СТАТЬИ

This article is dedicated to the terms for personal prayer (duʻāʼ and other derivative forms) in the Qurʼān. Occurrence of these terms in the text is analyzed quantitatively with regard to the chronology of the Qurʼānic text. They appear mainly in the sūras of the II and III Meccan periods, and more rarely in the Medinan period, contrary to the term for communal prayer ṣalāt which is frequent in the Medinan sūras. The study shows that they are used in a close number of interrelated contexts. These contexts could be described as follows: people’s ingratitude towards the Almighty God and their inclination towards pagan deities; their appeal to God in the time of danger; Allāh’s mercy to the righteous calling Him, including His response to them and helping a righteous man, like Zakarīyā and Ibrāhīm, to have a child. Emotional aspect of these fragments was analyzed as well. The Qurʼānic fragments, containing terms for the personal prayer, are emotionally intense and their modality varies from positive to negative, often containing both of these contrast evaluations. These traits and the variety of related topics and their emotional modality could be explained by diverse circumstances of Muḥammad’s prophetic mission, as his social role evolved from an outcast preacher to a head of the theocratic state. The variety of topics and their emotional modality could be a consequence of the different character of audiences during the different stages of monotheistic preach delivered by Prophet Muhammad.

Скачать JATS

INTRODUCTION
Prayer is one of the main practices in the religious systems of the world. Prayer can be personal or collective; it could be performed spoken aloud or silently. The text of a prayer can be an improvisation or a rigidly established canonic pattern, besides that it can also occupy a transitional position, being built more or less arbitrarily from established and generally accepted formulas. Typologically, there is a wide variety of prayers and here I refer to both the circumstances of their reproduction and their text structure. The fact that the prayer presupposses a text or an addressee makes it sui generis a communicative act. Therefore, “A common characteristic of prayer is its narrative quality – its potential as a sense-making discursive act” [Baquedano-López 1998, p. 198]. However, the prayer does not necessarily implies addressing to a deity with a request – important is the contact itself, the close personal and emotional connection with supreme forces: “the meaning of prayer as a religious act consists … in transcending” [Pylaev 2008, p. 55]. According to W. James, one of the establishers of the phenomenology of religion, “the prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion” [James 2002, p. 358]. Taking into account/ in light of the aforementioned, one can say that the prayer is an important factor in a person’s spiritual life and one of the strongest emotional experiences, especially for those who share the same traditional worldviews.
This paper contributes to the analysis of narrative structures, being devoted to the emotional side of passages from the Qurʼān, where the prayer is described. Moreover, the research focus also constitutes the personal prayer as a call to the God (or pagan deities). The subject of the study represents the contexts of the Qurʼānic passages where the terms ṣalāt and duʻāʼ (with derivative forms) are used and could be correlated with the concept of ‘prayer’. The relevance of the paper consists not only in the emotional plan of the corresponding Qurʼānic narratives, but also in their correlation with specific periods within Muḥammad’s prophetic mission, since the style and tone of the Qurʼānic message largely changes, depending on the circumstances of its revelation. At the same time, studying the meaning and the context evolution of the landmark words and concepts of the Qurʼān usage in time, could benefit in tracing the formation and development of the basic ideas and concepts of Islam in the first Muslim community.
OVERVIEW OF PREVIOUS RESEARCHES AND METHODOLOGY
In the past years researchers have already studied the relation between the change in the emotional ‘coloring’ of Qurʼānic text in accordance with the chronology of its revelation. So, Th. Nöldeke devoted a significant part of his book to the psychological aspects of Muḥammadʼs revelations. He also connected the changes in the style of sūras in depending the stage of the prophet’s mission, and, consequently, with the specific circumstances of their revelation [Nöldeke et al. 2013]. In addition, the stylistic peculiarities of the Qurʼānic text in relation to its chronology were studied by W. Muir, H. Grimme and R. Bell; a summary table of their chronological classification of sūras and verses of the Qurʼān can be found in R. Bell’s generalizing work, later revised and supplemented by M. Watt [Watt 1970, p. 205-213]. As for the Russian scholars, E.A. Rezvan studies the changes of style and emotional overtones of the Qurʼān in connection with the change of social roles played by Muhammad [Rezvan 2001].
