الإيجاز في قراءة الأئمة السبعة بالعراق والشام والحجاز للإمام أبي محمد سبط الخياط

al-Ijaz fi Qira'at al-A'immah al-Sab'ah bi-al-'Iraq wa-al-Sham wa-al-Hijaz lil-Imam Abi Muhammad Sibt al-Khayyat

An important early work on the Seven Canonical Qurʾānic Readings by the renowned Baghdadi master of Qirāʾāt and grammarian Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad, known as Sibṭ al-Khayyāṭ (464–541 AH). Regarded as one of the leading authorities on Qirāʾāt in Iraq in his age, Sibṭ al-Khayyāṭ authored a number of works in the discipline which later became important sources for Imām Ibn al-Jazarī in his monumental al-Nashr fī al-Qirāʾāt al-ʿAshr. Al-Ījāz is explicitly among the works Ibn al-Jazarī relied upon.

As its title indicates, the work records the readings of the Seven Imāms whose traditions were transmitted through the great centres of Qurʾānic recitation in Iraq, Syria and the Ḥijāz. It belongs to the early source-literature of Qirāʾāt, presenting the transmitted differences of the readers and their narrators rather than functioning as a later explanatory textbook. Its particular importance therefore lies in preserving an early layer of the riwāyāt and ṭuruq of the Seven Readings, material which subsequently entered the broader transmission network documented by Ibn al-Jazarī.

The historical significance of this edition is exceptional. For a long period, al-Ījāz was considered effectively lost, with no manuscript copy known to researchers. The editor, the renowned contemporary Qirāʾāt scholar Dr. Ayman Rushdī Suwayd, subsequently discovered a complete and valuable manuscript copied in 530 AH—only eleven years before Sibṭ al-Khayyāṭ's death and thus during the author's own lifetime. He then subjected this unique manuscript to a full scholarly study and critical edition.

This early date gives the surviving manuscript particular textual value. Rather than reconstructing a lost Qirāʾāt work from quotations in later sources, the edition places before the reader the text of one of the actual source-books standing behind Ibn al-Jazarī's al-Nashr. It consequently allows specialists to compare Ibn al-Jazarī's transmission of particular readings and routes with an early source upon which his own great synthesis was based.

Al-Ījāz is therefore especially valuable for advanced students and researchers interested in the Seven Qirāʾāt, the ṭuruq of transmission, the early Baghdadi school of Qurʾānic recitation, and the textual sources of Ibn al-Jazarī's al-Nashr. Together with the other early Qirāʾāt works being recovered and edited from manuscript, it provides a window into the discipline as it was transmitted several centuries before Ibn al-Jazarī systematised its enormous body of material.

The Dār al-Ghawthānī lil-Dirāsāt al-Qurʾāniyyah edition has been critically studied and edited by Dr. Ayman Rushdī Suwayd and represents the first publication of the work from its unique manuscript. It was published in 1442 AH / 2021 CE in one hardback volume of 330 pages, printed in three colours on cream paper

كتابٌ اعتمَدَهُ الإمامُ ابنُ الجَزَريِّ رحمه الله في كتابِهِ "نَشْرِ القِراءاتِ العَشرِ" كأصلٍ من أُصولِهِ، نُقَلِّبُ صَفَحَاتِهِ، ونُمْعِنُ النظَرَ في عِباراتِهِ، لِنَجُوبَ رِحابَ عِلْمِ القِراءاتِ القُرآنيةِ مع هذا الإمامِ العَظيمِ.حيثُ بدَأَ فَذَكَرَ أسانيدَهُ، ثمَّ أُصُولَ القُرَّاءِ، ثمَّ المَسائِلَ الخِلافيَّةَ. وتَصَدَّرَ لهذا السِّفْرِ المَاتِعِ فضيلةُ الدكتور أيمن رشدي سويد حفظه الله، فقدَّمَهُ لِأَهلِ القرآنِ مُحَقَّقًا على النحْوِ المُتَّبعِ في الدراساتِ العُليا الجامعيَّةِ، مُقابَلًا على نُسخةٍ نَفِيسةٍ مَكْتُوبةٍ في حياةِ المُصَنِّفِ تَعُودُ إلى سنةِ 530 هـ بعدَ أن كان في حَيِّزِ المفقودِ، كما أَرْفَقَهُ جداولَ ضَمَّنها أسانِيدَ كتابِ "الإِيجازِ" إلى مُصَنِّفِهِ الإمامِ سِبْطِ الخَيَّاطِ رحمه الله، ممَّا زادَ تَحقيقَ الكتابِ قِيمةً علميَّةً وفائدةً جليَّةً.