عن المتن والمؤلف
About the poem and its author
The author
Shams al-Dīn Abū al-Khayr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Jazarī was born in Damascus in 751 AH (1350 CE); his family's nisba traces to Jazīrat Ibn ʿUmar. He became the foremost authority — shaykh al-qurrāʾ — on the science of the Qurʾānic readings in his age.
He studied in Damascus and Cairo, founded a Dār al-Qurʾān in Damascus, and travelled widely: to Egypt, the Ḥijāz and Anatolia, and after the upheavals of Tīmūr's conquests onward to Transoxiana and finally Shiraz, where he settled and died in 833 AH (1429 CE). His an-Nashr fī al-Qirāʾāt al-ʿAshr and its versification Ṭayyibat an-Nashr, together with the biographical Ghāyat al-Nihāyah, remain standard references of the field.
The poem
Al-Muqaddimah — known after its author as al-Jazariyyah — is a short didactic poem in the rajaz metre. By its own reckoning it numbers 107 verses (verse 107: أبياتها قاف وزاي — qāf and zāy, 100 + 7); some printed editions divide these into 109.
It sets out what a reciter must master before reciting: the articulation points (makhārij) and attributes (ṣifāt) of the letters, the rules of tajwīd, the thinning and thickening of letters, the rulings of the rāʾ, lām, ḍād and ẓāʾ, of nūn, mīm and madd, the etiquette of pausing and starting (waqf and ibtidāʾ), and the orthography of the ʿUthmānic muṣḥaf. For six centuries it has been among the first texts committed to memory by students of tajwīd.
On this edition
Where the tradition permits more than one reading, the text marks it: coloured words carry an alternate reading or a documented print-variant that you may switch in place, and your choice is remembered. These are drawn from The Adornment of the Tuḥfah and Jazariyyah and presently cover the first four chapters.
Colophon
This digital edition was designed and prepared by Zakariyyaa at Tahleel Consultancy — zak@tahleelconsultancy.com. It is offered freely, seeking the pleasure of Allah. If it is of any benefit to you, the only payment asked is that you remember its compiler, his parents and his family in your sincere duʿāʾ.
The English rendering is a working draft offered for correction, not a substitute for study with a qualified teacher. Biographical detail follows the standard ṭabaqāt of the qurrāʾ, including al-Jazarī's own Ghāyat al-Nihāyah.