Ideas concerning relationships between a man and higher forces in pre-Islamic Arabia were extensively discussed by T. Izutsu in his monography [Izutsu 2002]. A study on the intertextual links between the Qurʼān and biblical liturgical texts, namely psalms, was also disclosed [Neuwirth 2010]. However, the prayer, its description and conceptualization in the text of the Qurʼān, as well as the relationship and intersections between various terms with the meaning of ‘prayer’ have to be further studied [Böwering 2004, p. 228]. Some issues associated with the emotive analysis of the Qurʼānic text were already studied in previous works [Bauer 2017; Bernikova, Redkin 2018]. Nevertheless, The term ‘(personal) prayer’ duʻāʼ and its derivatives are used in Qurʼānic text both with positive and negative emotional connotations [Böwering 2004, p. 229] and this fact leaves a wide field for the study of its occurrence and usage by applying the methods of contextual and emotive analysis.
Such a study can be accomplished predominantly by using computer methods and modern data technologies which process the Arabic text and analyse the quantitative data. Comparing the quantitative indicators of individual verses and sūras helps one to accurately periodize the text of the Qurʼān, and also to identify patterns of Qurʼānic text ‘construction’ related to the chronology of its revelation [Schmid 2010]. The author of the article used the Qurʼān Corpus [The Quranic Arabic Corpus] as a main source of the quantitative data, unless indicated in the corresponding reference. A part of the calculations was carried out jointly with N.A. Kizhaeva on the text of the Qurʼān using a Python script using the CAMel Tools library.
TERMS FOR THE CONCEPT OF ‘PRAYER’ IN THE QURʼĀN
As already mentioned, according to the Islamic ritual and creed there are two types of religious practices that we could describe using the term ‘prayer’,– ṣalāt and duʻāʼ. The first of these two is ṣalāt, a ritual prayer practice performed five times a day. The Islamic dogma says that performing this ritual prayer, is a duty for Muslims. Its rites and order are strictly prescribed and go back to the establishments erected by the Prophet Muhammad himself. The term ṣalāt itself is derived from the Aramaic word for ‘prayer’ and was adopted by the Arabs through Syriac. This word entered the Arabic language even before the rise of Islam and was recorded even in the pre-Islamic poetry. [Jeffery 2007, p. 198-199] The first listeners of the Qurʼān were undoubtedly aware of this word, since it was widely and regularly used in the Revelation without any substantial explanations. At the same time, the Qurʼān gives comments on how to properly perform ritual prayer, and also describes the details of its implementation and the preliminary condition for its performance. This fact creates the impression that the audience was familiar with the concept of ritual prayer and did not need any additional clarification of its nature and basic essence.
The term ṣalāt occurs 78 times in the Qurʼān as a singular form (65 times with the definite article al-, twice in a genitive construction, and 11 times with a pronoun affixed) and only five times in the plural [Böwering 2004, p. 217]. The usage frequency of the word ṣalāt in the Qurʼānic text is extremely uneven. This word does not occur in the earliest sūras of the first Meccan period (‘poetic’), and its appearance as an established Islamic term can be attributed to the period between 620 and 624 years. At the same time, half of all occurrences of the term in the Qurʼānic text belong to the Medinan period, i.e. contained in approximately 20% of the text [Monnot 1995, p. 925]. This is not surprising, as the crystallization of the basic institutions of Islamic dogma and ritual took place during the Medinan period of Muḥammad’s preaching.
However, there is another type of prayer in Islamic ritual practice. It is a kind of personal, voluntary appeal to the God. Unlike strictly regulated ritual prayer, performed five times a day with the strictly established Arabic formulas, this appeal or invocation could be made at any time, in any language. It usually contain some kind of request to the Almighty or an expression of gratitude to Him. To designate this prayer, Muslims use the term duʻāʼ, derived from the root d-ʻ-w with the general meaning ‘to call’, ‘to appeal’. Words derived from the root d-ʻ-w occur 212 times in the Qurʼān, including 170 times in the verbal form daʻā ‘to call’, used in a wide variety of contexts. These can be the calls of a person to the one God or pagan deities, the God’s appeal to human beings, and the calls of people addressed to each other. Concerning our study, we are mainly interested in the contexts where the call comes from people, and its addressee is a higher force or a supernatural being. Since the paper is focused on studying the conceptualization of personal type of prayer in Qurʼānic text, here we will consider only nominal forms derived from this verb and carrying the meaning ‘appeal to the God / pagan deities’. Further in the paper the term ‘(personal) prayer’ will be used in this meaning. The form duʻāʼ occurs 22 times in the text of the Qurʼān in total, and with the above-mentioned meaning – 11 times, the form daʻwā - 6 and 4 times, and the form daʻwat – 4 and 3 times, respectively (see Table 1).

