A specialised study of the problematic or apparently difficult passages within the Ten Canonical Qurʾānic Readings, by contemporary Qurʾānic scholar Dr. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAlī al-Ḥarbī. Originally submitted as a Master's thesis to the Department of Qurʾān and Sunnah at Umm al-Qurā University in Makkah, the work addresses those farshī variants whose meaning, grammar, morphology or Arabic usage has prompted questions among exegetes, grammarians and scholars of Qirāʾāt.
The term al-qirāʾāt al-farshiyyah here refers to the individual words and expressions in particular verses over which the canonical readers differ, as opposed to the recurring general principles (uṣūl) that apply throughout the Qurʾān. The author's concern is specifically with those variants which have been regarded as problematic from the standpoint of language, interpretation or grammatical analysis, explaining precisely where the apparent difficulty lies and then examining the scholarly explanations by which it may be resolved.
The book opens with a substantial theoretical introduction to the discipline of Qirāʾāt. Al-Ḥarbī discusses the definition, origins and historical development of the science, the three well-known conditions governing an accepted reading, and introduces the Ten Readers and their transmitters. He then devotes an entire section to Tawjīh al-Qirāʾāt itself: its definition and terminology, the reasons scholars began composing works in the discipline, its historical stages of development, and its literature. Particularly useful for researchers is his survey of approximately 78 earlier books and academic studies concerned with the explanation and linguistic justification of the readings.
The author next investigates the concept of mushkil al-qirāʾāt—what exactly makes a canonical reading appear problematic—and establishes five criteria by which such difficulty may be identified. This provides the methodological foundation for the principal part of the book, which occupies more than two-thirds of the study and proceeds from the beginning of the Qurʾān to its end, examining individual problematic readings in their Qurʾānic order.
For each passage, al-Ḥarbī cites the relevant verse, identifies the differences among the Ten Readers according to the transmission framework of al-Shāṭibī's Ḥirz al-Amānī and Ibn al-Jazarī's al-Durrah al-Muḍiyyah, and then isolates the particular reading in which the difficulty arises. He explains the nature and origin of the objection, identifies earlier scholars who raised or discussed it where applicable, and then brings together the various explanations offered by specialists in Tafsīr, Arabic and Qirāʾāt. His sources include major works such as al-Zamakhsharī's al-Kashshāf, Ibn ʿAṭiyyah's al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, Abū Ḥayyān's al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, al-Ālūsī's Rūḥ al-Maʿānī and Ibn ʿĀshūr's al-Taḥrīr wa’l-Tanwīr.
An important purpose of the work is also to address instances in which an established reading has been criticised, weakened or declared linguistically objectionable because its grammatical construction or meaning was misunderstood. Rather than merely asserting the validity of the reading, al-Ḥarbī traces the linguistic evidence and earlier scholarly discussion, examining questions of naḥw, ṣarf, Arabic usage, tafsīr and semantic interpretation to demonstrate how the reading may properly be understood. He also offers his own analysis, responses and preferences where appropriate.
This makes Tawjīh Mushkil al-Qirāʾāt al-ʿAshriyyah al-Farshiyyah particularly valuable for advanced students of Qirāʾāt, Tafsīr and Arabic grammar. Rather than being a general manual of the Ten Readings, it focuses upon precisely those passages where Qirāʾāt intersects with difficult questions of Arabic and exegesis, gathering discussions that would otherwise have to be located across numerous works of Tafsīr, grammar, lexicography and tawjīh al-qirāʾāt.
