The Science of Qurʼanic Recitation and Tajwīd

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

Praise be to God, and peace upon those of His servants whom He has chosen.

Know that in every class of the scholars of this community there is something blameworthy and faulty — so shun it:

( The Science of Recitation and Correct Articulation (tajwīd) )

As for the reciters trained in correct articulation: in them there is a finicking over-nicety (tanaṭṭuʻ) and a surplus of refinement, which leads to this — that the reciter who articulates precisely remains with his whole ambition turned toward the observance of the letters and toward the finicking over their articulation, so that this occupies him away from pondering the meanings of the Book of God Most High, and turns him aside from humility (khushūʻ) in recitation, and leaves him swollen with self-regard, holding cheap those who carry the Book of God Most High in their memories, so that he looks upon them with the eye of loathing, and holds that the Muslims recite faultily and that the reciters do not retain the anomalous readings (shawādhdh al-qirāʼah). Would that I knew: you — what have you recognized, and what have you learned! As for your learning, it is not sound; and as for your recitation, it is heavy, stripped bare of reverence and of sorrow and of fear. May God Most High grant you success, and make you see your right course, and rouse you from the bed of ignorance and ostentation. Their opposites are the reciters of melody and drawn-out cadence. Of these, whoever recites with a heart and with fear may on the whole be of some use — for I have seen among them one who recites soundly and is moved and weeps, and I have seen among them one who, when he recites, hardens hearts and wearies souls and alters the words; and the worst of them in condition are the funeral-reciters. As for reciting by the several transmissions and by their collation, that is the thing furthest from humility and the boldest of all in coming at recitation with what departs from the intent; and their badge is the multiplying of Ḥamzah's variants, the thickening of those lāms and the thinning of the rāʼs. Recite, man, and spare us the thickening and the thinning and the excess of inclination (imālah) and of prolongations, and the pauses of Ḥamzah — how long is this to go on! And yet another of them, if he is present at a completion-recital or recites in a prayer-niche, makes it his habit to bring out the outlandish variants and the abrupt pauses and the retching over the softened hamzah, and produces every divergence, and cries himself up: “I am Father Know-Me” — for I am a master of the seven readings. What are we to do with you? No: and God give you a good morning — you are a catapult stone and molten lead upon men's hearts. (1)

— Notes —

[5] (1) The sciences of the readings are among the noblest of the sciences, for their attachment to the Wise Qur'an, by which the Muslims are made happy when they hold fast to its guidance in the affairs of both worlds, and by which they meet humiliation and misery if they cast it behind their backs. Correct articulation is a binding obligation; and the readings are parts of the Qur'an, whose continuous mass transmission (tawātur) the community is obliged to maintain down the length of the centuries — indeed, the people of every region must have among them a number of men upholding them that reaches the threshold of mass transmission, failing which they all incur sin, as the exacting scholars have expressly laid down. The author is one of those who spent a portion of his life in the science of recitation until he acquired a strong competence in it; he is therefore among the greatest appreciators of the magnitude of the sciences of the readings. What he intended here was only to alert the self-deluded to the blights of which no science is free, and to hold them back from them. Far be it from him that his purpose should be to dishearten the resolve of those who uphold this noble science in the Muslim lands — few as they are today and were before today; may God multiply them and preserve them.