Ahruf


According to several different hadith, the Quran was revealed in seven Ahruf -- translated variously as "styles", "forms", or "modes". According to Islamic literature all but one type of Quran with one type of ahruf were destroyed by Caliph Uthman around 650 CE to avoid confusion and competition between the different styles.
Sources disagree over what made the different styles different. According to one source,, ahruf were in different "official dialects". Anther source argues the styles had different wordings not dialects. Sources also disagree over whether there were literally seven ahruf, or whether the number was to be "interpreted metaphorically" to indicate a "multiplicity" of variants.
These styles of ahruf are distinct from the recitations of the Qira'at, another, later group of variants of the Quran.

Etymology

There are at least 40 opinions among Muslim scholars on the meaning of the seven ahruf.
According to one Safi al-Shehada, harf in Arabic has a number of meanings:
  1. The border or the edge of something. upon a harf "
  2. A letter or a word, for example, means the letters of the alphabet.
  3. To swerve from the truth, to distort.

    Scriptural basis

One hadith often given as evidence for the ahruf is that of Malik Ibn Anas who reported that the second Rashidun Caliph Umar Ibn al-Khattab said:
"I heard Hisham Ibn Hakim Ibn Hizam reading Surat Al-Furqan in a different way from the one I used to read it, and the Prophet himself had read out this surah to me. Consequently, as soon as I heard him, I wanted to get hold of him. However, I gave him respite until he had finished the prayer. Then I got hold of his cloak and dragged him to the Prophet. I said to him: “I have heard this person reading Surah Al Furqan in a different way from the one you had read it out to me.” The Prophet said: “Leave him alone .” Then he said to Hashim: “Read .” “He read it out in the same way as he had done before me.” the Prophet said: “It was revealed thus.” Then the Prophet asked me to read it out. So I read it out. , he said: “It was revealed thus; this Quran has been revealed in seven Ahruf. You can read it in any of them you find easy from among them."

Other hadith of Muhammad and his companions include:
writes that the Quran continued to be read according to the seven ahruf until midway through Caliph 'Uthman's rule when some confusion arose in the outlying provinces concerning the Quran's recitation. According to Aisha Abdurrahman Bewley, different regions of the new empire followed the different 'ahruf' of different prominent companions of the prophet : "the Syrians followed Ubayy ibn Ka'b, the Kufans followed Abdullah ibn Masud, the people of Hims followed Miqdad ibn Aswad, and the people of Basra followed Abu Musa."
Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman reportedly observing these regional differences and on returning to Madina told Uthman, "Take this umma in hand before they differ about the Book like the Christians and Jews."
Philips writes that Some Arab tribes had begun to boast about the superiority of their ahruf and a rivalry began to develop. At the same time, some new Muslims also began mixing the various forms of recitation out of ignorance.
The "official copies" of the Quran Caliph 'Uthman decided to make were according to the writing conventions of the Quraysh tribe. He send them along with the Quranic reciters to the major centres of Islam. This decision was approved by Companions of the Prophet and all unofficial copies of the Quran were destroyed so that the Quran began to be read in only one harf. Thus, the Quran which is available throughout the world today is written and recited only according to the harf of Quraysh.

Comparison to Qira'at

;Bilal Philips
Bilal Philips writes that "after the seven ahruf were reduced to one", under the direction of Caliph 'Uthman, all of the methods of recitation were based on this mode. Bilal Philips writes that
A Qirâ'ât is for the most part a method of pronunciation used in the recitations of the Qur'an. These methods are different from the seven forms or modes in which the Qur'an was revealed. The seven modes were reduced to one, that of the Quraysh, during the era of Caliph 'Uthman, and all of the methods of recitation are based on this mode. The various methods have all been traced back to the Prophet through a number of Sahaabah who were most noted for their Qur'anic recitations. That is, these Sahaabah recited the Qur'an to the Prophet or in his presence and received his approval. Among them were the following: Ubayy Ibn K'ab, 'Alee Ibn Abi Taalib, Zayd Ibn Thaabit, 'Abdullah Ibn Mas'ud, Abu ad-Dardaa and Abu Musaa al-Ash'aree. Many of the other Sahaabah learned from these masters.
Since the Qirâ'ât "have all been traced back to the Prophet" and there is now only one harf for these Qirâ'ât to use, this suggests the Qirâ'ât were all based on the one remaining harf.
On transmission of Quran, Philips writes that among the next generation of Muslims, there arose many scholars who learned the various methods of recitation from the Sahaabah and taught them to others. Centres of Quranic recitation developed in Medina, Mecca, Kufa, Basra and Syria, leading to the evolution of Quranic recitation into an independent science. By the mid-eighth century CE, there existed many outstanding scholars considered specialists in the field of recitation. Most of their methods of recitations were authenticated by chains of reliable narrators ending with the Prophet.
;Aisha Abdurrahman Bewley
In writing about "The Seven Qira'at of the Quran", Aisha Abdurrahman Bewley suggests some of the diversity of the ahruf lived on in the Qira'at. The "official" Uthmanic mus'haf to "unite the Muslims on a single copy" of the Quran thinned out variation, but because it contained only rasm or a "skeleton" of the Arabic with "no diacriticalmarks", it still allowed for diversity of oral transmission.
The Qurayshi dialect was favoured in this and this eliminated much of the diversity, but some of it was still reflected in the different readings because it was essentially a business of oral transmission and there were no diacriticalmarks in the 'Uthmanic script. People recited the Qur'an as they had read it from their teacher and they in turn passed on this oral transmission.

