Hafs


Abū ‘Amr Ḥafs ibn Sulaymān ibn al-Mughīrah ibn Abi Dawud al-Asadī al-Kūfī, better known as Hafs, is a significant figure in the art of Qira'at and Qur'an reading. Being one of the primary transmitters of one of the seven canonical methods of Qur'an recitation, his method via his teacher Aasim ibn Abi al-Najud has become the most popular method across the majority of the Muslim world.
In addition to being the student of al-Najud, Hafs was also his son-in-law. Having been born in Baghdad, Hafs eventually moved to Mecca where he popularized his father-in-law's recitation method.
Eventually, Hafs' recitation of al-Najud's method was made the official method of Egypt, having been formally adopted as the standard Egyptian printing of the Qur'an under the auspices of Fuad I of Egypt in 1923. The majority of copies of the Quran today follow the reading of Hafs. In North and West Africa there is a bigger tendancy to follow the reading of Warsh.

Kufa tradition

Of all the canonical recitation traditions, only the Kufan tradition included the basmala as a separate verse in Chapter 1.
It is, alongside the Hafs 'an 'Asim tradition which represents the recitational tradition of Kufa, one of the two major oral transmission of the Quran in the Muslim World.The influential standard Quran of Cairo that was published in 1924 is based on Hafs 'an ʻAsim's recitation.