To Muslims, Mohammad’s arrival in Medina signifies the defining moment at which Islam began. Eventually Mohammad slipped through the leadership’s grasp and fled to Medina under pursuit, though eventually he managed to escape their tracking and to reach Medina in peace. Followers began to move to Medina and formed a community there. He began building a community, but the leaders of Mecca wanted to suppress this emerging movement. Mohammad’s encounters with the Divine, as Muslims understand it, began when he lived in Mecca. This is an extremely important and well-known song in the Islamic tradition. Note to perfomers: the song itself doesn’t touch the F-sharp and so doesn’t indicate Hijaz, but if you wish to add harmony or additional melody as ornamentation, experiment with Hijaz the F-sharp in particular adds tension and color. This isn’t how I hear it performed I think Arabic performers simply adjust. Arabic notation would have the B 1 quarter flat and would ignore the Hijaz softening. While this song is traditionally Arabic, I notate it here using the Turkish sytem which is more explicit about the Hijaz softening. While Hijaz is softened generally, in Turkish Huzzam the E-flat is raised even higher, just because. However, generally in Turkish (and often in Arabic) the wide interval in Hijaz is “softened” by bringing the lower note (E-flat) up and the upper note (F-sharp) down, just a little (1 koma). Huzzam places the Hijaz tetrachord on D: D, E-flat, F-sharp, G. This is in the Segah family it is rooted on Segah, the B-very-slightly flat (1 koma flat), then has C and D. See comments on scores below.Ī version with ornaments is (here the notation uses twice as many symbols for the same amount of time): Scores are here, for treble and alto clefs.