Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: John Boswell, The Royal Treasure: 

Muslim Communities under the Crown of Aragon in the 

Fourteenth Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-

versity Press, 1977); Robert I. Burns, Islam under the 

Crusaders: Colonial Survival in the Thirteenth-Century 

Kingdom of Valencia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-

versity Press, 1973); L. P. Harvey, Islamic Spain, 1250 

to 1500 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); 

Khaled Abou el Fadl, “Islamic Law and Muslim Minor-

ities: The Juristic Discourse on Muslim Minorities 

from the Second/Eighth to the Eleventh/Seventeenth 

Centuries.” Islamic Law and Society 1, no. 3 (Novem-

ber 1994): 141–187.

muezzin

 

(Arabic: 

muadhdhin)

The muezzin is the man who performs the daily 

call to 

prayer

 (

adhan

). His counterpart in a church 

would be a bell ringer. According to Islamic tradi-

tion the first muezzin was b

ilal

 

ibn

  r

abbah

 (d. 

ca. 641), one of the c

ompanions

 

oF

 

the

 p

rophet

known for his beautiful voice. Eventually the 

muezzin became part of the staff employed in a 

mosqUe

. In the early days he would do the call 

from any high point in the mosque so that people 

in the surrounding neighborhoods could hear 

that prayer time had arrived. When the 

minaret

became a standard feature of mosque 

architec

-

tUre

, the muezzin would climb its winding stairs 

to the top to do his job. Muezzins were also hired 

to accompany caravans that traveled to m

ecca

for the 

haJJ

. In modern times they use a public 

address system without having to climb up the 

minaret, and people can now also hear their calls 

to prayer via radio, television, and portable elec-

tronic devices.