The Quran in the Abu al-Harith ‘an al-Kisa’i riwaya

Abu al-Harith ‘an al-Kisa’i is one of the two transmissions of the reading of al-Kisa’i, the reader and grammarian of Kufa. Its transmitter, Abu al-Harith al-Layth ibn Khalid al-Marwazi, a Baghdad reader who died in 854 (240 AH), was according to al-Dani one of al-Kisa’i's most eminent disciples. Seldom recited today, it is mainly preserved in the teaching of the readings, alongside the transmission of al-Duri.

‘Ali ibn Hamza al-Kisa’i (d. 805; 189 AH) owed his nickname to the cloak (kisa’) he wore in the state of pilgrim sanctity. A student of Hamza, with whom he read the whole Quran four times, he composed his own selected reading, became the leading reader of Kufa and later settled in Baghdad. The founder of the Kufan school of grammar, he tutored al-Amin and al-Ma’mun, the sons of Harun al-Rashid. Abu al-Harith read directly with him.

Al-Kisa’i reads Māliki yawmi d-dīn with a long alif, gives the madd a medium length and, like Hamza, applies full imala to words such as al-hudā; he also inclines towards "e" the final syllable of words ending in -a(h) when pausing, as in raḥmah. Peculiar to Abu al-Harith is the assimilation of the l of yaf‘al into the dh of dhālika (yaf‘adh-dhālika), and he does not follow al-Duri's particular imalas, such as that of ru’yāka.

Reciters who have recorded it include Abdul Rashid Ali Sufi, Yousef Bin Noah Ahmad, Mohammed Mustafa Al-Zayat and Abdurrahim Abdussalam An-Nabulsi.