Written in Wax: Quranic Recitational Phonography.

• Author: Witkam, Jan Just
• Position: Critical essay

From the moment phonography was invented by Thomas A. Edison in 1877, and certainly after the numerous technical perfections of the ensuing years, the phonograph became a much valued instrument, as well as a toy, that quickly found its way around the world.' A box that could record and reproduce sound had been unimaginable. The new machine could be used in manifold ways, for amusement as well as for serious matters. The commercial function that Edison envisioned most was that of a dictaphone. (2) That the wax cylinders could at first not record more than two minutes of sound was a handicap, but technical improvements soon doubled that amount of time. Another initial drawback was the fact that the cylinders could not be copied, but this, too, was solved.

A year later, in 1878, Edison published a number of possible purposes for his invention. Among the ten points that Edison enumerated, two were particularly relevant for scholarly and educational uses: "the preservation of languages by exact reproduction of the manner of pronouncing" (3) and "Educational purposes.--As an elocutionary teacher, or as a primary teacher for children, it will certainly be invaluable. By it difficult passages may be correctly rendered for the pupil but once, after which he has only to apply to his phonograph for instructions. The child may thus learn to spell, to commit to memory, a lesson set for it, etc., etc." (4) Linguists and anthropologists used phonographs until late in the 1930s. One and the same machine able to make a recording and then reproduce it had a great advantage in the field over the technically more complicated sound recording on discs to be played by gramophone, an invention that appeared more or less simultaneously with the phonograph. The manufacture of sound discs was much more complex and demanded a higher technical level than recording on wax cylinders. Once the Edison Home Phonograph, a self-contained instrument to be sold at an affordable price, was developed for the market in 1896, the recording of sound came within the reach of a large public.

An early reference to the phonograph in Muslim lands was given by Ahmad Rasim, an employee of the Turkish Imperial Telegraph Company, who in 1885 published a booklet with the title "The Phonograph, One of the Most Remarkable Inventions of Mankind," apparently translated into Turkish from a European language. (5) It included a portrait of Edison and three images of an early phonograph, but does not attest to its use in a Muslim country. There is no discussion as to the permissibility of phonography.

For Islamic law scholars slightly over a hundred years ago, use of the phonograph was an entirely new subject. They approached this novelty by traditional methods--finding precedents and applying analogy. Their purpose was to categorize the act of using this marvelous invention, this piece of wood that reproduced the human voice, as one of five qualifications (ahkam) of Islamic law ifiqh): obligatory ifard), recommendable (sunna), permitted imubah), reprehensible (makruh), and forbidden (haram). Only when the jurisprudents have classified an act in one of these categories can believers know how to approach such a novelty. Quranic recitation is considered "divine music" (6) and more generally an act of worship. The conditions for recitation according to fiqh are ritual purity--cleanliness of body and mind. Elaborate rules are to be observed by the reciter as well as the listener, for both reciting and listening promise a heavenly reward. (7) The Quran is for Muslims, as its name (lit. recitation) implies, the pronunciation of God's word; secondarily it is a holy book in written or printed form. This aspect of orality makes early discussions by Muslim jurisprudents on Quranic phonography even more relevant. (8) Some attention has been paid recently to the consequences of new technologies in the duplication of the Quranic text, but the legal aspects of this remain largely unresearched. (9)

When the Dutch Islamicist Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936) published an article in 1900 on Muslim legal opinion on the recording of sound in general and of the recitation of the Quran in particular, he was treating an issue that was then very modern. (10) At the time Snouck Hurgronje was based in Batavia (Jakarta), where he held the influential post of official adviser to the Dutch colonial government on Arabian and Islamic affairs. It was his job, among other duties, to monitor new trends in the thinking of Indonesian Muslims, to report about these to the Dutch authorities, and to write official dispatches containing advice. These dispatches, most of which have been published, are still a prime source for the history of Islam in Indonesia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.'' At the time they were conceived, however, they had a practical purpose and a very limited circulation. Occasionally Snouck Hurgronje found the time to expand his research and work out its results in learned articles--his article on the phonograph is a typical spinoff of his official remarks. (12)

