Readings · a Light

One man's book settled the readings at ten

Ibn al-Jazari, born in Damascus in 1350 and dead in Shiraz in 1429, spent his life on the readings of the Qur'an. He argued that three further readings met the same standards as Ibn Mujahid's seven, and his book al-Nashr fi'l-Qira'at al-Ashr fixed the number at ten, where it has stayed. He set out three tests a reading must pass: it must fit the consonantal skeleton of the Uthmanic copies, it must be defensible in Arabic, and its chain of transmission must be sound. He also compiled Ghayat al-Nihaya, a biographical dictionary of thousands of reciters listed generation by generation, so that the chains could be checked rather than asserted.

Ibn al-Jazari · 1350 to 1429 CE