Ruku

Short description: Position of prayer

Precants performing ruku

Rukūʿ (Arabic: رُكوع, [rʊˈkuːʕ]) can refer to either of two things in Islam:

The act of belt-low bowing in standardized prayers, where the backbone should be in rest,^[1].
A paragraph of the Quran. (There are 558 Rukus in Quran).

In prayer, it refers to the bowing at the waist from standing (qiyām) on the completion of recitation (qiraʾat) of a portion of the Qur'an in Islamic formal prayers (salah). There is a consensus on the obligatory nature of the rukūʿ. The position of rukūʿ is established by bending over till the hands are on the knees and remaining in that position until one attains a relaxed state while glorifying God (سُبْحَانَ رَبِّيَ الْعَظِيم subḥāna rabbiya l-ʿaẓīm, "Glory be to my Lord, the Most Magnificent!") thrice or more in odd number of times.^[2]

In Al-Ghazali's book Inner Dimensions of Islamic Worship, he wrote about the rukūʿ by saying:^[3]

Bowing (rukūʿ) and prostration (sujūd) are accompanied by a renewed affirmation of the supreme greatness of Allah. In bowing you renew your submissiveness and humility, striving to refine your inner feeling through a fresh awareness of your own importance and insignificance before the might and grandeur of your Lord. To confirm this, you seek the aid of your tongue, glorifying your Lord and testifying repeatedly to His supreme majesty, both inwardly and outwardly.

Muslims in rukūʿ

Qur'anic subdivision

The term rukūʿ — roughly translated to "passage", "pericope" or "stanza" — is also used to denote a group of thematically related verses in the Quran. Longer chapters (surah) in the Qur'an are usually divided into several rukūʿs, so that the reciters could identify when to make ruku in Salah without breaking an ongoing topic in the Quranic text. There are 558 rukūʿs in the Qur'an.^[4]