Claim/Question: "The adhān appears nowhere in the Qur'an. The wording chanted from the minaret, its sequence, its melody — none of it is in the book. So the call to prayer is a later invention. If you say 'the Qur'an is sufficient', you have to set the adhān aside too."
The objection deserves a serious answer, because it contains a correct observation: searching the Qur'an for the wording of today's adhān is futile. Yet the objection, though phrased as one sentence, stacks two separate claims on top of each other: "there is no call to prayer in the Qur'an" and "the wording of today's adhān is not in the Qur'an." These are not the same claim, and the text does not answer them the same way.
What does the Qur'an say?
The Qur'an registers a call to prayer in two independent places. The first is in the Friday context:
يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓا۟ إِذَا نُودِىَ لِلصَّلَوٰةِ مِن يَوْمِ ٱلْجُمُعَةِ فَٱسْعَوْا۟ إِلَىٰ ذِكْرِ ٱللَّهِ
"O you who have believed, when [the adhān] is called for the prayer on the day of Jumuʿah [Friday], then proceed to the remembrance of Allāh and leave trade." (62:9)
The verb is nūdiya — a passive form: "when the call is made". Who calls, by what means, and with which words is left unsaid. What is said is only that the call happens and that the addressee must hurry to it. The verse does not institute the call; it presupposes it as something already known.
The second place concerns how the call is received from outside:
وَإِذَا نَادَيْتُمْ إِلَى ٱلصَّلَوٰةِ ٱتَّخَذُوهَا هُزُوًا وَلَعِبًا
"And when you call to prayer, they take it in ridicule and amusement." (5:58)
Here the verb is active and second person plural: nādaytum — "when you call". This shows the call is something the believers do, and that it is audible, public and regular enough to be mocked. A silent, inward reminder would give ridicule nothing to fasten on.
Root note (counted in the database). Both verbs share one root: n-d-y (nidāʾ: to call out). The root occurs in 53 words in the Qur'an, most of them unrelated to prayer — the people of the Garden calling to the people of the Fire (7:44), Zechariah's hidden supplication (19:3), Jonah calling out from the depths (21:87). The Qur'an, in other words, describes the call to prayer with an ordinary verb of calling, not with a technical term of its own.
The word we today pronounce "adhān" comes from a different root: ʾ-dh-n (to permit; to announce). This root occurs in 102 words, but 39 of them mean "permission" (idhn), 23 "he permitted" (adhina), and 18 "ear" (udhun). The noun adhān in the sense of "announcement" appears exactly once, and its subject is not prayer but pilgrimage:
وَأَذَٰنٌ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِۦٓ إِلَى ٱلنَّاسِ يَوْمَ ٱلْحَجِّ ٱلْأَكْبَرِ
"And [it is] an announcement from Allāh and His Messenger to the people on the day of the greater pilgrimage that Allāh is disassociated from the disbelievers, and [so is] His Messenger." (9:3)
The verb adhdhana ("to announce, to proclaim") occurs in three places (7:44, 12:70, 22:27) and the agent noun muʾadhdhin in two (7:44, 12:70). Not one of these five is a call to prayer. One is the proclamation of the pilgrimage:
وَأَذِّن فِى ٱلنَّاسِ بِٱلْحَجِّ
"And proclaim to the people the ḥajj [pilgrimage]; they will come to you on foot and on every lean camel." (22:27)
One is a voice announcing between two assemblies in the hereafter:
فَأَذَّنَ مُؤَذِّنٌۢ بَيْنَهُمْ أَن لَّعْنَةُ ٱللَّهِ عَلَى ٱلظَّـٰلِمِينَ
"Then an announcer will announce among them, 'The curse of Allāh shall be upon the wrongdoers'" (7:44)
The third is a herald shouting after a caravan in the story of Joseph (12:70). So the word "muezzin" does occur in the Qur'an — but nowhere in the Qur'an does it denote the person who calls to prayer.
Why a call is needed at all follows from prayer being time-bound:
إِنَّ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ كَانَتْ عَلَى ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ كِتَـٰبًا مَّوْقُوتًا
"Indeed, prayer has been decreed upon the believers a decree of specified times." (4:103)
And when the gathering ends, ordinary life resumes; the call marks an interval, not a rupture:
فَإِذَا قُضِيَتِ ٱلصَّلَوٰةُ فَٱنتَشِرُوا۟ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ
"And when the prayer has been concluded, disperse within the land and seek from the bounty of Allāh." (62:10)
What do we learn?
