The Criteria and Methods of Authority in Selecting the Correct Recitation of the Quran and its Effects

Having authority in reciting the Quran appeared with the emergence of differences in reciting the Quran in the second half of the first century and the first half of the second century AH. The Islamic scholars of the following centuries, influenced by ibn-Mujahid's Kitab al-Sab'a and his move to limit the recitation of the Quran to only seven ways, took into account recitation authority within the framework of argumentation and reasoning in recitations along with offering criteria and methods, and then they embarked upon selecting the correct recitation. Relying on the historical-analytical approach, the present study attempts to explicate the scientific criteria for selecting the correct recitation from among the criteria of the scholars of the past and the present (concordance between the recitation of a reciter and the general Muslim recitation or public recitation, correspondence between the recitation and the calligraphy of Othman Taha’s mus-haf concordance between the recitation and the rules of the Arabic language, and lack of contradiction between the recitation and rational arguments) and the narrative, literary, interpretive and writing methods of their authority that embrace some positive effects (including textual survival of the Quran, formation of various criteria for choosing the correct recitation, the development of the science of recitation, the promotion of reasoning in accepting or rejecting recitations, the richness of the Quranic literature, the role of the Arabic Language in paving the way and the development of syntax, and the impacts on interpretive and jurisprudential sciences) as well as negative effects and harms (including the reciter’s autocratic opinion and individual judgement, the reciter’s self-praise in Arabic literature and gaining fame, the reciter's weakness in Arabic literature, lack of knowledge of Arabic rules, and the Orientalists’ giving doubts about the alteration of the Quran momentum and their casting doubts about denying the divinity of the Quran).