Introduction

Over 40 years ago, on a warm spring day in the small town of Al-Kataba, Morocco, I observed a young man rocking back and forth while sitting on the porch of the local mosque. He held a foot-long stick in his right hand that he slid over a smooth, rectangular-shaped board. On further inspection, it became clear that he was using the stick to tap out a rhythm over a set of Arabic words written on the board. While startling and perplexing to me, the purpose of the activity was quite obvious to a Moroccan friend with whom I was traveling. This system of tapping out words was a typical method of studying the Quran in many mosques in Morocco.