of Ḥamzah, and he said, “The Qur’an was revealed only in the dialect of Quraysh, and that dialect is characterized by tafkhīm (emphatic pronunciation).”

Bishr ibn Mūsā said to him, “Nawfal has narrated to us.”

Ibn al-Madīnī replied, “Nawfal is reliable.”

He (Bishr) went on, “I heard ʿAbd Allah ibn Idrīs say to Ḥamzah, ‘Fear Allah—you are a man devoted to worship—yet this mode of recitation is neither the recitation of ʿAbd Allah nor of anyone else.’”

Ḥamzah responded, “For my part, I am scrupulous about reciting it in the miḥrāb.”

I asked, “Why?”

He answered, “Because it was not the people’s recitation.”

I said, “Then what will you do with it?”

He replied, “When I return from my journey, I shall leave it aside.”

Ibn Idrīs then said, “I do not consider it permissible to say of someone who follows Ḥamzah’s reading that he is adhering to the Sunnah.”

The author comments: Ibn Idrīs’s warning on this matter became well-known—may Allah forgive him—yet the Muslims have received Ḥamzah’s variant readings with full acceptance and are unanimously agreed upon them today.

The highest-graded narration transmitted by Ibn Idrīs is found in the collection of Ibn ʿArafah.

ʿAbd al-Ḥāfiẓ ibn Badrān and Yūsuf ibn Aḥmad informed us, saying: Mūsā ibn ʿAbd al-Qādir informed us; Saʿīd ibn al-Bannāʾ informed us; ʿAlī ibn al-Busrī informed us; Abū Ṭāhir al-Mukhlis narrated to us; ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad narrated to us; ʿUthmān ibn Abī Shaybah narrated to us; ʿAbd Allah ibn Idrīs and Jarīr narrated to us from al-Aʿmash, from Abū Sufyān, from Jābir, who said:

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “During the night there is an hour in which no Muslim coincides with it while asking Allah—Exalted is He—for any good of this world or the Hereafter without His granting it to him, and that occurs every night.”

It was recorded by Muslim (1) through the transmission of ʿUthmān, from Jarīr alone.