Revisiting Ibn Mujāhid's Position on the Seven Canonical Readings: Ibn ʿĀmir's Problematic Reading of kun fa-yakūna

Abstract

In this article, I argue that Ibn Mujāhid (d. 324/936) approached the variant readings of the Qur'an (qirāʾāt) from the perspective of legal rulings (aḥkām) as opposed to later scholars who treated qirāʾāt as ḥadīth transmissions. I also suggest that the concept of the tawātur of the seven (and ten) canonical Readings was invented in the post-Ibn Mujāhid era but retroactively projected onto his system. To support this argument, I carry out a structural comparison between Ibn Mujāhid's Kitāb al-Sabʿa fī’l-qirāʾāt and al-Ṭabarī’s Ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ. I then discuss the literature of ʿilal al-qirāʾāt (‘the justification/vindication of the Qur'anic Readings’), and demonstrate with three detailed examples Ibn Mujāhid's pragmatic approach to the variant readings of the Qur'an, one which is fundamentally distinct from the ideological views of later Muslim scholars.