Thread by @PhDniX

ʾAbū Muḥammad Yaḥyā b. al-Mubārak al-Yazīdī (d. 202 AH) was a Basran reader and grammarian, who is most well-known as being the most prominent transmitter of the canonical Basran reader ʾAbū ʿAmr. He also composed his own personal reading which differed minimally from ʾAbu ʿAmr

Al-Ḏahabī relates an elegant 5 verse didactic poem composed by ʾAbū ʿAbd aḷḷāh al-Mawṣūlī Šuʿlah, which lists the places where al-Yazīdī differs from ʾAbū ʿAmr (and thus also differs from how he taught ʾAbū ʿAmr's reading to al-Dūrī and al-Sūsī). Let's look at the poem!

Metre: Ṭawīl.
ʾalā ḫuḏ limā ḫtāra l-yazīdī li-nafsihī
"Truly, take what al-Yazīdī chose for himself"
(Note al-Yazīdī instead of al-Yazidiyyu to fit the metre).

ḫālafa fīhi l-māziniyya muḥarrarā
"he disagreed with ʾAbū ʿAmr (al-Māzinī) as it is recorded in writing."

li-bāriʾkumū maʿ naḥwi yaʾmurkumū kaḏā šabīhu yuʾaddi-h kullahū mušbaʿan qarā"
"For bāriʾ-kum (Q2:54) and with it what is like yaʾmur-kum (2:67), like that what is similar to yuʾaddi-h (Q3:75), all he read with a full vowel"
(lot's of funky poetic licenses for rhyme and metre)

ʾAbū ʿAmr pronounces some cases of stem-final -i and -u either ultrashort or not at all when it precedes -kum or -hum. Thus: bāriʾĭkum/bāriʾkum, yaʾmurŭ-kum/yaʾmur-kum. Al-Yazīdī regularizes this, and follows the pattern found with all other canonical readers.

Moreover, ʾAbū ʿAmr, when he encounters a final-weak jussive followed by a third person masculine pronoun, he pronounces the pronoun not as -hī but as -h. Al-Yazīdī reads these with a full vowel: yuʾaddihī (Q3:75), nuʾtihī (Q3:145). Other canonical readers have a long vowel too.

wa-lam yatasanna ḥḏif bi-waṣli maʿa qtadih
"As for 'lam yatasanna' (Q2:259), remove (the hāʾ) in continuous speech, together with iqtadih (Q6:90)."

wa-lam yusmi yawman tarǧiʿūna muqarrarā
"And he made passive 'yawman tarǧiʿuna' (Q2:281), decidedly"

lam yatasanna(h) and iqtadi(h) are interesting quirks in the rasm of the Quran, as they have a final hāʾ (لم يتسنه and اقتده) while all other final weak jussives/imperatives lack that. ʾAbū ʿAmr treats the hāʾ as part of the root, and always pronounces it.

The Kufan readers Ḥamzah and al-Kisāʾī interpret these final hāʾs (imho, correctly) as a pausal phenomenon, and drop the hāʾ in continuous speech. Al-Yazīdī follows them in this assessment.

ʾAbū ʿAmr reads Q2:281 yawman tarǧiʿūna, al-Yazīdī follows the consensus turǧaʿūna.

wa-maʿḏiratun naṣbun ʿuzayru munawwanun
"'Maʿḏiratun' (Q7:164) is accusative, and 'ʿUzayr' (Q9:30) takes tanwīn"

wa-nanfuḫu maǧhūlun bi-ṭāhā taḥarrarā
"nanfuḫu (Q20:102) is passive in Sūrat Ṭāhā", it has been recorded."

So far, all of al-Yazīdī choices brought him closer to the general consensus or standard grammar. But the reading maʿḏiratun as maʿḏiratan is something he shares only with Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim.

ʿuzayrun instead of ʿuzayru is something he shares with ʿĀṣim and al-Kisāʾī.

ʾAbū ʿAmr is the only canonical reader to read nanfuḫu in Q20:102, once again al-Yazīdī follows the majority reading in the passive: yunfaḫu.

wa-ḫāfiḍatun wa-t-talwu naṣbun ʿibādi lā bi-ḥaḏfi bimā ʾātākumu mdudhu wa-ḫburā
"And 'ḫāfidatun' and what follows (rāfiʿatun) (Q56:3) are accusative; '(yā-)ʿibād-i lā' (Q43:68) is with removal (of the final yāʾ), 'bi-mā ʾātā-kum' (Q57:23), lengthen it, and know it well!

ḫāfiḍatan wa-rāfiʿatan (Q56:3) is the only reading of al-Yazīdī that is not attested among any of the canonical 7 or 10 readers. It is marked as a secondary reading in Arabe 333(d).

For Q43:68 ʾAbū ʿAmr goes against the rasm يعباد لا and read yā-ʿibād-ī lā. Yazīdī follows the rasm, and thus reads yā-ʿibād-i, which is once again the majority reading.

For Q56:23 ʾAbū ʿAmr is the only one to read ʾatākum, al-Yazīdī follows the majority reading ʾātākum.

So now you too know the reading of al-Yazīdī! (if you knew the reading of ʾAbū ʿAmr to begin with😬)

What's interesting about this reading is that it is considered "šāḏḏ" = "irregular", but when you look at it, there is no obvious reason why this would be the case.

For a reading to be valid, the discipline argues that it needs to comply to three conditions:
1. A good chain of transmission
2. Adherence to the rasm
3. Follow proper Arabic grammar.

There are all kinds of ways to take issue with these conditions, but al-Yazīdī follows all.

1. Al-Yazīdī's chain of transmission is unimpeachable, after all, he himself transmits from ʾAbū ʿAmr, and his students become the now widely accepted canonical transmitters of that reading.

The fact that he made some personal choices in his reading should not affect this.

After all, Ḫalaf canonical transmitter of Ḥamzah also has his own selection of readings where he deviates from Ḥamzah, and that reading was later taken into the canon of the 10 readers by Ibn al-Ǧazarī.

2. Al-Yazīdī technically adheres to the rasm slightly better than ʾAbū ʿAmr by reading yā-ʿibād-i lā instead of yā-ʿibād-ī lā. So that certainly could not disqualify his reading.

3. Every one of his readings is attested among other canonical readers, so if their Arabic grammar is valid, so is al-Yazīdī's reading. The only exception is the accusatives in Q56:3, where he stands alone. But al-Farrāʾ accepts this reading here (albeit with some reservation).

In other words: the canonical readers (arguably) all agree with the three conditions of a 'valid' reading, but that does not mean that the inverse is true. Non-canonical readers can still be 'valid' by these conditions, and still be non-canonical.

This is not true for ALL non-canonical readers. The ʾisnād and grammar of al-ʾAʿmaš (direct teacher of Ḥamzah) is fine, but his reading occasionally deviates from the Uthmanic rasm. So by the 2nd condition, it is an invalid non-canonical reading.

That al-Yazīdī did not make it into the 'canon', then, is more of an accident of history than anything else. Although it also makes good sense from a practical perspective: What on earth would the use be for canonizing a reading that almost completely identical to ʾAbū ʿAmr's?

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