About the Scholar Muhammad ibn Ibn al-Jazari

Ibn al-Jazarī successfully memorized the entire Qur`ān at the early age of 13, and a year later, in 765 AH, was picked to lead the community in salāh. 

He soon resulted in this singular feat with an initiation into the study of the different qirā'āt [Qur`ānic readings] at the hands of the master reciters [qurrā'] of the Levant, Online Quran Classes for Adults.

6 Notables amongst his many scholars from the Levant include Ibn al-Sallār, Ahmad al-Tahhān, and Ahmad ibn Rajab. The study and rendering of the whole seven readings [sab˘ah qirā'āt] were conducted under the guardianship of such masters as Ibrāhīm al-Hamawī and Abū al-Ma˘ālī ibn al-Labbān which he completed in the year 768 AH.

In the same year, he traveled to Hijāz [now part of Saudi Arabia] for Hajj where he repeatedly studied the seven readings poem in Arabic, this time as directed in al-Kāfī of Ibn al-Shurayh and al-Taysīr of Abū ˘Amr al- Dānī under the Imām of Medina, Muhammad ibn ˘Abd Allāh.

His full name is Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn ˘Alī ibn Yūsuf al-˘Umarī al-Dimashqī. His nickname [laqab] is Shams alDīn, and he had two patronyms [kunyatān] Abū al-Khayr and Abū Muhammad; the first is more generally used.

He is commonly known as Ibn al-Jazarī. The ascription ‘jazarī’ originates from the Arabic word ‘jazīrah,’ which means ‘a peninsula.’ Most specialists are of the view that it belongs to Jazaria Ibn ˘Umar, a town in Turkistan.

On his return to Damascus, he made arrangements to study in Spain by Sheikh Muhammad ibn Yūsuf al-Andalūsī but was discouraged by his father. Instead, in 769 AH, he traveled to Egypt where under the guardianship of Ibn al-Sā`igh and Ibn al-Baghdādī, he learned to combine the seven alternative readings as indicated in al-˘Unwān, al-Taysīr and alShātibiyyah. 

He also, learn the twelve passages [qirā'āt] to Abū Bakr ibn al-Jundī according to many alternative turuq tuhfat al atfal In the course of his reading to Ibn al-Jundī, he reached the Qurānic verse in Sūrah Nahl, Online Quran Classes.

He then left for Egypt, where he met his son, whom he had not viewed for 20 years. The following hajj season noticed him return to Makkah and then to Yemen via sea. 

The Yemenites by then already possessed copies of his al-Hisn al-Hasīn, which they had commenced studying. He remained with them until the next hajj; after that, he journeyed to Egypt, where he gave some months. In 829 AH, the desire to continue his propagation and teaching took him back to Damascus and then on to Shīrāz.

This was to be his last journey, and he passed away in 833 AH on the 5th of Rabī˘ al-Awwal, a Friday. His funeral procession attracted a great multitude who vied to have the honor to carry his bier. His body was laid to rest in the school, which he had specially built in Shīrāz

The eponymous Ibn ˘Umar is ˘Abd Allāh ibn ˘Umar, a man from Mosul in Iraq. Some have suggested that it signifies Jazīrah ibn al-Khattāb al-Ta˘labī, a port city in Armenia.

The father of Ibn al-Jazarī – a merchant by trade – spent forty years wish for a child but to no avail. At the well of Zamzam, while performing Hajj, he supplicated that Allah gives him a son. 

His prayer was acknowledged and in the year 751 AH on a Saturday night, the 25th of the month of Ramadān, just after the finish of the night Tarāwīh salāh-prayers, Ibn al-Jazarī was born.

Ibn al-Jazarī's father, himself a devout Muslim, respected the Islāmic sciences and had a particular inclination to the study of the Qur`ān. He, therefore, gave his son to his personal Sheikh, the renowned Hasan al-Sarūjī, at a tender age to begin his education in the Qur`ānic sciences. 

In this way, father and son are listed in the annals of past as contemporaries, having been students of the same master.