Ibn Mujahid

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.