The spread and geographical expansion of Islam enabled Muslim communities to become acquainted with different cultures and sciences. This situation not only made it inevitable for the rapidly growing and developing Islamic society to leave tribal rule and enter the process of statehood but also brought along the necessity of learning and developing new sciences for the administration and well-being of the society. In line with this need, Muslim scholars began to classify sciences and put forward their views on them in line with the needs of society. The classification of sciences varied according to the different approaches and thoughts of scholars. Muslim scholars and philosophers classified the sciences according to their nature, and not content with this, they made great contributions to Islamic civilization by writing comprehensive works in many fields. On the other hand, some religious scholars evaluated the sciences according to the principles of Islam and refused to deal with them, claiming that some of them were useless. In this context, the science of music was handled with different approaches. Although Muslim philosophers considered music among the sciences of mathematics and philosophy and accepted it as one of the sciences that society needed, some religious scholars opposed music and criticized those who engaged in this science. In this article, the views of Islamic scholars until the 12th century on the sciences are analyzed and the place of music in the classification of sciences is discussed.
Keywords: Islamic Civilization, Classification of Sciences, Music