© Penelope Gan – All Rights Reserved – Lal Qila (Red Fort), Delhi, INDIA

The Azan (Arabic: أَذَان‎) which sums up the teachings of Islam:

there is no God but Allah; Muhammad is God’s Messenger; salvation is found through obedience to the Will of God, of which prayer is an important expression

is called out five times a day by the muezzin from the mosque or minarets, to summon Muslims for prayers – Salāt (Arabic: صلاة‎). The pronouncement is loud (usually via loudspeakers attached to minarets) with the intent to make available to everyone an easily intelligible summary of Islamic belief, intended to bring to the mind of every believer and non-believer the substance of Islamic beliefs, or its spiritual ideology.

The Sunnis opine that the Azan was neither written nor said by Prophet Muhammad, but by one of his companions, Umar. It is stated that Umar, a prominent companion of Muhammad had a revelation form God on the call for prayers. The news of this revelation by means of a dream was soon related to Muhammad who adopted the idea of a call to summon muslim for prayers and had  preferred the use of a call as the means rather than the bells or horns that were used by the Christians and Jews respectively.

At the sound of the first Azan, Muslims make haste for prayer – Hayya ‘ala-Salāt. By the second call, iqama, the Muslims are line up and ready for the beginning of the prayers (as shown in the photo above where two employees of Lal Qila abandoned their post hastily at the call of the first Azan to proceed to a clean, quiet and open space in the fort’s grounds).

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