Quran Home School Academy

What is Tajweed and How to Learn Tajweed?

How To Learn Tajweed?

If you are wondering how to learn tajweed then the answer is that the tajweed and its application can only be learned with a qualified teacher. The tajweed rules themselves can be studied independently, but their correct application can only be done by listening to, reciting to, and being corrected by, a qualified teacher of the Qur’an.

DO ALL ARABS KNOW HOW TO RECITE THE QUR’AN WITH PROPER TAJWEED?

Unfortunately many do not know proper tajweed.  In the days of the Prophet, peace and blessing upon him, there was no need for the study of tajweed because they talked with what is now known as tajweed; in other words, it was natural for them.  Now, over 14 centuries later, colloquial Arabic has changed radically from the classical Arabic with which the Qur’an was revealed, and Arabs have to study tajweed, just in the same way that non-Arabs do.

I WANT TO LEARN TO RECITE THE QUR’AN WITH PROPER TAJWEED, BUT DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START.

The first step is finding a qualified Qur’an teacher who will listen to you and point out your mistakes, and help you practice fixing them.  You will need to learn the Arabic letters and vowels too.

WHAT IF THERE AREN’T ANY QUALIFIED TEACHERS WHERE I LIVE?

Then your task is going to be a little harder, but certainly not impossible.  You need to work with tapes of good reciters, for example, Sheikh Abdullah Basfar, or Sheikh Mohammed Hosary.  There are sets available on the Internet and in Islamic stores that are called “mu’alm”.  In these sets, the reciter reads a phrase, and then there is a blank space on the tape, allowing the student to repeat what the reciter has just read.

You will need to work on the pronunciation of letters by getting a description of the articulation points and practice placing your tongue, lips, or finding the place in your throat where the letter is articulated from, and compare it to the letter when recited by the Sheikh.

PRINCIPLES OF TAJWEED

One who wishes to learn a science needs to know its principles so that he will gain insight into the sought science.  There are several principles in the science of tajweed that should be understood:

1. ITS DEFINITION

By linguistic definition: Betterment

Applied definition: Articulating every letter from its articulation point and giving the letter its rights and dues of characteristics. Rights of the letters are its required characteristics that never leave it.  The dues of the letters are its presented characteristics that are present in it some of the time, and not present at other times.  i.e. the medd, idgham

2. ITS FORMATION

The words of the Glorious Qur’an and some said Honorable Hadiths also.

3. ITS FRUITS

It is preserving the tongue from mistakes in pronunciation of the Glorious Qur’an during reading.

4. ITS PRECEDENCE

It is one of the most honored of sciences and one of the best of them due to its relation to Allah’s words.

5. ITS PLACE WITHIN THE SCIENCES

It is one of the Islamic Law sciences that are related to the Glorious Qur’an.

6. ITS FOUNDER

The rule setter from the practical point of view is the Messenger of Allah(pbuh) because the Qur’an was revealed to him from Allah, the most High, with tajweed, and he, was instructed on it from the Trustworthy, Jibreel, peace be upon him, and taught it to his companions, who then taught it to their followers and so on until it came to us by these chains.  The rule setters from the scientific point of view are the scholars of Qur’anic sciences, such as Abu ‘Ubaid Al-Qasim bin Sallaam.

7. ITS PRECEPT

Knowledge of tajweed is fardh kifayaah, meaning some of the Muslim community must know it, and its application is fardh ‘ain, required by all Muslims (men and women) who have the complete Qur’an or part of it memorized, even if only one surah.

8.  REASONS FOR ITS RULES

Guarding the Glorious Qur’an and preserving it from distortion.  The Arabs mixed with non-Arabs after the spread of Islam, and the Muslims feared that the Arab tongue would become corrupted with this intermixing.  It then became mandatory for rules to be put down that would preserve the recitation of the Qur’an from mistakes, and guarantee the reader of the Qur’an integrity of pronunciation.

9.  ITS PRINCIPLES

The knowledge of tajweed is contingent on four matters:

  1. Knowledge of the articulation points of the letters
  2. Knowledge of the characteristics of the letters
  3. Knowledge of what rules change in the letters due to the order of letters
  4. Exercising the tongue and a lot of repetition.

