In Islam, (pl. ; , 'recitations' / 'readings') refers to the ways or fashions that the Quran, the holy book of Islam, is recited. More technically, the term designates the different linguistic, lexical, phonetic, morphological and syntactical forms permitted with reciting the Quran.
Differences between include varying rules regarding the prolongation, intonation, and pronunciation of words, but also differences in stops, vowels, consonants (leading to different pronouns and verb forms), entire words and even different meanings. However, the variations do not change the overall message or doctrinal meanings of the Quran, as the differences are often subtle and contextually equivalent. also refers to the branch of Islamic studies that deals with these modes of recitation.
Qiraat should not be confused with tajwid—the rules of pronunciation, intonation, and caesuras of the Quran. Each qira'a has its own tajwid. Qiraat are called readings or recitations because the Quran was originally spread and passed down orally, and though there was a written text, it did not include most vowels or distinguish between many consonants, allowing for much variation. (Qiraat now each have their own text in modern Arabic script.) Qira'at are also sometimes confused with ahruf—both being readings of the Quran with "unbroken chain(s) of transmission going back to the Prophet". There are multiple views on the nature of the ahruf and how they relate to the qira'at, the general view being that caliph Uthman eliminated all of the ahruf except one during the 7th century CE.Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, Tafseer Soorah Al-Hujuraat, 1990, Tawheed Publications, Riyadh, pp. 28-29. The ten were canonized by Islamic scholars in early centuries of Islam.
Even after centuries of Islamic scholarship, the variants of the qira'at have been said to continue "to astound and puzzle" researchers into Islam (by Ammar Khatib and Nazir Khan), and along with ahruf make up "the most difficult topics" in Quranic studies (according to Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi). The qira'at include differences in consonantal diacritics (i'jām), vowel marks (), and the consonantal skeleton (rasm), resulting in materially different readings (see examples).Cook, The Koran, 2000: pp. 72.
The Quran that is in "general use" throughout almost all the Muslim world today is the 1924 Cairo edition based on the (reading) of on the authority of ( being the , or "transmitter", and being the or "reader").
History
According to Islamic belief, the Quran is recorded in the preserved tablet in heaven (), and was revealed to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. There are ten recognised schools of , each one deriving its name from a noted Quran reciter or "reader" ( pl. or ), such as Nafi' al-Madani, Ibn Kathir al-Makki, Abu Amr of Basra, Ibn Amir ad-Dimashqi, Aasim ibn Abi al-Najud, Hamzah az-Zaiyyat, and Al-Kisa'i. While these readers lived in the second and third century of Islam, the scholar who approved the first seven qira'at (Abu Bakr Ibn Mujāhid) lived a century later, and the readings themselves have a chain of transmission (like hadith) going back to the time of Muhammad. Consequently, the readers (qurrāʿ) who give their name to qira'at are part of a chain of transmission called a . The lines of transmission passed down from a riwāya are called turuq, and those passed down from a turuq are called or awjuh (sing. wajh; ).
Quranic orthography
Early manuscripts of the Quran did not use diacritics either for vowels (ḥarakāt) or to distinguish the different values of the rasm (I'jām) [see the graphic to the right], -- or at least used them "only sporadically and insufficiently to create a completely unambiguous text".
Gradual steps were taken to improve the orthography of the Quran, in the first century with dots to distinguish similarly-shaped consonants (predecessors to i'jām), followed by marks (to indicate different vowels, like ḥarakāt) and nunation in different-coloured ink from the text (Abu'l Aswad ad-Du'alî (d. 69 AH/688 CE). (Not related to the colours used in the graphic to the right.) Later the different colours were replaced with marks used in written Arabic today.
Adam Bursi has cautioned that details of reports that diacritics were added at the direction of al-Hajjaj under Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan are a "relatively late development" and that "While ʿAbd al-Malik and/or al-Ḥajjāj do appear to have played a role in the evolution of the qurʾānic text, the initial introduction of diacritics into the text was not part of this process and it is unclear what development in the usage of diacritics took place at their instigation." Manuscripts already used consonantal pointing sparingly, but at this time contain "no evidence of the imposition of the kind of fully dotted scriptio plena that the historical sources suggest was al-Ḥajjāj's intended goal", although "There is some manuscript evidence for the introduction of vowel markers into the Qurʾān in this period."
Recitations
In the meantime, before the variations were finally committed entirely to writing, the Quran was preserved by recitation from one generation to the next. Doing the reciting were prominent reciters of a style of narration who had memorized the Quran (known as hafiz). According to Csaba Okváth,
It was during the period of the Successors [i.e. the generation of Muslims succeeding the companions of Muhammad ] and shortly thereafter that exceptional reciters became renowned as teachers of Qur'anic recitation in cities like Makkah, Madina, Kufa, Basra, and greater Syria (al-Sham). They attracted students from all over the expanding Muslim state and their modes of recitations were then attached to their names. It is therefore commonly said that [for example] he recites according to the reading of Ibn Kathir or Nafi'; this, however, does not mean that these reciters [Ibn Kathir or Nafi] are the originators of these recitations, their names have been attached to the mode of recitation simply because their rendition of the Prophetic manner of recitation was acclaimed for authenticity and accuracy and their names became synonymous with these Qur'anic recitations. In fact, their own recitation goes back to the Prophetic mode of recitation through an unbroken chain.
