according to them, without any disagreement among the recognized scholars whose views count in matters of consensus and disagreement. Indeed, most leading scholars who were acquainted with Hamzah’s reading—such as Sufyān ibn ‘Uyaynah, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Bishr ibn al-Hārith, and others—preferred the readings of Abū Ja‘far ibn al-Qa‘qā‘ and Shaybah ibn Nisāh, both of Medina, and those of the Basran reciters, such as the teachers of Ya‘qūb ibn Ishāq and others, to the recitation of those who followed Hamzah and al-Kisā’ī. The leading scholars’ statements on this matter are well known among scholars.
For this reason, the leading scholars of Iraq for whom the ten or eleven readings were as firmly established as these seven compiled them in books and recited them both within and outside prayer. This was agreed upon among the scholars; none of them objected to it.
As for the censure of Ibn Shanabūdh mentioned by al-Qādī ‘Iyād and those who quoted him—Ibn Shanabūdh being the man who recited irregular readings in prayer during the fourth century AH and whose case became well known—it concerned only irregular readings that departed from the Quranic manuscript, as we shall explain.
None of the scholars objected to the ten readings. However, someone who does not know them, or for whom they have not been established—for example, someone living in a Muslim land in the Maghreb or elsewhere whom some of these readings have not reached—may not recite what he does not know, for