;Ammar Khatib and Nazir Khan
Ammar Khatib and Nazir Khan also write that "the famous ten qirāʾāt studied today represent only a limited assortment of the variations that existed prior to the ʿUthmānic codex" and its narrowing down of ahruf.

Questions

Emphasizing the difficulty of the issue, conservative Islamic scholar Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi stated in a 2020 interview that "every single student of knowledge... who studies ulm of Quran" knows "that the most difficult topics are ahruf and qira’at", so vexing that even "the most advanced of our scholars, they are not quite fully certain how to solve all of it and answer questions in there",
and so sensitive that it "should never be brought up in public” and is "not something you discuss among the masses".
;Were the variant ahruf readings approved by God?
Other reports of what the Prophet said seem to contradict the presence of variant readings.
Abu Abd Al-Rahman al-Sulami writes, "The reading of Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Zayd ibn Thabit and that of all the Muhajirun and the Ansar was the same. They would read the Quran according to the Qira'at al-'ammah. This is the same reading which was read out twice by the Prophet to Gabriel in the year of his death. Zayd ibn Thabit was also present in this reading the Ardah-i akhirah. It was this very reading that he taught the Quran to people till his death". According to Ibn Sirin, "The reading on which the Quran was read out to the prophet in the year of his death is the same according to which people are reading the Quran today".
Examining the hadith of Umar's surprise in finding out "this Quran has been revealed in seven Ahruf", Suyuti, a noted 15th-century Islamic theologian, concludes the "best opinion" of this hadith is that it is "mutashabihat", i.e. its meaning "cannot be understood."
Another critic, Shezad Saleem, has doubts about the validity of the hadith:
it is known that Hisham had accepted Islam on the day Makkah was conquered. If this Hadith is accepted, it would mean that for almost twenty years even the closest Companions of the Prophet like ‘Umar were unaware of the Qur’an being revealed in some other reading.

Sam Shamoun raises a number of questions about the basis of Qira'at.
At least two Sahih al-Bukhari hadith explicitly state the Qur'an was revealed in the dialect of the Quraysh -- making no mention of other ahruf—and that in case there are disagreements over recitation, this should clear everything up.
Narrated Anas bin Malik: and said to them. “In case you disagree with Zaid bin Thabit regarding any dialectic Arabic utterance of the Quran, then write it in the dialect of Quraish, for the Quran was revealed in this dialect.” So they did it.

Narrated Anas bin Malik: Hudhaifa bin Al-Yaman came to Uthman at the time when the people of Sham and the people of Iraq were waging war to conquer Arminya and Adharbijan. Hudhaifa was afraid of their differences in the recitation of the Qur'an, so he said to 'Uthman, "O chief of the Believers! Save this nation before they differ about the Book as Jews and the Christians did before." So 'Uthman sent a message to Hafsa saying, "Send us the manuscripts of the Qur'an so that we may compile the Qur'anic materials in perfect copies and return the manuscripts to you." Hafsa sent it to 'Uthman. 'Uthman then ordered Zaid bin Thabit, 'Abdullah bin AzZubair, Said bin Al-As and 'AbdurRahman bin Harith bin Hisham to rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies. 'Uthman said to the three Quraishi men, "In case you disagree with Zaid bin Thabit on any point in the Qur'an, then write it in the dialect of Quraish, the Qur'an was revealed in their tongue." They did so, and when they had written many copies, 'Uthman returned the original manuscripts to Hafsa. 'Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur'anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt. Said bin Thabit added, "A Verse from Surat Ahzab was missed by me when we copied the Qur'an and I used to hear Allah's Apostle reciting it. So we searched for it and found it with Khuzaima bin Thabit Al-Ansari. : ‘Among the Believers are men who have been true in their covenant with Allah.’ ”

Furthermore, while some hadith refer to ahruf, there is no mention of seven ahruf or of different ways of reciting the Quran in the Quran itself, nor does the Quran ever refer to itself in the plural,. Since there are multiple verses of the Quran declaring that "our revelations" have been "explained in detail", some mention of the existence multiple recitation or variants there would be expected, according to Shamoun.

Other ideas

questions those hadith which purport "variant readings". He also insists on the basis of Quranic verses that Quran was compiled in the life of Muhammad, hence he questions those hadith which report compilation of Quran in Uthman's period: As most of these narrations are reported by Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, Imam Layth Ibn Sa‘d in his letter to Imam Malik has written:
It is said that Abu Ubaid al-Qasim bin Salam selected twenty-five readings in his book. The seven readings which are famous in current times were selected by Abu Bakr ibn Mujahid. The 20th-century Pakistani theologian Javed Ahmad Ghamidi writes:

Citations