Ibn Mujahid
859 CE–936 CE · Baghdad
Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Musa ibn al-Abbas ibn Mujahid (245-324 AH / 859-936 CE) was a Qur'an scholar of Baghdad, where he was born, studied, taught, and died. He is remembered above all as the man who fixed the canon of the "seven readings" (qira'at) — the seven slightly differing oral traditions of reciting the Qur'an, each going back to an early master-reciter.
In his Kitab al-Sab'a ("The Book of the Seven"), Ibn Mujahid selected seven recognized reciters from the main centers of early Islamic learning — Nafi' of Medina, Ibn Kathir of Mecca, Abu 'Amr of Basra, Ibn 'Amir of Damascus, and the three Kufans 'Asim, Hamza, and al-Kisa'i — and presented their readings as the accepted set. Readings outside this group he classed as shadhdh ("isolated," non-canonical). Sources report he enjoyed the backing of two Abbasid viziers, Ibn 'Isa and Ibn Muqla, which helped give his selection official weight around 322-324 AH.
Two reciters who recited grammatically defensible variants without an accepted chain of transmission — Ibn Miqsam (tried 322 AH) and Ibn Shanabudh (tried 323 AH) — were prosecuted and made to recant in cases in which Ibn Mujahid is reported to have been involved. Scholarly tradition, following the work of Louis Massignon, also holds that his testimony on heretical Qur'anic interpretation figured in reopening the trial of the mystic al-Hallaj. The exact reasons he settled on seven readings rather than more or fewer remain debated.
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BaghdadIraq
What they did here
Ibn Mujahid was born in Baghdad (245 AH / 859-860 CE) and, by the consistent account of the biographical sources, lived his whole life there. He studied Qur'an and hadith in the city, learning the reading-traditions from teachers including Qunbul and Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Dajuni, and went on to head the leading circle of Qur'an readers in the Abbasid capital. It was in Baghdad that he composed Kitab al-Sab'a and that the trials of Ibn Miqsam (322 AH) and Ibn Shanabudh (323 AH) took place. He died there on 20 Sha'ban 324 AH (13 July 936 CE). No reliable source records significant travel or residence elsewhere, so the journey is, as attested, a single city.
About Baghdad
Major Mizrahi center; home of Yosef Hayyim (Ben Ish Chai).
Across the traditions, in Baghdad at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Ibn Mujahid’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Ibn Mujahid’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Jewish world
Buddhist world
Works
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