Each reciter had variations in their tajwid rules and occasional words in their recitation of the Quran are different or of a different morphology (form of the word) with the same root. Scholars differ on why there are different recitations (see below). Aisha Abdurrahman Bewley gives an example of a line of transmission of recitation "you are likely to find ... in the back of a Quran" from the Warsh harf, going backwards from Warsh all the way to Allah himself:"[T]he riwaya of Imam Warsh from Nafi' al-Madini from Abu Ja'far Yazid ibn al-Qa'qa' from 'Abdullah ibn 'Abbas from Ubayy ibn Ka'b from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, from Jibril, peace be upon him, from the Creator."
After Muhammad's death there were many qira'at, from which 25 were described by Abu 'Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam two centuries after Muhammad's death. The seven qira'at readings which are currently notable were selected in the fourth century by Abu Bakr Ibn Mujahid (died 324 AH, 936 CE) from prominent reciters of his time, three from Kufa and one each from Mecca, Medina, and Basra and Damascus.Cook, The Koran, 2000: p. 73 Later, three more recitations were canonized for ten. (The first seven readers named for a qiraa recitation died un/readers of the recitations lived in the second and third century of Islam. (Their death dates span from 118 AH to 229 AH).
Each reciter recited to two narrators whose narrations are known as riwaya (transmissions) and named after its primary narrator (rawi, singular of riwaya). Each rawi has turuq (transmission lines) with more variants created by notable students of the master who recited them and named after the student of the master. Passed down from turuq are wujuh: the wajh of so-and-so from the tariq of so-and-so. There are about twenty riwayat and eighty turuq.
In the 1730s, Quran translator George Sale noted seven principal editions of the Quran, "two of which were published and used at Medina, a third at Mecca, a fourth at Kufa, a fifth at Basra, a sixth in Syria, and a seventh called the common edition " He states that "the chief disagreement between their several editions of the Koran, consists in the division and number of the verses."
Reciting Some of the prominent reciters and scholars in Islamic history who worked with qiraʼat as an Ilm al-Din (Islamic science) are:
Abu Ubaid al-Qasim bin Salam (774 - 838 CE) was the first to develop a recorded science for tajwid (a set of rules for the correct pronunciation of the letters with all their qualities and applying the various traditional methods of recitation), giving the rules of tajwid names and putting it into writing in his book called al-Qiraat. He wrote about 25 reciters, including the seven mutawatir reciters. He made the recitation, transmitted through reciters of every generation, a science with defined rules, terms, and enunciation.
Abu Bakr Ibn Mujāhid (859 - 936 CE) wrote a book called Kitab al-Sab' fil-qirā'āt. He is the first to limit the number of reciters to the seven known. Some scholars, such as ibn al-Jazari, took this list of seven from Ibn Mujahid and added three other reciters (Abu Ja'far from Madinah, Ya'qub from Basrah, and Khalaf from Kufa) to form the canonical list of ten.
Imam Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi (1320 - 1388 CE) wrote a poem outlining the two most famous ways passed down from each of seven strong imams, known as al-Shatibiyyah. In it, he documented the rules of recitation of Naafi', Ibn Katheer, Abu 'Amr, Ibn 'Aamir, 'Aasim, al-Kisaa'i, and Hamzah. It is 1173 lines long and a major reference for the seven qira'aat.
Ibn al-Jazari (1350 - 1429 CE) wrote two large poems about qira'at and tajwid. One was Durrat Al-Maʿniyah (), in the readings of three major reciters, added to the seven in the Shatibiyyah, making it ten. The other is Tayyibat al-Nashr (), which is 1014 lines on the ten major reciters in great detail, of which he also wrote a commentary.
The readings Criteria for canonical status All accepted qira'at according to ibn al-Jazari follow three basic rules: Conformity to the consonantal skeleton of the Uthmānic codex. Consistency with Arabic grammar. Authentic chain of transmission.
The qira'at that do not meet these conditions are called shādh (anomalous/irregular/odd). The other recitations reported from companions that differ from the Uthmānic codex may represent an abrogated or abandoned ḥarf, or a recitation containing word alterations for commentary or for facilitation for a learner. By contemporary consensus, it is not permissible to recite the shādh narrations in prayer, but they can be studied academically. The most well documented companion reading was that of 'Abdullah ibn Mas'ud. Ramon Harvey notes that Ibn Mas'ud's reading continued in use and was even taught as the dominant reading in Kufa for at least a century after his death and has shown that some of his distinctive readings continued to play a role in Hanafi fiqh. In 1937, Arthur Jeffery produced a compilation of variants attested in Islamic literature for a number of companion readings. More recently, Abd al-Latif al-Khatib made a much more comprehensive compilation of qira'at variants called Mu'jam al-Qira'at. This work is widely cited by academic scholars and includes ten large volumes listing variants attested in Islamic literature for the canonical readings and their transmissions, the companions, and other non-canonical reciters, mainly of the first two centuries. The process by which certain readings became canonical and others regarded as shaadhdh has been extensively studied by Shady Nasser.Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qurʾān, 2012
The seven canonical qira'at