Matn Tayyibat al-Nashr fi al-Qiraat al-Ashr
- Author died
- 833 AH
- Editions
- Dar al-Huda
Matn Tayyibat al-Nashr fi al-Qiraat al-Ashr (The Pleasant Scent of al-Nashr in the Ten Readings) is a didactic didactic poem on the ten major Quranic readings (al-Qiraat al-Ashr al-Kubra), composed by the Quranic scholar Ibn al-Jazari (751–833 AH / 1350–1429 CE) . It serves as a comprehensive versification of his major reference work, al-Nashr fi al-Qiraat al-Ashr .
Composition and Context
Ibn al-Jazari composed the work in the lands of Rum at the city of Bursa under Ottoman rule during the reign of Sultan Bayezid . As stated in the concluding verses of the poem, he completed it in the middle of Sha'ban 799 AH . In the closing lines, Ibn al-Jazari granted a general transmission authorization (ijaza) for the text to all Quran reciters of his era .
The work condenses the extensive transmission lines of his prose book al-Nashr, providing an accessible, mnemonic verse manual for students seeking to master the variant readings and their individual lines of transmission .
Structure, Meter, and Content
The poem is composed in the rajaz meter (mustaf'ilun repeated six times) and is structured as an alfiyya containing roughly one thousand lines—counted in some records as 1,000 verses and in others as 1,015 verses . Each line carries an independent rhyming end (rawi) .
The work encompasses the ten canonical readers—Nafi' al-Madani, Ibn Kathir al-Makki, Abu 'Amr ibn al-Ala', Ibn 'Amir al-Shami, Asim ibn Abi al-Najud, Hamza al-Zayyat, al-Kisa'i, Abu Ja'far al-Madani, Ya'qub al-Hadrami, and Khalaf al-Bazzar . For each reader, Ibn al-Jazari establishes two primary transmitters (rawis), and for each transmitter two secondary paths (tariqs), further dividing into Maghribi, Mashriqi, Egyptian, and Iraqi lines to encompass approximately one thousand total transmission paths (turuq) .
In setting up the mnemonic code system (rumuz), Ibn al-Jazari followed the convention established by al-Shatibi in Hirz al-Amani wa-Wajh al-Tahani (al-Shatibiyya), expanding upon it with additional symbols to accommodate the three additional readers and the hundreds of newly documented paths, thereby doubling the scope of both al-Shatibiyya and Abu 'Amr al-Dani's al-Taysir .
In addition to the variant readings themselves, the introductory chapters cover:
- The three foundational pillars of valid Quranic recitation (arkan al-qira'a): conformity to Arabic grammar, agreement with the Uthmanic orthography, and soundness of chain of transmission (isnad) .
- The merits of Quranic reciters .
- The points of articulation of letters (makharaj al-huruf) .
- Fundamental rules of tajwid and the principles of stopping and resuming (al-waqf wa-l-ibtida') .
Reception and Commentaries
Due to the vast number of transmission paths included in the text, scholars composed dedicated works of textual editorial verification (tahrirat) to distinguish permissible recitation combinations from impermissible blending of distinct lines .
Prominent commentaries on the work include:
- A concise commentary by the author's son, Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Jazari (d. 859 AH) .
- An extensive commentary by his direct student, Muhibb al-Din Abu al-Qasim al-Nuwayri (d. 857 AH) .
- Later commentaries by Muhammad al-Munir al-Samannudi (d. 1199 AH), Muhammad Mahfuz al-Tarmasi (d. 1338 AH), and Ali Muhammad al-Dabba' (d. 1380 AH) .
The poem was printed in Cairo by Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi in 1369 AH, and an edition edited by Muhammad Tamim al-Zu'bi was published by Dar al-Huda in Medina in 1414 AH .
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