The Regional Recitations of al-Jazūlī’s Dalāʾil al-Ḫayrāt as Reflected in Its Manuscript Tradition

Abstract

Muḥammad al-Jazūlī’s Dalāʾil al-Ḫayrāt is one of the most popular and widespread Islamic prayer books in the Sunni Islamic world; consequently, most library collections around the world have many copies of this manuscript. Despite its prolific written form, it is its recitation that should probably be considered the most prominent expression of the text. This paper undertakes a careful analysis of the vocalization and orthoepic signs added to three vocalized copies of 18th-century Dalāʾil al-Ḫayrāt manuscripts from Mali, the Maghreb, and Turkey. It reveals that they each have distinct recitation styles with their own phonological and morphological features, distinct from the rules applied in Classical Arabic prose text. Moreover, it is shown that these recitation styles clearly draw upon the rules of local Quranic reading traditions, while not entirely assimilating to them, thus giving a distinct local orthoepic flavour to the manner in which this text was recited.