COMMON TAJWEED ERRORS

The two most common tajweed mistakes made by non-Arabs are the timings of the vowels, and medd letters, and in the articulation points of the letters.  The first type of mistake has been addressed in the first of what will be, insha’ Allah many tidbits; please see the tidbit lesson link.  The second type of mistake, that in the letters themselves, is a major problem that needs to be addressed by all non-Arabs, whether they are Westerners, Europeans, Africans, from the Indo Pakistani subcontinent, or from Eastern Asia.  At the outset, the letters that occur in Arabic that are not common in other languages would be what one would imagine to be a problem, but in fact, there are letters in Arabic that are similar to other languages, but do not share the same articulation points with their counterparts.

The letters that occur in Arabic, that are not common in other languages are:

ض  ص  غ  ع  خ  ح  ط  ظ

The articulation points of all the Arabic letters will be described later, insha’Allah in a future tidbit lesson.

Letters that have similar sounds in other languages, but in fact have different articulation points are:

د  ت  ف  ك  ر  ل

The first two  (starting from the right), use the tip of the tongue from the top side and what lies opposite from the tip of the tongue from the gum line of the two top front incisors.  Many different languages have similar letters, as in English there is “d” and “t”, but they articulate these letters at a posterior position in the mouth from what the Arabs use as an articulation point.  The result is an incorrect pronunciation of these letters when reading Qur’an.

The ra’ and lam are two letters that non-Arabs have some difficulty in pronouncing correctly.  The ra’ uses the tip of the tongue and the top of the tip and the gums of the two top incisors, but the trick to the ra’ is actually hitting the gum.  Many Muslims try to pronounce the ra’ without touching the tongue to the gum.  Some mistakenly use the throat, like the French do in the French “r”.  The Arabic lam has the widest use of the tongue of any other letters, but uses only the end of the sides of the tongue until it ends at the tip, which then hits the gums of the front upper eight teeth.

The above are just brief summaries of the letters, and as stated before, Insha’Allah soon a tidbit lesson will be posted with all the articulation points discussed in detail.

A third mistake incurred by Arabs and non-Arabs alike is in making proper stops and starts.  There is more than one aspect to this mistake.  The first aspect is that the proper way to stop on a word is by putting a sukoon, or absence of a vowel on the last letter of the word.  It is not allowed to stop using the harakah, or vowel on the last letter of the word.  The second aspect of stopping is that of stopping at a place that doesn’t contradict the meaning intended by Allah, the Exalted.  The same mistake can occur when starting up after stopping and taking a breath.  One cannot just start on the next word arbitrarily, instead the meaning needs to be considered, and the start should be on a word that portrays the correct and complete meaning, even if the reciter needs to go back two or three words.  The stop and start will be explained in detail, insha’ Allah in future tidbit lessons.

One note that is of utmost importance.  It is vital that the Muslim learn the Arabic letters and vowels and recite the Qur’an using them, NOT a transliteration.  Transliterations do not take into account the various letters that sound similar to the untrained ear, but are very different in pronunciation.  The Qur’an is the word of Allah, revealed to man as a guidance, and we have to be extremely careful to read it, as best we can, with proper pronunciation.  Reading a transliteration can lead to changing the meaning of the Arabic Qur’an by mispronouncing letters.

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Quran Reading with Tajweed or Tajwid Rules

Literally, ‘tajwid‘ means improvement and perfection. If you do something with tajwid it means you are trying to do it with the utmost quality and in the most perfect way possible. The term Tajwid Rules, refers to the science concerned with correct recitation and pronunciation of the Qur’anic words and verses. The relationship is clear between the literal meaning of the word and its technical usage; the literal meaning revolves around perfecting an action or a performance, which is the recitation of the Qur’an as far as the science of Tajwid is concerned.

