الجامع في القراءات العشر وقراءة الأعمش للإمام أبي الحسن علي الخياط-الغوثاني

al-Jami' fi al-Qira'at al-'Ashr wa-Qira'at al-A'mash lil-Imam Abi al-Hasan 'Ali al-Khayyat

An important early source in the science of Qurʾānic Readings, by the Baghdadi master of Qirāʾāt Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Fāris al-Khayyāṭ (d. c. 450–452 AH). Commonly known as Jāmiʿ Ibn Fāris, the work gathers the readings of the Ten Readers together with the reading of al-Aʿmash, and is especially significant because it belongs to the formative period of Qirāʾāt literature several centuries before Ibn al-Jazarī. Ibn al-Jazarī himself lists the Jāmiʿ among his direct source-books for al-Nashr fī al-Qirāʾāt al-ʿAshr and records his chain of transmission for it.

The author, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Khayyāṭ al-Baghdādī, was an early fifth-century authority in Qirāʾāt. His Jāmiʿ is particularly noteworthy for treating the Ten Qirāʾāt at a relatively early date, alongside the reading of the Kūfan reciter Sulaymān al-Aʿmash (d. 148 AH). It therefore preserves a broader body of transmitted reading material than works confined to the Seven, and provides valuable evidence for the state of the discipline before the later standardisation represented by works such as Ibn al-Jazarī’s al-Nashr.

The book presents both the general principles (uṣūl) of the readers and the individual differences occurring throughout the Qurʾān (farsh al-ḥurūf), documenting the transmitted variants and their respective lines of transmission. Its importance is consequently not merely practical. It is also an important source for the isnāds, ṭuruq and textual history of the Qirāʾāt, preserving transmission material from the Baghdadi school of recitation that subsequently fed into the great encyclopaedic works of the discipline.

Its relationship with Ibn al-Jazarī is particularly significant. When compiling al-Nashr, Ibn al-Jazarī did not know al-Jāmiʿ merely as a bibliographical citation: he explicitly states that he transmitted the work through his own chain, placing it among the recognised source-books upon which the transmission architecture of al-Nashr rests. This makes Jāmiʿ Ibn Fāris valuable for advanced students studying the ṭuruq underlying al-Nashr, as well as researchers tracing the development of the Ten Readings from the earlier manuals to Ibn al-Jazarī’s synthesis.

The modern publication of this text is also significant because it brings into print a work that had long remained in manuscript. The Dār al-Ghawthānī edition has been critically edited and studied by the renowned contemporary authority on Qirāʾāt Dr. Ayman Rushdī Suwayd, who has devoted considerable attention to editing early source-texts used by Ibn al-Jazarī. The text has been carefully vocalised, with useful annotations added by the editor, making a difficult early Qirāʾāt source considerably more accessible to contemporary specialists and students.

This is therefore primarily a work for the advanced student and specialist in Qirāʾāt rather than an introductory manual. Its particular value lies in its antiquity, its preservation of the Ten Readings together with al-Aʿmash, and—above all—its place among the early source-texts subsequently relied upon by Ibn al-Jazarī in al-Nashr.

The Dār al-Ghawthānī lil-Dirāsāt al-Qurʾāniyyah edition, critically edited by Dr. Ayman Rushdī Suwayd, was first published in 1442 AH / 2021 CE in one large hardback volume of 776 pages, fully or extensively vocalised and printed in two colours