Rast is the name of a maqam

Arabic maqam

Arabic maqām is the system of melodic modes used in traditional Arabic music, which is mainly melodic. The word maqam in Arabic means place, location or rank. The Arabic maqam is a melody type...

 (musical mode) in Arabic and related systems of music.

Rast is a Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

 word (راست) meaning "right" or "direct". Rast is regarded as the basic maqam in Iranian as well as in Arabic music, in the same way as the major scale

Major scale

In music theory, the major scale or Ionian scale is one of the diatonic scales. It is made up of seven distinct notes, plus an eighth which duplicates the first an octave higher. In solfege these notes correspond to the syllables "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti/Si, ", the "Do" in the parenthesis at...

 in Western music, though it is rather different from the major scale in detail (the major scale is in fact more like maqam Ajam

Ajam (maqam)

‘Ajam is the name of a maqam in Arabic, Turkish, and related systems of music. Ajam in this usage means "Persian."...

). Rast features a half-flat

Quarter tone

A quarter tone , is a pitch halfway between the usual notes of a chromatic scale, an interval about half as wide as a semitone, which is half a whole tone....

 third and a half-flat seventh scale degrees.

According to Habib Hassan Touma

Habib Hassan Touma

Habib Hassan Touma ) was a Palestinian composer and ethnomusicologist. He authored a number of books, essays and articles on Arabic music....

, maqam rast "evokes a feeling of pride, power, soundness of mind, and masculinity."

Middle eastern Sephardic Jews liken the word Rast to head from the Hebrew word "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).