Tajwīd as a Codified Discipline: An Analysis in Light of Avicenna’s Criteria for Science

Tajwīd was recognized as an ʿilm in classical Islamic scholarship, yet its epistemic status as a codified discipline has received comparatively little systematic examination. This study investigates whether tajwīd exhibits Avicenna’s structural criteria for science: a determinate subject matter (mawḍūʿ), foundational principles (mabādiʾ), and organized problems (masāʾil). The analysis finds that tajwīd takes the letters of the Qurʾān, insofar as they are realized in recitation, as its subject matter; rests on self-evident, inductive, transmitted, and normative principles; and organizes its problems around articulation points (makhārij), phonetic attributes (ṣifāt), phonetic interactions, including idghām, elongation (madd), pausing and resumption (waqf and ibtidāʾ), and recitational error (laḥn). Its aim is to preserve the transmitted verbal and recitational form of the Qurʾān and maintain the integrity between wording and meaning. Methodologically, the study employs qualitative conceptual and textual analysis conducted through a structural and functional analogical framework. It shows that tajwīd combines theoretical systematization with supervised practice through transmission, listening, recitation before a qualified teacher, repetition, and correction. This analysis contributes to existing scholarship by shifting attention from the individual rules and pedagogical transmission of tajwīd to its internal disciplinary architecture, and by showing how a transmission-based and practice-centered Qurʾānic discipline can be analyzed through a classical Islamic framework of scientific organization without being reduced to demonstrative science. The study concludes that tajwīd is not identical to a demonstrative science but can be characterized as a codified, normative, transmission-grounded, and practice-centered Qurʾānic discipline within the broader classical Islamic conception of ʿilm.