Ṭabarī and Difference of Reading in Devotional Verses of Ordinances

The present article addresses the way Ṭabarī interacted with the phenomenon of difference of reading (qarā‘a) under the devotional verses of ordinances (āyāt al-aḥkām) and indicates that he, as one of the eminent and early figures of exegesis writing, properly reserves for himself the right to judge and adopt an aspect from among various aspects of readings. This way, our interpreter sometimes adopts a reading as absolute and puts aside– explicitly or by implication–the reading opposite to it. (Absolute selection) Sometimes he prefers one from among two different readings but does not drive the rejected reading away from the field of permitted readings. (Relative selection) also, in some positions, regards both readings as righteous and does not make any selection between them. (Non-selection acceptance) Besides these three, sometime Ṭabarī contents himself with reporting the difference of reading without expressing his judgment in this respect. On the other hand, our interpreter attests to the following criteria for absolute or relative selection of a reading: consensus of reputable reciters, superabundance or popularity of the reading, the orthography of the Muslims’ copies of the Qur’ān, the verse’s semantic-interpretive certainty, the expressive-syntactic criteria, traditions of the Revelation occasion, traditions denoting the Prophet’s (S.A.W.) reading, and the more eloquent and more popular dialect. Meanwhile, the most important and frequently practiced criterion that our interpreter relies on in his arbitrations is the consensus of the reciters whom he calls as “authority”.