شرح قواعد المواطن في أصول القراء

Sharh Qawa'id al-Baqari fi Usul al-Qurra'

A concise classical commentary on the principles of the Seven Canonical Qurʾānic Readings, by the reciter and scholar Sulṭān ibn Nāṣir al-Jubūrī (d. 1138 AH). The work is a commentary upon al-Qawāʿid al-Muqarrarah wa’l-Fawāʾid al-Muḥarrarah, better known as al-Qawāʿid al-Baqariyyah, of the eminent Egyptian master of Qirāʾāt Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn Qāsim al-Baqarī (1018–1111 AH). Al-Baqarī was a prominent teacher of Qurʾānic recitation in seventeenth-century Egypt, and his Qawāʿid became a compact manual setting out the recurring principles governing the readings of the Seven.

Al-Baqarī’s original text concentrates upon the uṣūl al-qirāʾāt: the general rules which recur throughout the Qurʾān in the readings of Nāfiʿ, Ibn Kathīr, Abū ʿAmr, Ibn ʿĀmir, ʿĀṣim, Ḥamzah and al-Kisāʾī and their transmitters. Among the subjects encountered are idghām, madd and qaṣr, the treatment of hamzah, imālah, rules relating to rāʾ, sukūn and tanwīn, and waqf, together with examples illustrating how the respective readers apply these principles.

Al-Jubūrī’s commentary makes the compact original considerably more accessible. He provides biographical introductions to the seven readers and their transmitters, explains al-Baqarī’s rules and terminology, and supplements the examples supplied in the matn with further Qurʾānic examples. The result is a useful intermediate text: more explanatory than the concise Qawāʿid al-Baqariyyah itself, while remaining focused on the practical principles necessary for understanding the differences between the Seven Readings.

Of additional value, the Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah volume is printed together with Kitāb al-Idghām al-Kabīr attributed to the great Basran reader Abū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ (d. 154 AH). This supplementary text distinguishes idghām kabīr from idghām ṣaghīr and then treats the former in detail. The edition concludes with an index identifying 84 Qurʾānic locations involving idghām kabīr, making the appended work particularly useful for students studying the reading of Abū ʿAmr.

Together, the two texts provide students of Qirāʾāt with a compact introduction to the recurring principles of the Seven Readers, accompanied by a specialised treatment of one of the most distinctive features of Abū ʿAmr’s reading. It is particularly suitable for readers who have already acquired the fundamentals of Tajwīd and are progressing into the formal study of the Seven Qirāʾāt.

The Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, Beirut edition has the commentary edited by Hanāʾ al-Ḥimṣī, while al-Idghām al-Kabīr is edited by Anas ibn Muḥammad Ḥasan Mahrah.