CRITERIA FOR ACCEPTABLE MODES OF READING
The concept of the ‘seven modes’ has been open to a number of interpretations among scholars, including the probability that the ahruf may refer to divergent dialects among the Arabs at the time of the revelation of the Qur’an.
The standard interpretation, however, is that the ahruf refers to what became known as the ‘seven readings’ (qira’at) of the Qur’an. That the seven modes of reading have been transmitted from one Qāri’ to another (mutawātir) in a teaching-learning chain is certain. The word mutawātir indicates that a group of learners in every generation has transmitted the
linguistic and phonetic techniques (a mode of reading) to the next generation in a unanimous manner that it is customarily impossible to agree on falsehood. Thus, it is a multiple source mode of reading. These seven modes of reading are the correct or acceptable ones. For a mode of reading to be acceptable, it had to meet three major criteria:
(i) compatibility with the orthography of the Uthmanic master codex (khatt or rasm al-mushaf al-‘uthmāni),
(ii) compatibility with Arabic grammar, and
(iii) being authentically passed on from the Prophet. However, the third criterion is not taken into consideration by the majority of Qur’an scholars (Abdul-Raof, 2012:110).
We may, however, encounter ten, rather than seven, Qur’an reciters. The other three reciters are: Ya’qub (d.
205/820) (Basrah), Khalaf (d. 229/843) (Baghdad), and Abu Ja’far b. al-Qa’qa’ (d. 130/747) (Madinah).
Thus, one can claim that even the companions such as Ibn ’Abbas, Ibn Mas’ud, Ubai b. Ka’b, and Anas b. Malik read some Qur’anic expressions with an irregular mode of reading. It is also important to note that:
(i) all the irregular modes of reading were abrogated by the Uthmanic master codex,
(ii) they were not allowed to be used in any prayer, and
(iii) they could not be accepted as evidence to substantiate any jurisprudential matter.
It is also necessary to mention four other readers who did not attain the same status as the Seven or the Ten just mentioned and are usually considered to represent the four Shādhdh (irregular) variants after the ten
(Dutton:1999). These four are: Ibn Muhaysin (d. 123/740) in Makkah, al-A’mash (d. 148/765) in Kūfa, and al-Hasan Albasri, (d. 110-728) and Yehya al-Yazidi (d. 202-817) in Basra.
Therefore, a mode of reading was classified as irregular (shadhdhah) if:
(i) it was adopted by one reciter only, i.e., it was not mutawātir (i.e., was not transmitted from one generation to another by a group of ruwāt),
(ii) it was not one of the seven or ten modes of reading, and most importantly.
(iii) it was not compatible with Arabic grammar or Arabic language.
It is also of value to note that the two expressions (al-ahruf al-sab’ah – the seven dialects) and (al-qira’at al-sab’ah – the seven modes of reading) do not overlap. In other words, they are two different notions and have
different criteria. It is worthwhile to note a number of matters with regards to ‘the seven dialects’:
(i) At times, a dialect (harf) may represent a mode of reading (qirā’ah) but it is not always the case and is not vice versa.
(ii) The expression ‘seven dialects’ occurs in the prophetic tradition: (unzila al-qur’anu ‘ala sab’ati ahrufin
– The Qur’an was revealed with seven dialectal forms.) “The
definition of the term ahruf has been an area of much scholarly debate and is encompassed in the general works of the Qur’an. The forms corresponded to the dialects of the following seven tribes: Quraysh, Yemen, Hawāzin, Kinānah, Thaqīf, Tamīm and Huthayl. The revelation of the Qur’an in seven different ahruf made its memorization and recitation much easier for the different tribes. At the same time, the Qur’an defied them to produce one surah similar to it in their own dialect so that they would not protest against the incomprehensibility” (Rippon, 1988:34). However, the expression (sab’ah – seven) does not necessarily mean ‘seven’ as it was customary among the Arabs to use this expression (sab’ah) for exaggeration to mean ‘many’ but not specifically ‘seven’.
(iii) Qur’anic Arabic was the dialect of the Quraish tribe as this was the dialect of the Prophet and his
people, and most importantly, it was the most advanced dialect linguistically and stylistically. This view was supported by ’Uthman’s claim: (nazala al-qur’anu bilisani quraish – The Qur’an was
revealed in the dialect of Quraish.) For instance, other Arabic dialects suffered from phonetic and syntactic irregularities. The tribe of Huthayl, for example, could not pronounce the voiceless pharyngeal fricative [ح – ħ] and replaced it with the voiced pharyngeal fricative [ع –ʕ ], as in: [ħatta
ħi:n] – for a while, Q37:178) which Huthayl speakers pronounced as: [ʕatta ʕi:n].
Similarly, the tribes of Tamīm and Asad could not pronounce the initial glottal stop (al-hamzah) represented by the symbol [Ɂ] and used to change it to the voiced pharyngeal fricative [ع –ʕ], as in: [Ɂanna] – (indeed) was pronounced as: [ʕanna]. In a similar vein, the tribe of Asad used ungrammatical forms of language, as in: [taɁlamu:n] instead of the grammatical form [taʕlamu:n] – you (plural) know).
(iv) The expression (sab’ah – seven) also means: ‘seven topics or seven disciplines which the Qur’an
recurrently refers to, such as: monotheism, prophethood, eschatology, reward and punishment, the allowed and prohibited, parables and similitudes, admonition, clear and ambiguous, abrogating and abrogated, and jurisprudential matters.’
(v) The claim that one can exchange the ayah-final set of epithets with another set of epithets since all the
epithets are descriptive expressions of God and are all His names. Thus, there is no harm to replace the
ayah-final set of epithets (ghafurun rahīm – forgiving and merciful) by (sami’un basīr – hearing and
seeing). This claim is linguistically and stylistically flawed. An in-depth text linguistic analysis of
Qur’anic discourse can reveal that ayah-final set of epithets are context-sensitive and do not occur
haphazardly at the end of the ayah. Each epithet is semantically tied up to its context. For more details,
see Abdul-Raof (2005).
Source: Phonological Features in Qiraat
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