Ibn Wardan an Abu Jafar

Isa ibn Wardan transmitted the reading of Abu Jafar Yazid ibn al-Qa'qa', recorded here with Medina as its reading centre, and stands beside Ibn Jammaz's transmission as the second of the two riwayat through which Abu Jafar's reading, one of the three that complete the canonical ten, survives.

Ibn Wardan's transmission recites the basmala between suras, holds detached vowel lengthening to two counts against connected lengthening of four or five, and always sounds the closing mim of plural pronouns with a connecting vowel. The takbir is not part of the reading, and verse numbering follows the Medinan count. Where the surviving record distinguishes Ibn Wardan's transmission from Ibn Jammaz's, the difference is narrower than between the riwayat of most of the seven readings; the two chains largely converge on the features recorded here.

Abu Jafar's reading, and both of the transmissions that carry it, entered the canonical register only with Ibn al-Jazari's fifteenth century al-Nashr, which extended the seven Ibn Mujahid had selected five centuries earlier to a full ten on the same tests of soundness, chain and conformity to an Uthmanic text. Ibn Wardan's reading is accordingly classed as mutawatir among the ten, a standing below none of the seven in its own soundness but reflecting the later date at which the wider canon was fixed rather than any weakness particular to this transmission.