Word form	Occurrence in the text	With meaning ‘prayer’
duʻāʼ	22	11
daʻwā	4	3
daʻwat	6	4

Table 1. Occurrence of lexemes with the meaning ‘(personal) prayer’ in the text of the Qurʼān.
It is interesting to note the uneven distribution of these three lexemes in the text of the Qurʼān from the perspective of the text revelation chronology. For the latter, Th. Nöldeke’s classification was used [Watt, Bell 1970, p. 205-213], and the presence of the Medinan verses in the Meccan sūras was also taken into account (and vice versa). Thus, the form duʻāʼ is used mainly in Medinan (3:38; 14:39; 14:40¹) and Meccan sūras of the II period, characterized by the wide using of the God’s epithet Raḥmān (17:11; 19:4; 19:48; 25:77; 41:49; 41:51; 46:51). Only once this lexeme occurs in the sūra of the III period (‘prophetic’) (13:14). The form daʻwā is used three times in the sūras of II Meccan period (10:10 (twice); 21:15), and appears once in the sūra al-Aʻrāf, one of the ‘prophetic’ sūras of the III Meccan period (7:5). The word daʻwat occurs once in the Madinan sūra al-Baqara (2:186), once again in the Medinian and twice in the ‘prophetic’ sūras of the III Meccan period (10:89; 13:14). None of the forms listed above is found in this meaning in the earliest sūras of the I Meccan period (‘poetic’). Data on the frequency’s use of lexemes depending on the chronology are summarized in Table 2.

Word form	Chronological period of the revelation
	I Meccan	II Meccan	III Meccan	Medinan
duʻāʼ	0	7	1	3
daʻwā	0	3	1	0
daʻwat	0	0	2	1

Table 2. Frequency of distribution of lexemes with the meaning ‘(personal) prayer’ in the Qurʼānic text by chronological periods.
THEMATIC CONTEXTS OF THE TERM ‘(PERSONAL) PRAYER’ IN THE TEXT OF THE QURʼĀN
All three of these forms are used with the meaning of ‘call to the God / deities’. The semantic contexts in which the term ‘(personal) prayer’ is used, generates a number of recurring motives that can often be associated to repeating formulas.
a) Chronologically, the first motive, of ‘(personal) prayer’ used in the Qurʼānic text is the plot of people’s impatience and ingratitude. When they get into trouble, they turn to the God with a prayer asking for help, but despair while not seeing an immediate result. Then people begin to grumble against the God and fall into disbelief: “Man wearies not of praying for good (lā yasʼamu l-insānu min duʻāʼi l-h̠ayri); but when evil visits him, then he is cast down and desperate.. … And when We bless man, he turns away and withdraws aside; but when evil visits him, he is full of endless prayers (fa-d̠ū duʻāʼin ʻarīḍin)” (41:49, 51)². It is no coincidence that this fragment is found in the sūra 41 Fuṣṣilat, referring to the II Meccan period. The main ideas of the sūra are a monotheistic sermon, a call for gratitude towards the God and a sharp criticism against those who do not recognize the greatness of the God and are proud of themselves - the peoples of ʻAd and T̠amūd. Similar appeals can be found in other fragments, also related to the II Meccan period. People are impatient and want to receive from above things which are both good and bad, but dear to their hearts: “Man prays for evil, as he prays for good (duʻāʼuhu bi-l-h̠ayri); man is ever hasty.” (17:11). In an attempt to achieve what they want, people invoke other deities besides Allāh, and then their prayer is in vain: “And who is further astray than he who calls, apart from God, upon such a one as shall not answer him till the Day of Resurrection? Such as are heedless of their calling (wa-hum ʻan duʻāʼuhim ġāfilūn)” (46:5).

