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Rast Panjgah (orRast;Persian:راست پنج گاه) is the name of adastgah (musical mode) inIranian music and of amaqam inArabic and related systems of music.
Rast (راست) is a Persian word meaning "right" or "direct". Rast is regarded as the basicdastgah inIranian music and later on was adopted inArabic andTurkish makam music, in the same way as themajor scale in Western music, though it is rather different from themajor scale in detail.Rast features ahalf-flat third and a half-flat seventhscale degrees.
Middle easternSephardic Jews liken the wordrast to "head" from the Hebrew wordרֹאשׁrosh. 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).[citation needed]