and he surpassed everyone in the art of Qur’an recitation. He was in no way inferior to al-Kisāʾī (1); indeed, a number of leading authorities considered him the stronger of the two—yet Abū al-Ḥasan simply enjoyed particular divine favour.

The reciters thronged around Yaʿqūb. Among those who read to him were: Rūḥ ibn ʿAbd al-Muʾmin (2); Muḥammad ibn al-Mutawakkil, known as Ruways (3); al-Walīd ibn Ḥassān; Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Khāliq the Blind; Kaʿb ibn Ibrāhīm; Ḥumayd ibn Wazīr; al-Minhāl ibn Shādhān Abū ʿUmar al-Dūrī; Abū Ḥātim al-Sijistānī; and many others.

He would publicly teach his mode of recitation in Basra during the lifetimes of Ibn ʿUyaynah, Ibn al-Mubārak, Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān, Ibn Mahdī, the judge Abū Yūsuf, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan, Yaḥyā al-Yazīdī, Sulaym (4), al-Shāfiʿī, Yazīd ibn Hārūn, and numerous other leading scholars.

After careful investigation we have found no report that any of the expert reciters, jurists, devout worshippers, grammarians, or caliphs—such as Hārūn al-Rashīd, al-Amīn, or al-Maʾmūn—ever disapproved of his reading or forbade him from it in any way. Had anyone censured him, it would certainly have been transmitted and become well known. On the contrary, more than one scholar praised it; his students continued to teach it in Iraq, and the imam of the Grand Mosque of Basra maintained this recitation in the miḥrāb for many long years. No Muslim objected to it; rather, the people welcomed it—whereas even Ḥamzah, despite his eminent status, was met with criticism.