Author: Christopher Melchert
Studia Islamica, Vol. 91, 2000

Ibn Mujāhid (d. Baghdad 324/936) is famous for establishing seven acceptable textual variants or readings (qarā‛āt) of the Quran, beyond which no reader might go. Two Quran readers were famously tried for reciting unacceptable variants, Ibn Miqsam in 322/934 and Ibn Shannabudh in 323/935. Both forced to recant. Ibn Mujāhid did indeed bring some of the forms of Hadith science to the Quran science.

The Seven readings of the Quran are to be classified with the “canonical” six books of Hadith: they were never formally ratified, or even universally accepted; they did restrain growing complexity; modern scholars have had difficulty talking about them without simplifying historical reality; but indeed their recognition, however halting and incomplete, did mark a widely observable turn in the tenth century toward limited agreement and manageability.

Bibliography:
Melchert, Christopher; Ibn Mujāhid and the Establishment of Seven Qur’anic Readings, Studia Islamica, Vol. 91, 2000, 5-22