Rast (maqam)

Rast Panjgah (or Rast; Persian: راست پنج گاه) is the name of a dastgah (musical mode) in Iranian music and of a maqam in Arabic and related systems of music. Rast (راست) is a Persian word meaning "right" or "direct". Rast is regarded as the basic dastgah in Iranian music and later on was adopted in Arabic and Turkish makam music, in the same way as the major scale in Western music, though it is rather different from the major scale in detail. Rast features a half-flat third and a half-flat seventh scale degrees. Middle eastern Sephardic Jews liken the word rast to "head" from the Hebrew word רֹאשׁ rosh. Therefore, they have a tradition of applying maqam rast to the prayers whenever they begin a new Torah book in the weekly Torah portions (this occurs approximately five times a year as there are five books in the Torah).