b) The motive of the viciousness of a person who turns to the God only in trouble closely echoes the idea of punishing sinners whose prayer will not be heard. This story is found in sūras of the II Meccan (25:77) and the III Meccan periods (7:5; 21:15). In these fragments the main idea is that the God will punish those who declared His words a lie, regardless of their prayers (25:77). At the same time, the idea of the inevitability of divine punishment, despite prayer, is clearly expressed at the beginning of the sūra al-Aʻrāf, which describes divine anger towards the unrighteous inhabitants of various settlements: “How many a city We have destroyed! Our might came upon it at night, or while they took their ease in the noontide, and they but cried (wa-mā kāna daʻwāhum), when Our might came upon there, ‘We were evildoers’.” (7:4-5). The same motive sounds in the sūra al-Anbiyāʼ: “They said, ‘Alas for us! We have been evildoers’. So they ceased not to cry (fa-mā zālat tilka daʻwāhum), until We made them stubble, silent and still” (21:14-15).
c) Another motive is somewhat ‘diffused’ in its structure and could be described as follows: Allāh answers the prayers of the righteous, while the sinners’ call to other deities besides the Almighty God remain unanswered. Worth mentioning that all the cases where the term daʻwat is used with the meaning of ‘(personal) prayer’ refer to this motive. It makes sense to give all cases of the use of this term. It appears in the story of Mūsā in the sūra Baqara: “And when My servants question thee concerning Me - I am near to answer the call of the caller (daʻwata d-dāʻī), when he calls to Me; so let them respond to Me, and let them believe in Me; haply so they will go aright” (2:186). The same word is used in describing the story of Mūsā, where the latter is assured that God heard the prayers addressed from him and his brother Hārūn: “He said, ‘Your prayer (daʻwatukumā) is answered; so go you straight, and follow not the way of those that know not’.” (10:89). Special mention deserves the parallel use of the terms daʻwat and duʻāʼ in the same Qurʼānic verse, which contrasts the prayer addressed to Allah Almighty and the prayer of the polytheists: “To Him is the call (daʻwat) of truth; and those upon whom they call, apart from Him, answer them nothing, but it is as a man who stretches out his hands to water that it may reach his mouth, and it reaches it not. The prayer (duʻāʼ) of the unbelievers goes only astray” (13:14).
This motive is close to the motive of the righteous people praying in paradise, not so much asking for something from the God but praising Him: “Their cry (daʻwāhum) therein, ‘Glory to Thee, O God,’ their greeting, ‘Peace,’ and their cry (daʻwāhum) ends, ‘Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being’ ” (10:10). It is noteworthy that the phrase by which “their cry ends” textually coincides with the beginning of the first sūra al-Fātiḥa (al-ḥamdu li-l-lāhi rabbi l-ʻālamīna). This sūra is widely recited by Muslims during a ritual prayer performed on various occasions, and as an invocation to the God with personal prayer.
d) The last, and rather specific motive with the term ‘(personal) prayer’ in its description is used is the appeal of famous prophets and righteous people of the past with a request to give them offspring. This motive can be classified as a separate plot, since the fragments of the Qurʼānic continuing it represent a refrain in with the following thought is repeated: the God ‘hearest prayer’, He answers the call of the righteous addressed to Him. Examples are the stories of Zakarīyā: “Then Zachariah prayed to his Lord saying, ‘Lord, give me of Thy goodness a goodly offspring. Yea, Thou hearest prayer (samīʻu d-duʻāʼ)’ ” (3:38); and Ibrāhīm: “Praise be to God, who has given me, though I am old, Ishmael and Isaac; surely my Lord hears the petition. My Lord, make me a performer of the prayer, and of my seed. Our Lord, and receive my petition (duʻāʼ)” (14:39-40). It is not a coincidence that the same plot and the same characters, Zakarīyā and Ibrāhīm, appears in ṣūra Maryam. Furthermore, there is a vivid resemblance between the story of Maryam and the miraculous birth of ʻĪsā (19:4), on the one hand, and the birth of Isḥāq and Yaʻqūb from the aged Ibrāhīm and his wife (19:48), on the other. In the latter case, besides the divine mercy towards the righteous, there is also criticism of polytheism: “Now I will go apart from you and that you call upon, apart from God; I will call upon my Lord, and haply I shall not be, in calling upon my Lord (bi-duʻāʼi rabbī), unprosperous. So, when he went apart from them and that they were serving, apart from God, We gave him Isaac and Jacob, and each We made a Prophet” (19:48-49).
In the light of the aforementioned, it is obvious that the terms for personal prayer are used in the Qurʼān in those contexts which describe the relationship between man and the God or pagan deities. At the same time, the terms duʻāʼ, daʻwā, daʻwat are used both in a negative (divine punishment, calls to pagan deities, human ingratitude) and in a positive way (the prayer of the righteous and the God’s answer to it). These terms appear in the Qurʼān with their religious meaning only in context of II Meccan period, and after that they were widely used up to the chronologically latest passages of the Qurʼān. The Motives in which the terms denoting personal prayer are used, along with data on the chronology of the revelation of the corresponding fragments, are presented in Table 3.

