An analysis of the recitation of ʿĀṣim in the context of the concept of infirād

This study aims to identify the readings in which ʿĀṣim b. Bahdala (d. 127/745), one of the representatives of the Kūfan school, and his transmitters Ḥafṣ b. Sulaymān (d. 180/796) and Abū Bakr Shuʿbah (d. 193/809), exhibited infirād (individual readings), and to examine these within the framework of the concept of infirād. In the literature of Qurʾānic recitation (qirāʾāt), the term infirād denotes the phenomenon in which a recitation imam, his transmitter, or the holder of a ṭarīq remains singular in a particular mode of reading. The analysis carried out within the scope of this research has revealed that the readings of ʿĀṣim and his transmitters, which have been categorized as infirād within the seven-, ten-, or fourteen-recitation classification systems, are not in fact absolutely singular. Rather, it has been demonstrated that parallel reading forms concordant with these variants exist in exegetical literature, linguistic sources, and the corpus of shādh (irregular) recitations. This study seeks to clarify the issue by focusing on the conceptual framework of infirād, its types, its place in the literature, and its significance and position within the science of recitation. The findings indicate that the variants attributed as infirād to ʿĀṣim and his transmitters should be studied with a broader approach, beyond the restrictive classification schemes of the seven, ten, or fourteen recitations, and that these variants cannot strictly be regarded as infirād. To this end, the research employed methods of literature review and comparative textual analysis.