Idris an Khalaf

Idris al-Haddad transmitted the independent reading of Khalaf ibn Hisham, recorded here with Baghdad as its reading centre. Khalaf is one of the more unusual figures in the qira'at register: classical sources identify him as one of the two transmitters of Hamza al-Kufi's seven canon reading and, separately, as a reader in his own right whose own transmitted variants Ibn al-Jazari recognised as the tenth of the canonical ten readings. This entry records Idris's transmission of that second, independent reading, distinct from his transmission of Hamza.

The surviving record for this transmission is comparatively sparse next to the seven canon readings, which is typical of the three readings Ibn al-Jazari added to reach the ten: they are attested by fewer surviving works of detailed commentary than the readings Ibn Mujahid had already canonised five centuries earlier. What is recorded is that the reading is actively taught and studied rather than known only through citation, and that the takbir plays no part in it.

Idris's transmission carries the standing of the ten, the wider canon Ibn al-Jazari fixed in the fifteenth century al-Nashr, built on the same tests of chain, breadth and conformity to an Uthmanic codex that had governed the original seven, and it stands beside Ishaq's transmission as the second of the two riwayat through which Khalaf's own reading survives.