The First Call to Prayer

In Madinah the believers prayed in congregation, but there was no signal to gather them. The Companions discussed it: a horn like the Jews, a bell like the Christians, a fire lit on a height? None satisfied the Prophet ﷺ. The matter rested unresolved, until Allah gave the answer through the dream of an ordinary Companion.

Abdullah ibn Zayd (ra) saw in his sleep a man teaching him words to call the people: Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar... ashhadu an la ilaha illallah... hayya alas-salah... He came in the morning and told the Prophet ﷺ, who said: it is a true vision, in sha Allah. Then he gave the honour of voicing it not to the dreamer but to another: stand with Bilal and teach him, for his voice is more beautiful than yours.

And so Bilal ibn Rabah (ra), the freed slave who had been pinned to the burning sand for refusing to renounce the One, climbed to the highest roof near the mosque and lifted the first adhan over Madinah. The two syllables he had gasped under the boulder, Ahad, Ahad, had become a call that summoned a whole city, and would summon the whole earth.

Umar ibn al-Khattab (ra), it is related, came hurrying with the news that he had seen the very same dream, and the Prophet ﷺ told him: to Allah be the praise. From that day the adhan has marked the hours of the Muslim world, five times daily, unchanged: the same words Abdullah ibn Zayd (ra) heard in a dream, in the voice the Prophet ﷺ chose for their beauty, calling hearts from sleep and work and the street to stand before their Lord.