النهاية في شرح الغاية في القراءات

al-Nihayah fi Sharh al-Ghayah fi al-Qira'at

An important early commentary in the science of Qurʾānic Readings, by the distinguished scholar of Qirāʾāt Tāj al-Qurrāʾ Maḥmūd ibn Ḥamzah ibn Naṣr al-Kirmānī (d. after 535 AH). The work is a commentary upon al-Ghāyah fī al-Qirāʾāt al-ʿAshr of the eminent reciter Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn Ibn Mahrān al-Naysābūrī (d. 381 AH), an especially significant early work in the development of the literature of the canonical readings.

Ibn Mahrān’s al-Ghāyah occupies an important historical position because it was among the earliest independent works to extend the study of Qirāʾāt beyond the Seven Readers gathered by Ibn Mujāhid (d. 324/325 AH) in his famous Kitāb al-Sabʿah. Ibn Mihrān presented the readings of the Ten in a highly concise form. Al-Kirmānī’s al-Nihāyah was composed to open up this compressed text, clarify its difficult passages and explain the wealth of information contained within it.

The work is particularly interesting because its transmission framework does not correspond exactly to the later standard presentation of the Ten Readings. Alongside the readings treated by Ibn Mihrān, al-Kirmānī adds the choice (ikhtiyār) of the celebrated philologist and reciter Abū Ḥātim Sahl ibn Muḥammad al-Sijistānī (d. 255 AH). The book therefore preserves an important stage in the history of Qirāʾāt literature before the later systems of transmission became dominant.

Al-Kirmānī does considerably more than simply expand Ibn Mihrān’s terse expressions. He supplies valuable information concerning Ibn Mihrān’s teachers and students, including details which the editor notes are difficult to find elsewhere, and draws upon a remarkably broad range of earlier Qirāʾāt literature. This is one of the work’s greatest historical values: a number of the books from which al-Kirmānī quotes are no longer extant, so that al-Nihāyah preserves material from portions of the early Qirāʾāt tradition that would otherwise have been lost.

Another distinctive feature is al-Kirmānī’s treatment of the phonetic and linguistic phenomena underlying Qurʾānic recitation. According to the detailed study accompanying the critical edition, he discusses certain phonetic questions connected with the readings with unusual thoroughness and takes care to gather the Qurʾānic examples of the linguistic phenomenon under discussion. At the same time, his writing remains notably concise, giving the reader the necessary explanation without turning the commentary into an excessively expansive work.

The work is therefore valuable on several levels: as a commentary clarifying Ibn Mihrān’s al-Ghāyah; as a source for the early history and transmission of the Qirāʾāt; as a repository of quotations from lost or unavailable works; and as evidence for the manner in which scholars of the fifth and sixth Islamic centuries analysed the linguistic and phonetic dimensions of Qurʾānic recitation. It is especially suited to advanced students and researchers in Qirāʾāt, the history of Qurʾānic transmission, Arabic phonetics and the early literature of the Qurʾānic sciences.

The Markaz Tafsīr lil-Dirāsāt al-Qurʾāniyyah edition is the first critical publication of the work, prepared by Dr. Ḥusayn Khalaf Ṣāliḥ al-Ḥilw. His edition originated as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Tikrit, supervised by the renowned Qirāʾāt scholar Prof. Ghānim Qaddūrī al-Ḥamad, and was established from a unique surviving manuscript. The dissertation was awarded with distinction in 2012.

The book was published by Markaz Tafsīr in 1442 AH / 2021 CE