Verse	Form	Period	Motive	Emotion
duʻāʼ
(3:38)	l-duʻāʼi	Med.	d	+
(13:14)	duʻāʼu	III Mec.	c
(14:39)	l-duʻāʼi	Med.	d	+
(14:40)	duʻāʼi	Med.	d	+
(17:11)	duʻāʼahu	II Mec.	а
(19:4)	biduʻāʼika	II Mec.	d	0
(19:48)	biduʻāʼi	II Mec.	d	0
(25:77)	duʻāʼuku	II Mec.	b
(41:49)	duʻāʼi	II Mec.	a
(41:51)	duʻāʼin	II Mec.	a
(46:5)	duʻāiʼhim	II Mec.	a
daʻwā
(7:5)	daʻwāhum	III Mec.	b
(10:10)	daʻwāhum	II Mec.	c	+
(10:10)	daʻwāhum	II Mec.	c	+
(21:15)	daʻwāhum	II Mec.	b
daʻwat
(2:186)	daʻwata	Med.	c	+
(10:89)	daʻwatukumā	III Mec.	c	0
(13:14)	daʻwatu	III Mec.	c

Table 3. Motives of plots, periods of revelation and emotional coloring of fragments in which terms with the meaning ‘(personal) prayer’ are used.
MAN’S APPEAL TO THE GOD: ANALYSIS OF THE EMOTIONAL COMPONENT
As demonstrated by T. Izutsu, personal prayer in the Qurʼānic worldview is a part of a complex communication system between a man and the God [Izutsu 2002]. In this worldview, the God sends down (nazala) the Revelation (waḥy) to the prophets directly or through the mediation of angels. But this linguistic relationship between the God and a man is not one-sided. In other words, instead of always remaining passive, a person, for his part, sometimes takes the initiative of establishing dialogue with the God (or deities), addressing Him through linguistic signs. As a result, a phenomenon arises that structurally corresponds to Revelation, but it is ‘directed’ in the opposite direction, since it is a direct verbal communication in an ‘upward’ direction, from a man to the God. This is the prayer or invocation (duʻāʼ). [Izutsu 2002, p. 208-209]. The concept of duʻāʼ could be found in a very early layer of the Qurʼānic prayer vocabulary, which is confirmed by the use of this term both in relation to the Almighty God and to various pre-Islamic deities [Böwering 2004, p. 228]. A person resorts to higher forces in a situation that goes beyond the ordinary, in moments of imminent danger, in the face of death, i.e. in those situations that adherents of existential philosophy would call ‘limit situation’ [Izutsu 2002, p. 209-210]. This explains the high degree of emotional intensity of those fragments in which Arabic terms derived from the root d-ʻ-w are used with the meaning of ‘(personal) prayer’. Let us consider these fragments and the contexts of their appearance in the Qurʼānic narrative more carefully.
It is important to note (this is also true for the considerations above), that the extraction of motives and evaluation of emotional component in a passage is not a trivial task, since the same passage could be part of a larger fragment. So, for example, in the verse (10:89), on the one hand, we observe a positive connotation - the God answers the prayers of Mūsā and Hārūn. On the other hand, this motive is included into a wider context that has a negative emotional connotation. It is the story of divine wrath that caused the punishment of Firʻawn and the drowning of his troops. Moreover, this story is part of a larger story of the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt, i.e. a story about the good that the God had done for them by Mūsā and Hārūn. It is important to remember that “the constant repetition of phrases and, often, plots is a fundamentally important feature of the Qurʼān. It consists of many "parallel places" that echo other places of the Koran that are similar in plot or expression. This is how several dimensions of the Qurʼānic text are created” [Piotrovsky 1991, p. 23]. This makes it "polyphonic", multidimensional, which creates difficulties for isolating individual motives and emotional states.
Considering this circumstance, it seems appropriate to take into account exclusively the immediate context, i.e. only emotional tonality of the verse in which the word with the meaning ‘(personal) prayer’ appears. the modality of interaction between the God and people was chosen As a criterion for evaluating the degree of emotional tonality,. Verses that refers to divine mercy and calling to God with a request for something good were attested as positive (+), and those talking about punishments, human ingratitude, the appeal to other deities besides Allāh were marked as negative (). As a neutral (0) were considered verses which simply communicate some information without a clearly distinguishable moral or emotional assessment, or (much more often) contrasted both the negative and positive ways of the relationship between the God and man. Information about the emotional tonality of verses that use terms with the meaning ‘(personal) prayer’ is also given in Table 3.
