Muezzin

The muezzin calls the adhan, the summons to the five daily prayers, and the office is defined by voice, knowledge of the times, and reliability.

Calling the adhan

The muezzin proclaims the call to prayer from the mosque five times a day at the appointed hours, and the office requires a clear and strong voice, an accurate knowledge of the prayer times, which shift with the sun through the year, and the reliability to sound the call faithfully, since the community orders its worship by it. The words of the adhan are fixed, declaring the greatness of God, the confession of faith, and the summons to prayer and to success, and the beauty and clarity of the calling are prized.

An honoured but unordained role

There is no ordination and no clerical caste in the Sunni tradition, so the muezzin holds an honoured function rather than a sacred order, appointed by the mosque, and the office carries a particular dignity from the tradition that the first muezzin was Bilal, a freed Ethiopian slave and Companion of the Prophet chosen for the strength and beauty of his voice, which sets a precedent that the call belongs to merit rather than to birth. In the modern period the call is often amplified or broadcast, and in the great mosques a skilled muezzin remains a valued figure. The office has no exact parallel in traditions that summon worship by bell rather than by the human voice.

Before the minaret became a standard feature of mosque architecture, the earliest muezzins are said to have called the adhan from the highest rooftop available, and the tower form developed over the following centuries partly to project the call further across a growing city, becoming one of the most recognisable features of Islamic architecture in the process.

Amplification changed the office considerably in the twentieth century: loudspeakers now carry the call across distances no human voice could reach unaided, and in a number of countries, including Turkey and several Gulf states, a single centrally coordinated recording is broadcast from many mosques at once rather than each mosque employing its own muezzin, a shift that has reduced the number of working muezzins even as the call itself is heard more widely than ever. Noise regulations affecting the volume and timing of the amplified call have become a live civic issue in some cities with mixed populations.

Women have served as muezzins in a small number of mosques, including women-led congregations and a few mixed mosques in recent decades, but the practice remains a minority position contested by most schools of Sunni jurisprudence, which restrict the public call to prayer to men.