Reciting Memory, Reworking Tradition: The Historical Development of Sima’an at Two Tahfidz Institutions in Bandung, 2017–2025

Abstract

This article examines the historical development of sima’an—the collective audition of Qur’anic recitation—at Ma’had Tahfidz Kampus 3 of UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung and Ma’had Tahfidz Oase Qur’ani between 2017 and 2023. It treats sima’an neither as an unchanged devotional residue nor as a neutral instructional technique, but as a historical practice continually reorganized by institutional settings. The study uses the historical method of heuristics, external and internal source criticism, interpretation, and historiography. The evidence used includes research archives, institutional descriptions, and visual records available for the period, published scholarship on Qur’anic memorization and tasmi’, and documented accounts of institutional routines before the temporal cut-off. The comparison identifies a common normative core: muraja’ah, accurate recitation, mutqin memorization, disciplined accountability, and the cultivation of confidence before listeners. The two institutions nevertheless developed contrasting arrangements. Kampus 3 integrated sima’an into a university residential program whose participants had to reconcile memorization with academic schedules. Its practice moved from relatively flexible bil nadzor recitation toward online continuity during the COVID-19 interruption and, after the return to campus, stronger use of bil ghaib. Oase Qur’ani, founded in 2017 as a specialist tahfidz institution, made bil ghaib and quality control central to its model from the beginning; it later intensified testing through random questioning and recitation under physically demanding conditions. The article argues that continuity was produced through controlled adaptation. Institutional time, student composition, and the distribution of authority shaped the form of audition without dissolving its ethical purpose. The comparison contributes a historical account of contemporary Islamic educational practice by showing how a recognizable tradition survives precisely through institutional reworking.