Tajwid

In Arabic, the term tajwīd is derived from the verb جود (jawada), meaning enhancement or to make something excellent.

It is said that the first person to collect the science of tajwīd in his book Kitāb al-Qirā'āt was Imām Abu ʻUbaid al-Qāsim bin Salām (774–838 CE) in the third century of Hijra.

[2] He made the reality, transmitted through reciters of every generation, a science with defined rules, terms, and enunciation.

[3][4] Abu Bakr Ibn Mujāhid (859–936 CE) wrote a book called Kitab al-Sab’ fil-qirā’āt "The Seven of the Recitations".

One was Durrat Al-Maa'nia (Arabic: الدرة المعنية), in the readings of three major reciters, added to the seven in the Shatibiyyah, making it ten.

The other is Tayyibat An-Nashr (Arabic: طيبة النشر), which is 1014 lines on the ten major reciters in great detail, of which he also wrote a commentary.

Dr. Shadee Elmasry states that it is an individual obligation (farḍ al-'ayn) on every Muslim to recite the opening chapter of the Qur'an (al-fatiha) with correct tajwīd, though they do not need to know the terms and definitions of the rules themselves.

[9] Abu Dawud's hadith collection has a chapter heading titled "Recommendation of (reciting with) tartīl in the Qur'an."

The next narration describes the importance of prolongation (Arabic: مدا maddā): "Qatadah said: I asked Anas about the recitation of the Qur'an by the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.

"Solar" and "lunar" became descriptions for these instances as the words for "the moon" and "the sun" (al-qamar and ash-shams, respectively) are examples of this rule.

An example of a characteristic would be the fricative consonant sound called ṣafīr, which is an attribute of air escaping from a tube.

The emphatic consonants خ ص ض ط ظ غ ق, known as mufakhkham letters, are pronounced with a "heavy accent" (tafkhīm).

If, however, the preceding vowel is a kasrah, then the ل in Allāh is light, such as in the Bismillah: بِسْمِ اللّٰه‎ Prolongation refers to the number of morae (beats of time) that are pronounced when a voweled letter (fatḥah, ḍammah, kasrah) is followed by a madd letter (alif, yāʼ or wāw).

[10] For example, the end of the last verse in "al-Fatiha" has a six-mora maddah due to the shaddah on the ل (lām).

The five qalqalah letters are the consonants ق ط د ج ب. Qalqalah is the addition of a slight "bounce" or reduced vowel sound /ə/ to the consonant whose vowel sound is otherwise cancelled, such as by a sukūn, shaddah, or the end of sentence.