Abu ‘Imarah Hamzah Ibn Habib al-Zayyat al-Taymi, better known as Hamzah az-Zaiyyat (80-156AH),Edward Sell, The Faith of Islam, pg. 341. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2013 reprint. Muhammad Ghoniem and MSM Saifullah, The Ten Readers & Their Transmitters. (c) Islamic Awareness. Updated January 8, 2002; accessed April 11, 2016. was one of the seven canonical transmitters of the Qira'at,Aisha Bewley, The Seven Qira'at of the Qur'an. International Islamic University Malaysia. Accessed April 18, 2016.Edward Sell, Islam, pg. 54. or methods of reciting the Qur'an. His appellation "az-Zaiyyat" was given to him because he used to work transporting natural oils to Hulwan and then bringing cheese and walnuts back to Kufa.Ibn Khallikan, Deaths of Eminent Men and History of the Sons of the Epoch, vol. 4, pg. 478. Trns. William McGuckin de Slane. Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1843. He was a Persian.
His style of recitation was traditionally one of three preferred in the historic city of Kufa,Claude Gilliot, Creation of a fixed text, pg. 50. Taken from The Cambridge Companion to the Qur'an by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. his hometown.Abd al-Amir Hussain Amin, Islam in Bilad al-Rafidayn, pg. 211. Taken from The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture vol. 3: The Spread of Islam Throughout the World, ed. Idris El Hareir and Ravane M.Baye. Place de Fontenoy: UNESCO, 2011. Az-Zaiyyat himself had been taught to recite the Qur'an by al-A'mash, and al-Kisa'i was one of his students. The two primary students who preserved and spread his method were Khalaf al-Bazzar and Khallad.Claude Gilliot, Creation, pg. 51.Shady Hekmat Nasser, Ibn Mujahid and the Canonization of the Seven Readings, p. 129. Taken from The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur'an: The Problem of Tawaatur and the Emergence of Shawaadhdh. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2012. Az-Zaiyyat was not without his critics: Ahmad ibn Hanbal intensely disliked some characteristics of his reading, and fellow reciter Shu'bah considered his method of reading to constitute bid'ah.Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qur'an, p. 58.
In addition to his Qur'anic reading, az-Zaiyyat was also known as an Arabic grammarian and linguist. However, his efforts in the latter two fields were largely unrecognized, and the people of Basra in particular disliked his way and alleged that he had grammatical errors.Kees Versteegh, Arabic Grammar and Qurʼānic Exegesis in Early Islam, pg. 176. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1993.
He died in the year 772CE/156AHShady Nasser, Canonization, pg. 49. at the age of 76 in Hulwan.
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