Phonography in Islamic circles was never a subject that required Snouck Hurgronje's official advice, but writings and fatwas on aspects of phonography were issued in Indonesia, and reading them was his work. Of the early authors on phonography, two were in fact acquaintances of his--Sajjid Oethman (Sayyid'Uthman) and Abdallah al-Zawawi. The former probably offered the booklet that he published in 1899-1900 on phonography to Snouck Hurgronje; the latter sent him a handwritten copy of his fatwa on the same subject in the course of 1908. That document, which is not widely known, is herewith published and translated.

A favorable circumstance was that Snouck Hurgronje had a genuine interest in all sorts of technical novelties. He brought photographic equipment with him for his stay in Jedda and Mecca in 1884-1885, and after the Egyptian officer Muhammad Sadiq Bey (Sadie Bey) he was the second photographer--together with the Meccan physician Abd al-Ghaffar b. Abd al-Rahman al-Baghdadl (13)--to record images of Islam's holy city and its inhabitants, and the first Westerner to do so. Much later in life he chose to travel to the 17th International Congress of Orientalists in Oxford (August 28-September 1, 1928) by airplane, a choice of transport that again illustrates a certain eagerness for new technologies. But at the beginning of the twentieth century phonography had taken his fancy, not just to write about Muslim reactions to this new phenomenon, but also to embrace, play, and work with it for its own sake at his home in Weltevreden, Batavia. (14)

EARLY ISLAMIC WRITINGS ON SOUND RECORDING

The earliest known document on the use of phonography in an Islamic context dates from 1899. It is a fatwa, a legal opinion, issued by Sayyid'Uthman (1822-1914) in Batavia. (15) Sayyid TJthman was of HadramI origin, like so many Arabs in southeast Asia. He was a leading intellectual in Islamic circles, had many contacts with the colonial authorities, and exerted considerable influence by way of the stream of publications that came from his lithographic press. Some of these are still being reprinted. Inevitably, he was involved in many controversies concerning both Islamic law and the modus vivendi between Indonesian Muslims and the colonial authorities. In his fatwa he divided the matter of the phonograph into three questions, which he answers (after a lengthy introduction with considerations of a more general nature):

1. Is phonography an honest profession? Is reciting the Quran and a singing woman from the same box permitted? Answer: If decency is guaranteed, it is permitted.

2. Are the sounds reproduced indeed the Quran? Is there a reward for the listener? Answer: No reward is gained, because the sound does not come from the mouth of a human being, and the Quranic sound that one hears from the phonograph is not produced by the human organ of speech.

3. If phonographic sound is not considered to be the human voice, may one listen to a phonographic copy of a strange woman's (ajnabiyya) voice? Answer: If the listening arouses lust it is forbidden; if this is not the case, it is permitted. There is an analogy with looking at the shadow of a strange woman, or at her image in a mirror.

   Sayyid'Uthman's fatwa on the phonograph was criticized, whereupon he wrote a more elaborate one to silence his opponents. (16) Although he does not provide their identity, Sayyid 'Uthman's lengthier fatwa is a vigorous rejection of the opinion and conclusions on the same subject of a Singaporean mufti, who was apparently more permissive and liberal than Sayyid 'Uthman. The Singaporean mufti held the following views: to listen to phonographically produced sounds is always permitted; to listen to phonographically produced Quranic recitation brings reward; prostration while listening to the sajda verses produced phonographically is recommended; the engravings in the cylinder have the same legal status as script in a written or printed Quran.

   A few years later, an Egyptian jurisprudent by the name of Muhammad Bakhit al-Muti'i (1856-1935) wrote a pamphlet on the subjects of phonography and insurance, two subjects that are only related by the fact of their modernity. (17) The author was a former member of the Egyptian High Court and would go on to have a distinguished career as Egypt's Grand Mufti. He had already written two treatises, one about the phonograph, the other about insurance, but these had, so he tells us, aroused criticism from several sides, and in the present work he sets out to position himself...