Discover the meaning of the term Al-lḥn (لحن) in Islamic vocabulary.
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Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM
📖 1 min readDisliked in the Quran and the call to prayer, and it is the prolongation where it should not be prolonged. It is disliked to chant or excessively melodize the call to prayer in a way that alters its words. As for beautifying the voice for the call to prayer, it is good as long as it does not constitute a lahn, thus it is stated in the commentary of Majma al-Bahrain by Ibn al-Malik and in al-Sirajiyyah.
Deviating speech from its established rules, either by removing inflection (i'rab) or by graphical alteration (tashif), which is blamed and is the most common usage, or by moving it from explicit expression to allusion and implicature, which is commendable from a rhetorical perspective. Among this is their saying ("And it is him the poet intended by saying: ... see page 449, entry "lahn"): And the best speech is that which contains allusion.