The Partial Eclipse of Seven Full Moons.

• Author: Laher, Suheil

Those savants who passed on God's word to us So fresh and sweet: may God grant them fine meed! Among them seven bright full moons rose up, With brilliance and integrity, to lead. (1) Shady Nasser's The Second Canonization of the Quran (324/936) is an in-depth study of Ibn Mujahid's (d. 324/?) Kitdb al-Sab'a, a pivotal and influential book in the genre of documentation of quranic variant readings (qird'at, sg. qira'a). The title might suggest that it discusses doctrines of authority and theological legitimation, but it is actually about the mechanisms by which certain readings became acceptable or popular. Granted, there is an interplay between codification and proliferation, but they are not identical.

The book as a whole contains valuable analysis of the early history of quranic readings, and gives food for thought for those with an unrealistic, overly idealized view of the transmission of the qira'at. It contains a wealth of information presented to the English reader for the first time--Nasser rightly observes that the book is a significant contribution (at least for a Western audience) to the academic literature on transmitters of the qira'at and their activities--and it provides detailed documentation of both the usill (general principles) and farsh (one-off variants in the quranic text) of the seven readings as presented by Ibn Mujahid.

Three major claims are argued in the book (pp. 3-4):

1. The concept of "static, uniform, single-authored readings" is a myth that was backprojected by later scholars, and the systems of recitation associated with the eponymous reciters were developed retroactively in an attempt to suppress variants;

2. The shawadhdh (noncanonical) readings were not only those that diverged from the 'Uthmanic skeletal text (rasm), but also those that diverged from the consensus of the collective community (of elite reciters, or qurra');

3. Contrary to the dominant Islamic narrative that privileges the oral over the written, the transmission of the qira'dt was "heavily dependent" from very early on (late first century) on written transmission, for which oral corroboration was retroactively applied.

   Nasser omits mentioning a fourth contribution of the book, namely, that he has deduced how the qira'at underwent an organic selection process through a complex interplay of geography, tutelage, and corroboration. In my estimation, this analysis (discussed in chap, two) is a veritable contribution--and the most important one--of this book to scholarship in the field.

   Nasser's book consists of five chapters (spanning about 250 pages), plus an extensive appendix ("Comprehensive Table of Quranic Variants") of over four hundred pages. I follow with a discussion of each chapter, and conclude with an excursus on the reliability of the quranic reciters, in which I argue against Nasser's characterizations of some of them.

   CHAPTER BREAKDOWN

   In chapter one, Nasser outlines his thoughts about the oral transmission of the Quran, viz.. it was never a static corpus, and although there is no evidence that intentional changes were made, the reciters nevertheless engaged in correction and standardization of the defective script of the 'Uthmanic codex. This, along with the imperfections of human memory and zeal (on the part of some) to bolster theological or legal arguments, led to slow, subtle changes, eventually leading to a stable text by way of a collective, communal process that spanned generations. Nasser is interested in how this process occurred, and shelves (for the purposes of the current book) the question of why.

   Nasser divides the history of quranic transmission into "five critical phases of canonization" (p. 5): (1) from the caliph 'Uthman (d. 35h) to Ibn Mujahid, (2) Ibn Mujahid's project, (3) al-Dani (d. 444ft) and al-Shatibl (d. 590ft), (4) Ibn al-Jazari (d. 833ft), and (5) the 1923 Cairo printed edition (of Hafs's reading). Nasser seems to use the term "canonization" rather loosely. A better term would have perhaps been "stages of codification," for otherwise we are left, for example, with the unseemly inference that a standard, modern printed Quran in the rendition of Qalun or Warsh (widely recited in North Africa) has gone through only four stages of canonization (unless we broaden the scope of the fifth stage to allow inclusion of similar, official printing projects in North Africa). Furthermore, Nasser's fourth stage does not distinguish between Ibn al-Jazarl's two, rather different projects. In al-Durra al-rnudiyya, which can be considered an extension of al-Danl's and al-Shatibl's standardization efforts, Ibn al-Jazari extended the pool of readings from seven to ten, following the pattern of al-Dani and al-Shatibl in having two canonical transmitters (sg. raw!) for each of the additional three readings. In al-Nashr fi al-qira'at al-'ashr, however, his project was to produce documentation for a total of eighty routes (with 980 subroutes) for these ten readings. (2) Regarding Nasser's fifth stage (the production of the 1923 Cairo edition), it may be noted that the wide dissemination of the Hafs qirci'a does not imply subcanonical status for Warsh or Qalun, which, as said, continue to be recited without deprecation by most North African Muslims today, or for readings that are only recited by qira'at specialists. Confusion also arises from a comment in footnote 132 on p. 46, where Nasser remarks that some reciters compiled qira'at manuals that attempted to include readings beyond the ten (such as al-A'mash's) in the canon. Yet the mere existence of books documenting such readings does not prove that the author was trying to set up a rival canon, nor can one find any indication in the prefaces of those books that this is what was being attempted. For example, al-Dimyatl, whom Nasser cites, acknowledged that the additional four readings beyond the ten are anomalous (shadhdh), but that it has nevertheless been deemed acceptable to document (tadwin) them. Chapter one concludes with a list of definitions of technical terms used by Ibn Mujahid--which is useful, especially since (as Nasser mentions) Ibn Mujahid often uses terms that did not end up becoming standard among his successors in the field--as well as notes on the system of transliteration that Nasser follows.

