11 – al-Ahwāzī, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Yazdād *
I have already discussed him at length in History, in The Classes of the Qur’an Readers, and in The Balance of Reliability (1); so here I shall mention him only in summary.
He was a leading authority on the Qur’anic readings, long-lived and widely renowned, a transmitter of ḥadīth who travelled extensively and narrated copiously. Yet he was neither precise nor expert in that field; rather, he was like one who gathers firewood in the dark. Despite his prominence in the discipline of recitation, scholars have criticised him and the lofty chains of transmission he claimed.
He is the shaykh, the imām, the erudite scholar, the reciter of the horizons: Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Yazdād ibn Hurmuz al-Ahwāzī, who settled in Damascus.
Born: 362 AH.
He alleged that he had recited to ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Ghadhā’irī (2)—an unknown man who is not deemed reliable—who in turn claimed to have read to al-Ushnānī (3) and al-Qāsim al-Maṭraz (4); and he also stated that he had recited
(*) Sources: Ibn Asakir, Tabyin Kadhib al-Muftari, pp. 364-420; Yaqut, Muʿjam al-Udaba, 9/34-39; al-Dhahabi, Mizan al-Iʿtidal, 1/512-513; idem, Maʿrifat al-Qurraʾ al-Kibar, 1/322-325; al-Dhahabi, al-ʿIbar, 3/210-211; Ibn al-Jawzi, Mirʾat al-Janan, 3/63; Ibn al-Jazari, Ghaya al-Nihaya, 1/220-221; Ibn Hajar, Lisan al-Mizan, 2/237, 240; Ibn Taghribirdi, al-Nujum al-Zahira, 5/65; Hajji Khalifa, Kashf al-Zunun, 1/140, 211 and 2/1303; Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab, 3/274; Tahdhib Tarikh Ibn ʿAsakir, 4/197-198.
(1) See the references cited above for this biographical entry.
(2) Al-Dhahabi also includes him in Maʿrifat al-Qurraʾ al-Kibar, 1/271, noting that he lived until shortly before 380 AH.
(3) The nisba *al-Ashnani*—with ḍamma on the initial alif and sukūn on the shīn—derives from trading in *ashnan* (alkali). It refers here to Abu al-ʿAbbas Ahmad ibn Sahl, the Qurʾan reciter who died in 307 AH; see Maʿrifat al-Qurraʾ al-Kibar, 1/200-201, and Ghaya al-Nihaya, 1/59-60.
(4) This is Abu Bakr al-Qasim ibn Zakariyya ibn ʿIsa al-Baghdadi, al-Mutarriz, d. 305 AH; see Maʿrifat al-Qurraʾ al-Kibar, 1/195, and Ghaya al-Nihaya, 2/17.