The Education of Qur’ān Recitation (Qirā’āt) in Turkey

Qur’ān Recitation (qirā’āt) activities constitute a good part of the Qur’ān education history starting with the revealation of the Qur’ān. In Prophet Mu？ammad’s era and after his death, education and teaching activities for spreading the Qur’ān recitations were maintained by muslims. Several institutions were built for this purpose, and many works are written for qirā’ātscience education and methods developed made a big contribution to the spreading of qur’ān recitation science. An Interregnum period for qirā’ātscience has happened at the last period of Ottomans and first years of Republic of Turkey. Qirā’ātScience, under the state supervision and by formal institutions for many years, were sustained in an informal way after the law on unification of education were introduced. With the decrease of teachers, the education of the Qur’ān recitation faced a difficult time and almost nearly ceased. In our country, increasing of the expertness courses and number of men who trained in this places in recent years deserve a separate study, particularly on this subject. Summary There are many scholars who have studied the recitation of the Qur’ān (qirā’āt), and many papers that have been written on this subject analysing it by means of practice. Some institutions are founded with the purpose of teaching qirā’ātand a number of different methods have been developed in the historical process of qirā’āt. It is not clear when the knowledge of qur’ānic recitation first emerged in the region of Anatolia. In the Ottoman Empire, Kha？īb ‘Abdulmu’min Rūmī who was tutee of Ibn al-Cezerī started to accept students for teaching qirā’ātin Bursa. Since then, qirā’ātbecame an official discipline of Islamic sciences. Evidently, the time Turks learned qirā’ātshould be before Ibn al-Cezerī’s arrival to Bursa. The brightest era of the qirā’ātand its institutionalisation was between XI-XIII centuries during the reign of the Ottoman Empire. Not only did training and teaching activities took place as seven and ten recitations, but authors also wrote books as supplementary references by depending on the works of the scholars such as Dānī, Shā？？bī and Ibn al-Cezerī. Thus, the scholars made education practical and started to teach it as part of certain methods. The end of the 13th century was the time when sab‘a(seven) method based on seven recitations was superseded by ‘ashara(ten) method based on ten recitations. That is, the sab‘amethod was replaced by the ‘asharamethod in the country. The education of qirā’ātwhich were taught in expert institutions known as dār al-qurrāuntill the