After the rapid spread of Islam in its early centuries, especially among non-Arabs, Muslim scholars deemed it necessary to put down a set of rules that serve as a reference for the Qur’an learners. So, Tajwid has been the reference for people who wished to recite the Qur’an in a correct manner. This, however, does not deny the fact that the Qur’an cannot be learned independently, without the assistance of a skilled teacher. The unique isnad-based system of learning Qur’an continued to be the recognized way for teaching students how to recite the Qur’an and for training them on Tajwid. In the isnad-based system, a student recites the whole Qur’an by heart, from the beginning to the end, fulfilling the rules of Tajwid to a certified Qur’an teacher, and then the student is certified by the teacher to be qualified to recite and teach the Qur’an. The certificate is called ijazah (license). A typical ijazah lists the teachers of the granting sheikh (the isnad or sanad , an unbroken chain of teachers that goes back to the Prophet).

Tajwid, according to the scholars’ definition, is all about “articulating (the sound of) each letter from its proper point of articulation, and ensuring the correct pronunciation of the genuine characteristics of each sound as well as the occasional ones.” Here, by ‘genuine’ scholars mean the permanent features of a sound without which the sound is never pronounced correctly. The occasional features are those affecting a letter sound due to certain occasional reasons such as the place of the letter in a word, its tashkil, the features of the letters coming before or after it, etc.

A typical Tajwid book starts with an introduction clarifying the significance and manners of reciting the Qur’an, the prerequisites of a correct recitation, the Islamic ruling of observing Tajwid when reciting the Qur’an and the types of recitation in terms of speed. The main body of Tajwid, as clearly stated in the above definition, is concerned with the correct pronunciation of the Qur’an. This is dealt with in the following basic topics:

  1. Points of articulation (Makharij Al-Huruf)
  2. Letters Characteristics (Sifat Al-Huruf)
  3. Other rules of Tajwid related to the sound changes of certain letters due to their places in the word or their surrounding letters, such as the rules of a non-vowel N and M (ahkam an-Nun wal mim as-sakinah) and the types of long vowels (mudud.)

Students of phonetics will find the above topics familiar and similar to what they study. The concept of idgham, for example, is similar to that of assimilation as far as phonetics is concerned.

It is obligatory, according to the scholars of Tajwid, to observe its rules when reciting the Qur’an. Allah Almighty said, {…recite the Qur’an (aloud) in a slow, (pleasant tone and) style} (Al-Muzzamil 73: 4)

The verse means reciting the Qur’an slowly with humility (khushu`) and reflection observing the rules of Tajwid such as lengthening the long vowels (madd al-mamudud) and shortening the short ones (qasr al-maqsur)… The command in the above verse indicates obligation as this is the original usage of the imperative form. There is nothing here to indicate otherwise. (Al-Marsafi, Hidayat Al-Qari’ ila Tajwid Kalam al-Bari)

Imam ibn Al-Jazari, one of the earliest scholars of Tajwid, maintained in his Tuhfatul-Atfal, a famous beginner-style Tajwid manual, that, It is incumbent to observe the rules of Tajwid; those who fail to do so are incurring a sin because the Qur’an was revealed by Allah and transmitted to us with the rule s of Tajwid.

Some scholars, however, hold that it is recommended (mustahab) to follow the rules of Tajwid rather than being wajib(obligatory), as long as the words are pronounced correctly in terms of Arabic and no mistakes are involved of course. Nevertheless, it befits a Muslim to try his best to perfect his recitation. `A’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) narrated that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said:

The one who is proficient in the recitation of the Qur’an will be with the honorable, obedient scribes (angles), and he who recites the Qur’an with difficulty and find it hard to recite will have a double reward. (Al-Bukhari and Muslim)

Tajwid is just one of the manifestations of Allah’s protection for the Qur’an from any kinds of corruption. Going through books of the Tajwid shows the extreme care given to the minute details of the pronunciation of the Qur’an. All of this is to ensure that the way the Qur’an is recited fourteen centuries after the demise of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) is exactly the same as how the Prophet recited the Qur’an. Besides, the isnad-based transmission of the Qur’an guarantees that the rules of Tajwid are fully put into practice in a way that ensures the highest quality and accuracy level when transmitting the Qur’an from one generation to another. Tajwid, after all, is one of a group of sciences created initially to serve the Qur’an and to guard it from corruption such as the Qira’at (science of the recitation versions) and the scripting of the Qur’an (ar-rasm wad-dabt.)

By Muhammad Fathi

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