The Great Merits of Reciting the Qur’an with Contemplation: ibn al-Qayyim
The great scholar ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah once wrote:
If people only knew the great value of reciting the Qur’an with reflection, then they would devote themselves to it above anything else. For when one recites with contemplation, when he comes across an ayah which contains something needed to rectify his heart, he would repeat that ayah, perhaps as many as one hundred times or even for the entire night! For reciting a single ayah with contemplation and understanding is better, more beneficial for one’s heart, and more likely to bring about an increase in eemaan and tasting the sweetness of the Qur’an than reciting the entire Qur’an without reflection or understanding.
This used to be the practice of the Salaf, that one of them might repeat a single ayah until the morning came. It has also been authentically attributed to the Prophet that he stood in the night prayer until the morning came repeating a single ayah, which was:
إِن تُعَذبهُمْ فَإِنَّهُم عِبَادك وَإِن تغْفر لَهُم فَإنَّك أَنْت الْعَزِيز الْحَكِيم
If You punish them, then they are Your slaves. And if You forgive them, then You are the Mighty, the Wise. [5:118]
For reciting the Qur’an with contemplation is the very basis of the heart’s rectification.
In this same vein, ibn Mas’ood said, “Do not recite the Qur’an rapidly without pause like the recitation of poetry or while babbling it quickly out of hastiness. (Rather) stop when you come to one of its amazements, and let it move your heart, and do not be bothered if you do not reach the end of the surah.”
Aby Ayyub relayed that Abu Hamzah said, “I said to ibn ‘Abbaas, ‘I am very quick in my reading, I read the entire Qur’an in three days.’ He said to me, ‘For me to read a single surah and to contemplate it and recite it at a slow measured pace is more dear to me than to recite the Qur’an as you do.'”
And there are two types of contemplating the Qur’an. 1) Contemplating its contents in order to understand the meanings which your Lord intended, and 2) contemplating those meanings which invite the reader to reflect and ponder them. The first is contemplating over what the Qur’an shows and indicates, while the second is oriented towards what that person needs. The first is contemplating the ayah itself, while the second is contemplating the effects of the ayah on the person.
Along these lines, Allah has revealed the Qur’an for it to be contemplated, pondered over and acted upon, not for it to be merely recited while the people turn away from its meanings. al-Hasan al-Basri said, “The Qur’an was revealed to be acted upon, but these people treat reciting it as the action it requires.”
[Miftah Dar al-Sa’aadah 1/187]
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