The Abu Dhabi adhan: An orienting soundmark through scaled configurations of space and time

Abstract

Amid its superdiverse population, the call to prayer, the adhan, identifies the UAE as an Arab, Muslim nation state while forming discrete ethno-class publics around its numerous urban mosque calls. I conceptualize the adhan as a soundmark, which functions as a vital sonic place-maker and orients listeners' attendant actions through a series of scaled chronotopes. I posit two intersecting umbrella chronotopes, masjid and jāmi‘, which frame how each adhan is listened to and taken up. For autochthonous Emiratis, the chronotope of masjid opens up a portal of copresence with God and attendant rituals of ethical self-formation. Meanwhile, the chronotope of jāmi‘ positions Emiratis in the iterative constitution of their nation, community, and family. Through these chronotopes, I examine how members of an extended Emirati family use the adhan to reinforce discourses of ethnonational and gendered socialization within their cloistered urban tribal enclave in the capital, Abu Dhabi. However, as the state gradually divests from full economic dependence on oil, infrastructural transformations are leading young Emiratis toward two-income single-family homes in multiethnic suburbs. Accordingly, I show how the marked reduction in the adhan in new developments becomes a synecdoche for sociopolitical changes and Emiratis' ambivalence toward them.