that your community should recite the Qur’an upon seven modes; whichever mode they use, they will have spoken correctly.
Al-Tirmidhī also transmits the following:
The Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—met Gabriel and said, “O Gabriel, I have been sent to an unlettered nation. Among them are the elderly woman, the old man, the senior adult, the boy, the girl, and the man who has never read a single book.” Gabriel replied, “O Muhammad, the Qur’an has been revealed on seven modes.”
Al-Tirmidhī commented: “This ḥadīth is sound.”
The story of ʿUmar with Hishām ibn Ḥakīm is likewise firmly established in the major collections—al-Bukhārī, Muslim, the Muwaṭṭaʾ, Abū Dāwūd, al-Nasāʾī, and other compilations and Musnad works. It will be presented in full at the end of the chapter, Allah willing.
Scholars have differed over what is meant by the Seven Modes, reaching thirty-five opinions, all listed by Abū Ḥātim Muḥammad ibn Ḥibbān al-Bustī. In this book we shall mention five of them:
- The first—and it is the position held by the majority of scholars such as Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Wahb, al-Ṭabarī, al-Ṭaḥāwī, and others—is that the Seven Modes are seven ways of expressing closely related meanings with different wordings, like aqbil, taʿāla, and halumma (“come,” “come here,” “come along”).
Al-Ṭaḥāwī said: The clearest proof for this is the ḥadīth of Abū Bakrah: Gabriel came to the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—and said, “Recite on one mode.” Michael said, “Ask that it be increased.” He said, “Recite on two modes.” Michael again said, “Ask that it be increased,” until it reached seven modes. Gabriel then said, “Recite, for each is adequate and sufficient, so long as you do not mix a verse of mercy with one of punishment, or a verse of punishment with one of mercy—just as one may say halumma, taʿāla, aqbil (‘come’), idhhab (‘go’), asriʿ (‘hurry’), or ʿajjil (‘make haste’).”
Waraqāʾ narrated from Ibn Abī Najīḥ, from Mujāhid, from Ibn ʿAbbās, from Ubayy ibn Kaʿb that he used to recite, “For those who believe, unẓurūnā” (Q 57:13) as: “For those who believe, amhilūnā” (“grant us respite”), “For those who believe, akhkhirūnā” (“defer us”), and “For those who believe, arqubūnā” (“wait for us”).
With the same chain it is reported from Ubayy that he would recite, “Whenever it lights up for them, they walk therein” (Q 57:13) as, “they pass therein,” and “they hasten therein.”
Al-Zuhrī said—in a report recorded by al-Bukhārī and Muslim—“These modes occur within a single matter; they do not differ regarding what is lawful or unlawful.”
Al-Ṭaḥāwī explained: “The latitude afforded to the people in these modes was granted because they were unable to take up the Qur’an in dialects other than their own. They were an unlettered people, with only a few among them who wrote. It would have been difficult for each person to abandon his own dialect for another, and even if he tried to do so, he could manage it only with great hardship. Therefore, concession was granted to them…”