Adhan (أَذَان ʔaˈðaːn), also variously transliterated as athan, adhane (in French), ajan/ajaan, azan/azaan (in South Asia), adzan (in Southeast Asia), and ezan (in the Balkans and Turkey), among other languages, is the Islamic call to public prayer (salah) in a mosque recited by a muezzin at prescribed times of the day.
Adhan is recited from the mosque five times daily, traditionally from the minaret. It is the first call summoning Muslims to enter the mosque for obligatory (fard) prayer (salah). A second call, known as the iqamah, summons those within the mosque to line up for the beginning of the prayers. Only in Turkey, Ezan is voiced in five different styles at different times; saba, uşşak, hicaz, rast, segah.
Adhān, Arabic for "announcement", from root ʾadhina meaning "to listen, to hear, be informed about", is variously transliterated in different cultures.
It is commonly written as athan, or adhane (in French), azan in Iran and south Asia (in Persian, Dari, Pashto, Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, and Punjabi), adzan in Southeast Asia (Indonesian and Malaysian), and ezan in Turkish and Serbo-Croatian Latin (езан in Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic and Bulgarian, ezani in Albanian). Muslims on the Malabar Coast in India use the Persian term بانگ, banku, for the call to public prayer.
Another derivative of the word adhān is ʾudhun (أُذُن), meaning "ear".
Muezzin
The muezzin (مُؤَذِّن muʾaḏḏin) is the person who recites the adhan from the mosque. Typically in modern times, this is done using a microphone: a recitation that is consequently broadcast to the speakers usually mounted on the higher part of the mosque's minarets, thus calling those nearby to prayer. However, in many mosques, the message can also be recorded. This is due to the fact that the "call to prayer" has to be done loudly and at least five times a day. This is usually done by replaying previously recorded "call to prayer" without the presence of a muezzin. This way, the mosque operator has the ability to edit or mix the message and adjust the volume of the message while also not having to hire a full-time muezzin or in case of the absence of a muezzin.