   Chapter two is, in my estimation, the best and most important chapter of the book. Here Nasser discusses how certain "circumstantial elements" (p. 25) were responsible for the ascendance of certain readings and the eventual extinction of others, through an organic process of weeding out some transmitters of qird'dt based on criteria that were "vaguely formulated" (p. 25) by the community of qurra' and which Nasser extracts in the course of the chapter. Beginning with a close study of transmissions of Hafs's rendition of 'Asim's reading, and also citing data for the readings of al-Kisa'I, Abu 'Amr, and Nafi', Nasser outlines six criteria used for weeding out transmitters:

1. Divergence from general or local consensus. Nasser discusses how Hubayra al-Tammar, a transmitter from Hafs, frequently "diverged from the consensus of the transmitters of Hafs," due to either his "imprecision or exercising his own ijtihad." The qurra' were "always vigilant as to what their peers were reciting and disseminating," and were "concerned with verbatim, faithful, and precise transmission between master and disciple" (p. 30); as a result, Hubayra was excluded from canonical status. Divergence from a local or general consensus appears to be the most important criterion for the exclusion of a reciter.

2. Geography and mentorship. Nasser discusses how another of 'Asim's students, Mufaddal, in spite of his prowess in the field of language, was not given canonical status, again because of divergence. He uses the case of Aban al-'Attar to illustrate how the "nature and duration of the mentorship between a teacher and his student played a significant role" (p. 38) in canonization and how this mentorship was influenced by city of domicile.

3. Conflict of interest. The case of al-Kisa'i, who was both a transmitter from Shu'ba and the disseminator of his own qira'a, is used to illustrate how al-Kisa'i's nonspecialization in the reading of Shu'ba (due to being occupied with his own ikhtiyar (3) ) led to his being disqualified as a transmitter from Shu'ba.

4. Specialization. The case of Ahmad al-Hulwanl (d. 250h), who studied all seven of the canonical readings, shows how a reciter spreading himself too thin could lead to his making mistakes, which resulted in his being excluded from the canon by some authorities.

5. Dissemination and association. An examination of eight transmitters from Abu 'Amr shows how qurrd (y) were influenced by other readings circulating in their locale, with the result that they sometimes misattributed variants to various teachers. It also shows that narrators who dedicated their time to teaching quranic recitation were given priority for canonization.

6. Discipline specialism. Some students of Nafi' are discussed here, the philologist al-Asma'i (d. 216h) especially, illustrating that reciters were unlikely to become canonical if their main field of specialty was something other than qird'a.

   We observe that all of these criteria listed are purely epistemic, in the sense that each of them leads to the exclusion of transmitters on the basis of factors that have possibly affected the accuracy of their transmissions. This is worth pointing out, as Nasser's earlier description of them as "circumstantial elements" might suggest that they refer to extraneous and irrelevant factors like political allegiances, personal relationships, and the like, which is clearly not the case.

   The chapter then turns (pp. 60-89) to discuss "sixty-six problematic transmissions of Nan' (4) in order to explore who was responsible for these errors and who held the authority to vet these transmissions. In addition to the three reasons for the emergence of variant...