The Second Canonization of the Quran (324/936)

Shady Nasser

Hardback

9789004401976

Ibn Mujahid and the Founding of the Seven Readings

In The Second Canonization of the Qurʾān, Nasser studies the transmission and reception of the Qurʾānic text and its variant readings through the work of Ibn Mujāhid (d. 324/936), the founder of the system of the Seven Eponymous Readings of the Qurʾān. The overarching project aims to track and study the scrupulous revisions the Qurʾān underwent, in its recited, oral form, through the 1,400-year journey towards a final, static, and systematized text. 

For the very first time, the book offers a complete and detailed documentation of all the variant readings of the Qurʾān as recorded by Ibn Mujāhid. 

Contents

1: Preliminaries. The Second Canonization of the Qurʾān 

2: Survival of the fittest 

2.1: The Irregular readings of the Canonical Readings 

2.2: Sixty-Six Problematic Transmissions in Ibn Mujāhid’s Kitāb al-Sabʿa 

3: Ḥadīth and Qurʾān rijāl criticism 

4: Orality revisited. The Written Transmission of Qirāʾāt 

4.1: The Regional Codices 

4.2: Early different forms of Qirāʾāt transmission

5: The Nature of the Qurʾānic variants 

5.1: Standardization of Arabic and the Qurʾānic text through the principles of Qurʾānic recitation (uṣūl al-Qirāʾa) 

5.2: The individual variants (farsh) of the Qurʾān