Qira'at
In Islam, 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, entire words and even different meanings. However, the variations don't change the overall message or doctrinal meanings of the Qur'an, as the differences are often subtle and contextually equivalent. also refers to the branch of Islamic studies that deals with these modes of recitation.
There are ten recognised schools of, each one deriving its name from a noted Quran reciter or "reader", 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 lived a century later, and the readings themselves have a chain of transmission going back to the time of Muhammad. Consequently, the readers 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.
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.
Qira'at are also sometimes confused with ahruf—both being readings of the Quran with "unbroken chain 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. 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, and along with ahruf'' make up "the most difficult topics" in Quranic studies. The qira'at include differences in consonantal diacritics, vowel marks, and the consonantal skeleton, resulting in materially different readings.
The Quran that is in "general use" throughout almost all the Muslim world today is a 1924 Egyptian edition based on the of on the authority of .
History
According to Islamic belief, the Quran is recorded in the preserved tablet in heaven, and was revealed to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel.Quranic orthography
Early manuscripts of the Quran did not use diacritics either for vowels or to distinguish the different values of the rasm , -- 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, followed by marks and nunation in different-coloured ink from the text. 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. According to Csaba Okváth,It was during the period of the Successors and shortly thereafter that exceptional reciters became renowned as teachers of Qur'anic recitation in cities like Makkah, Madina, Kufa, Basra, and greater Syria. 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 he recites according to the reading of Ibn Kathir or Nafi'; this, however, does not mean that these reciters 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 with the same root. Scholars differ on why there are different recitations. Aisha Abdurrahman Bewley gives an example of a line of transmission of recitation "you are likely to find... in the back of a Qur'an" from the Warsh harf, going backwards from Warsh all the way to Allah himself:"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 from prominent reciters of his time, three from Kufa and one each from Mecca, Medina, and Basra and Damascus. Later, three more recitations were canonized for ten..
Each reciter recited to two narrators whose narrations are known as riwaya and named after its primary narrator.
Each rawi has turuq 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 are:Abu Ubaid al-Qasim bin Salam was the first to develop a recorded science for tajwid, 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 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 to form the canonical list of ten.
Imam Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi 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 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.