No Other Design © Privacy Policy | Terms of Use

The word nashid is related to the verb anshada which means to 'make something known as raising one's voice' as one would when a lost item has been found. In the case of poetry, the munshid, the one who performs inshad, makes the meanings and feelings of the poetry 'known' by raising their voice to give due and a full performance to the poem.

The word nashid commonly denotes in our time halal poetry (on the topic of Allah, his messenger (alayhi s-Salam), or good character sung without instruments. They are commonly memorised in the Arabic phrase, 'Suni'a bi sihrika', whose consonants are the Arabic saad for the maqam Saba, nun for the nahawand (from ancient Persia), 'ayn for 'Ajam meaning foreign which is the closest to a Western major scale, ba' for heavy used maqam Bayat, sin for Sika which is the exultant maqam of Tala'a l-Bard, ha' for Hijaz which is the exotic and typically Middle-Eastern maqam of the adhan of the Haramayn (the two sacred sanctuaries), ra' for another heavily worked maqam; Rasd, and finally kaf for Kurdi, the Maqam contributed by the Kurds of the Middle-East.

A well-memorised nashid for which one knows the maqam can be used to determine the maqam of an unknown nashid as it can be used as a point of departure for reciting Qur'an in that maqam.

About Inshad