Thread by @PhDniX

In the recitation of the Quran, generally 7 readings tradition are accepted as canonical and most consider an additional 3 after that as canonical as well. Today, for each reader 2 canonical transmitters are accepted, but this was not always the case. A thread on transmitters.🧵

If one looks at how the readings are taught today, we find that there is a fairly strict two-transmitter canon. Transmissions outside of these two, even when transmitting from one of the canonical seven, are generally not recognised as canonical and it's very rare to hear it.

But how was this at the time that the 7 were canonized by Ibn Mujāhid in the late 3rd or early 4th century? Did he have the two transmitter system in mind? Not at all! In fact he records many, many more strands of transmission for several of the seven readers.

Nāfiʿ is an especially impressive case. While Ibn Mujāhid does report the now canonical Warš and Qālūn he reports 13 other direct students. For ʿĀṣim it is a lot less extreme, but there we find a third transmission path besides the canonical two, that of al-Mufaḍḍal.

What exactly makes a "transmitter" is somewhat undefined. While in the case of Nāfiʿ and ʿĀṣim the canonical transmitters are direct students of the reciter, this is not always the case. Ḫalaf and Ḫallād from Ḥamzah are a generation removed. For Ibn ʿĀmir, two.

In the case of Ibn Kaṯīr, one of the two canonical transmitters (Qunbul) was the direct teacher of Ibn Mujāhid who has 4 (!) generations in between him and Ibn Kaṯīr.

All these transmitters disagree with each other on how to recite to a greater or lesser extent.

It is not so clear that Ibn Mujāhid thought in terms of formal "transmissions" as we later do. While for some transmissions it is possible to get a full image of how that transmitter recited, many transmissions are only referred to somewhat incompletely.

Ibn Mujāhid traces one of his transmissions of al-Kisāʾī through Nuṣayr, who, in later times receives quite detailed descriptions quite distinct from the two canonical transmitters, but Ibn Mujāhid lacks these details completely. He does not seem to transmit the full system.

As Shady Nasser says in his "Two-Rāwī Canon", it is not so clear whom Ibn Mujāhid considered "transmitters", and which parts are just incidental transmissions; he does not clearly distinguish them, although conceptually the distinction seems to exist somewhat.

In later works the concept of a Transmitter becomes more formalized, and authors start to transmit full recitations of the Quran for each of the paths they cover.

For example, in his Jāmiʿ al-Bayān al-Dānī has 4 transmitters for Nāfiʿ: ʾIsmāʿīl, al-Musayyabī, Qālūn and Warš.

So where does this system of two transmitters come from? Shady Nasser investigates that in his article on the Two-Rāwī Canon. He shows that the first two really show that system is Ibn Ġalbūn (d. 389/998), who in his ʾIršād has this system.

But the system really only rises to popularity with the Andalusian al-Dānī (d. 444/1052-3) when he writes his massively popular Kitāb al-Taysīr fī Qirāʾāt al-Sabʿ, intended as a learners' guide for the readings. It does not seem he ever intended to establish these as canon...

In his much larger work, the Jāmiʿ al-Bayān he covers many more transmission paths, and the Taysīr seems to only have been an attempt to have a simplified system for ease of learning (hence the name Taysīr "simplification").

It is also worth nothing that he does not conceive of al-Dūrī and al-Sūsī as "transmitters", but rather as paths from a single transmitter of ʾAbū ʿAmr, namely al-Yazīdī. The same could be said for Ḥamzah's transmitters, although in that case he is less explicit about that.

Eventually al-Šāṭibī (d. 590/1194) rewrote al-Dānī's Taysīr into a didactic poem, one that is still used today to learn the Quranic recitations. Its unmatched popularity cemented the "Two-transmitter canon" as the de facto standard from that point onwards.

But it is worth appreciating that there were many other transmissions that were recorded in significant detail that one could recite a full reading. Such -- now marginal -- transmissions do show up in Quranic manuscripts, and until a surprisingly late date!

For example, this 15th century manuscript that was recently auctioned clearly reflects the reading of the transmission of Nuṣayr from al-Kisāʾī in its red vocalisation.

christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/…

This is recognizable because of its use of Long plural pronouns like humū when
1. It is he before-last word of a verse (humū kāfirūna#)
2. Stands before a hamzah (lahumū ʾajrun)
3. Stands before a mīm (ġanimtumū min).

This is unique to his transmission.

The development of the canon of two transmitters per eponymous reader, thus, developed quite late (somewhere between the 12th and the 15th century CE), and developed from a purely practical simplification for didactic purposes, not because the "canonical 2" were inherently better

By the time of Ibn al-Jazarī's (d. 833/1429) -- who established the addition of 3 more readers to the canon seven -- the two transmitter canon had become a fait accompli. He gives 2 transmitters for Ḫalaf for purely formal purposes, as he says their transmissions are identical.

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