It is interesting to note that fragments carrying the most negative emotional tonality were found in the earliest of the fragments we present here - almost mainly in the sūras sent down during II Meccan period (17:11; 25:77; 41:49, 51; 46:5; 21:15). They contain reproaches of ingratitude to people who are ready to pray only when they are in trouble and stories about divine punishment. The only exception is the verse (7:5) which constitutes the very beginning of the sūra al-Aʻrāf of the III Meccan period.
The most positive contexts, namely the stories of a miraculous birth as a consequence of a righteous man or a prophet’ prayer, can be found in the sūras from the later stages of the Qurʼānic text formation of III Meccan (19:4, 48) and Medinan (3 :38; 14:39; 14:40) periods. At the same time, in the fragments of the III Meccan period describing divine intervention in the affairs of Zakarīyā and Ibrāhīm in the sūra Maryam, the righteous men turned to the God paying special attention to their plight and miserable conditions. Zakarīyā, asking the Almighty for offspring, complains about his bodily weakness and old age (19:4). Ibrāhīm, informing his father of his intention to ask the God for offspring, delivers a whole speech condemning the polytheists (19:48). Late Meccan and Medinan sūras also include fragments that describe the God as having heard the prayer and answering it, in contrast to pagan deities, whose calling is meaningless (2:186 (twice); 10:89; 13:14) . It is noteworthy that the word daʻwat is used exclusively in this context as a religious term.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The above analysis allows us to draw a number of conclusions about the use and role of terms that carry the meaning of ‘(personal) prayer’ in the Qurʼānic text. First, in contrast to the word ṣalāt, denoting ritual prayer, they are most often found mainly in sūras of II and III Meccan periods, and not in Medinan sūras. This could be explained by the fact that the Medinan sūras are largely devoted to explaining and establishing the ritual component of Islam, the legal institutions and the political situation of the young religious community. Indeed, “the sermons of Muḥammad, especially delivered in Medina, had a special form of organization. In particular, they included not only the revelation itself, but also its explanation” [Rezvan 2001, p. 113]. As for the Meccan sūras, addressed to an audience skeptical of the Prophet, they were concentrated mainly on moral and ethical preaching and calls for strict observance of monotheism, criticism of addressing anyone other than the Almighty. In addition, the emotional component is especially strong in the Meccan sūras for they were aimed to convert a person to a new religion. Thus, forcing a listener to shudder at stories about the manifestation of divine anger and empathize with the prophets and righteous men of the past, these fragments of the sūras called to invoke the One God and hope for his grace, rejecting the pagan deities.
The same considerations could explain another observation: the tone of the verses softens with the chronology of their fixation. While the earlier fragments contain the most emotionally negative contexts for the use of the term ‘(personal) prayer’, the later verses carry a more positive message. After all, the Meccan sūras were send down primarily for a skeptical audience, which needed to give examples of the consequences of human pride and disobedience. And in the Medinan period, the sermon was directed to people who had already believed, the companions and assistants of the prophet, who had to be encouraged and supported during the formative period of the community consolidation and its struggle with the hostile tribes of Yat̠rib and the Meccan polytheists. It is also interesting to note the absence of nominal religious terms with the meaning ‘(personal) prayer’ in the earliest fragments of the Qurʼānic text – the Meccan suras of the I (‘poetic’) period. This is also true for the term ṣalāt, which means ‘ritual prayer’. The probable reason for this, on the one hand, is that the terminological apparatus of the emerging religion was not fully formed at that time. On the other hand, the Meccan sūras, which describe the Day of Judgment and the impending catastrophe of a planetary scale, leave little room for dialogue between the God and a man – the latter appears in them mainly as a silent witness of the grandiose apocalyptical events.
Summing up, we can say that the emotional coloring of the Qurʼānic fragments describing personal prayer directly depends on the circumstances of their revelation, as well as the characteristics of the audience and the role played by the prophet. The tone of the verses on prayer softens from the Meccan to the Medinan period. At the same time, the narratives of prayer appear to be the most significant for the Meccan sūras of the II and III periods, which contain stories about the relationship between God and man in a historical context.