Qā’idah with my teacher, which in itself took quite a lot of time, I finally could read and pronounce Arabic words in the best way, and could thus be proceeded to the actual task: that of memorizing the actual Book. I can still recall the excitement that it promised. After having spent much time watching others take lessons from the Holy Book, and not being quite able to do so, the desire for it was as real as that of a child who longs to grow up in a flash. What the child does not understand, is the responsibility that essentially follows knowledge and authority.
Memorizing the Book was, needless to say, a tedious job, and at any rate, not a short one either. Due to this demanding nature, the school administration required us to attend classes from morning to night. We used to have lessons to memorize each day, the length of which started off with short passages, but increased as we advanced further. As a typical day would kick off, we would have a test of the lesson from yesterday, a revision of parts we have memorized so far, and finally a reading of the lesson for the next day. There were essentially breaks for prayers, meals, naps and games – which were a relief – but most of our time was reserved for the process of memorization and revision. As we would get back home tired and exhausted, happy to be with our families once again, our minds would still be on getting up early for the next day and preparing for the next lesson. A sense of responsibility started to grow, preparing us, unconsciously perhaps, for a greater one that was to come.
Any account of an educational process is incomplete without a mention of its educators. The very sensitive and arduous nature of the memorization process required our teachers to be quite strict – which of course we failed to realize at that point – and sometimes even to adopt traditional punishment techniques such as requiring a student to stand as he recited. But as a rule, they were nice and respectable people, highly learned themselves in the art of Qur’ānic recitation and memorization.
And so it went on for more than 2 years: lesson, revision, lesson again, and occasional punishments, until I finally was a Hāfidh: I had memorized the Holy Book of Qur’ān completely by heart, making my parents and family proud, but that was not the end of it. For me, Tahfīz has greatly shaped my life and what I am to be. It is now as important a part of me as is my brain. Wherever I go and introduce myself accordingly, I am received with awe. Most of my Muslim fellows hold me in high regards because of it. Though a privilege and an accomplishment it may seem, I have discovered that it in fact is a great responsibility. I am expected to possess more religious knowledge and practice than the people around me. As a Hāfidh, I am to live up to the standards of the Muslim community. I have to be more careful with my actions, because if any of my actions goes against the principles of Islam, my being a Hāfidh is considered a reason enough for me to have refrained from it. And most important of all, I am to repeat what I have memorized over and over again, lest I might lose it – for a person who forgets the Āyahs of the Qur’ān after knowing them, will be resurrected blind on the Day of Judgment. I do not consider it an accomplishment either. Instead, I attribute it all to the Grace of Allāh, my Creator and Sustainer, who made such a seemingly impossible a task, possible for me and many others, and still is making it possible.
This tradition of Tahfīz is one of the factors that have kept the Holy Book of Qur’ān alive and preserved in the exact form as it was four hundred and a thousand years ago. Not a single person in the world can claim otherwise, or he’ll have countless Huffādh and a similar number of matching copies of the Book from all over the world, along with the original manuscripts dating back to as early as a year after the Prophet (May Peace and Blessings of Allāh be upon him) himself, and yet accompanied by a complete history of the preservation process to counter their claim. It is a specialty indeed, a unique phenomenon. For that is what it is meant to be, Qur’ān: a Book to be read over and over again, forever to come, and after it.
posted by MH at 11:11 PM
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