(interpretation) The first claim — "there is no call to prayer in the Qur'an" — does not survive contact with the text. 62:9 and 5:58 record the call as a fact, without arguing for it. 62:9 even attaches a ruling to it: when the call is heard, trade is to be left. No ruling is attached to a practice that does not exist. Read together with 4:103, the picture is a time-bound act of worship plus an audible, public announcement of that time.
(interpretation) The second claim — "the wording of today's adhān is not in the Qur'an" — is correct, and this article does not try to refute it. The Qur'an does not state what the call should say, how many lines it has, in what order, who pronounces it, from where, or with which melody. All of that lies outside the text. What lies inside is the call's function: announcing the time and gathering the community. Wording and form are later solutions to that function.
(interpretation) The third point is lexical, and most of the confusion lives here. The Qur'an speaks of the call to prayer with the root n-d-y; it never uses the noun adhān for prayer. "Adhān" in its current sense is therefore not a Qur'anic term but a name that settled later. That does not make the name wrong — but citing 9:3 to prove "the word adhān is in the Qur'an" is misleading: the adhān there is a public declaration made on a pilgrimage day, not a summons to prayer.
(interpretation) Fourth, 5:58 shows the call was audible from the very beginning. Mockery attaches only to what is heard. This detail makes it hard to read the early call as a quiet internal reminder that only later became vocal: the scene of ridicule could not be constructed unless the call reached outsiders' ears.
Different readings
(interpretation) Linguistic reading: the passive nūdiya deliberately leaves the agent open. On this reading the vagueness is not a gap but a latitude: who calls and how is left to the community. The text fixes what it wanted fixed — the time, the gathering, the suspension of trade — and leaves the rest open.
(interpretation) Traditional reading: the Qur'an gives the frame, the prophetic period fills in the practice. On this reading no one should expect the wording of the adhān in the Qur'an, since the Qur'an does not give the number of cycles in a prayer either. The adhān is the institutionalised form of the call that 62:9 presupposes; it does not contradict the text, it occupies the space the text left empty.
(interpretation) Qur'an-sufficiency reading: the obligation is the call itself, not a particular wording. Any means a community chooses to announce the time satisfies 62:9. The strength of this reading is its fidelity to the text; its weakness is practical — without a shared wording the "call" ceases to be socially recognisable, and the public visibility that 5:58 presupposes disappears.
(interpretation) Historical-academic reading: the scene of ridicule in 5:58 indicates that the call existed early and was distinct enough to draw the attention of neighbouring religious communities. This reading accepts that the form of the call settled over time and treats that as ordinary institutionalisation rather than corruption. It also notes that the term adhān acquired its "call to prayer" sense after the Qur'anic period.
Honest limits
Certain in the text: that an audible, public call to prayer was made is recorded in two separate places (62:9, 5:58). A ruling is attached to it: on hearing the Friday call, trade is left and one hurries to remembrance (62:9). Prayer is a time-bound obligation (4:103). The noun adhān occurs once and denotes a pilgrimage declaration (9:3); adhdhana and muʾadhdhin never denote a call to prayer where they occur (7:44, 12:70, 22:27).
Left to interpretation: the wording of the call, its number of lines, their order, repetition, melody, the place it is given from, and who gives it. How many times a day the call is made is likewise absent; 62:9 speaks only of Friday. Saying "today's adhān is a Qur'anic command" and saying "there is no call in the Qur'an" both claim more than the text does.
This article is not a legal ruling on the adhān and was written neither to endorse nor to abolish current practice. It separates one thing only: what the text gives from what tradition added.
Conclusion: The call to prayer is in the Qur'an — in a passive form (62:9), in an active form (5:58), and with a ruling attached to it. The wording, sequence and melody of what we now call the adhān are not; the word itself is never used in the Qur'an for prayer (9:3, 22:27, 7:44). The honest sentence joins both halves: the Qur'an commands the call and does not script it. The answer to "Is the adhān in the Qur'an?" is therefore not one word — the call, yes; the wording, no.
Related articles
- Is prayer in the Qur'an?
- Is Friday prayer in the Qur'an?
- Prayer times and astronomy
- The meaning of prayer
Source: Qur'anic verses (M. Okuyan's Turkish rendering; English renderings from Saheeh International). Presented with a text/interpretation distinction; not a legal fatwa.