Reciting the Qur'aan with Contemplation

There is nothing more beneficial to the heart than recitation of Qur’aan with contemplation and reflection upon its verses, because it comprises of all the stations of the travelers, the conditions of the workers and the stations of the acquainted. Reciting the Qur’aan with contemplation generates love, yearning, fear, hope, repentance, reliance on Allaah, being pleased with Him, entrusting affairs to Him, gratitude, patience and other conditions with which the heart attains life and perfection.

Further, the Qur’aan restrains one from all blameworthy characteristics and deeds with which the heart gets corrupted and ruined. If people were to know what recitation of the Qur’aan with reflection contains [of benefit], they would have preoccupied themselves with it at the expense of any other thing. If a person recites it with contemplation to the extent that whenever he comes across a verse which he needs for the treatment of his heart, he should recite it repeatedly even if it is a hundred times or throughout the night.

Reciting a verse with contemplation and understanding is better than reciting the whole Qur’aan without contemplation and understanding. It is more beneficial to the heart and it leads to the attainment of eemaan and tasting the sweetness of the Qur’aan. This was the practice of the pious predecessors. One of them would continue to repeat a verse until dawn. It is established from the Prophet that he paused at a verse and kept on reciting it repeatedly until dawn. The verse in question was: “If You punish them, they are Your slaves, and if You forgive them, verily You, only You are the All­-Mighty, the All­-Wise.” [Soorah al-Maa’idah: 118]

Reciting the Qur’aan with contemplation is the foundation of the heart’s rectification. For this reason, Ibn Mas‘ood said: “Do not rush through the recitation of the Qur’aan like the hasty recitation of poetry and do not scatter the Qur’aan out like the scattering of sand. Stop at its amazing parts and make your heart move with it. None of you should let his concern be to reach the end of the Soorah.”  Aboo Ayyoob related that Aboo Jamrah said: “I said to Ibn Abbaas that I am fast in reciting the Qur’aan, and that I used to recite it completely in three days.” Ibn Abbaas then said: “To recite one Soorah of the Qur’aan with contemplation and perfect recitation is dearer to me than reciting it the way you are reciting.”

Taken from Miftaah Daar as-Sa’aadah by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah