A Teacher Who Comes After His Student

Abu Jafar Yazid ibn al-Qaqa taught at Medina, died in 130 AH, and belonged to the generation of the Followers. Nafi al-Madani, whose reading stands first in the canonical order, read to him. Abu Jafar's own reading stands eighth. The ordering is not chronological and was never meant to be: the seven that Ibn Mujahid assembled in the early tenth century were a selection made from the teachers whose lines were best established in his own time and in the cities he recognised as authoritative, and the three added later were added later. So the eighth reading is in a real sense older than the first, and the man who taught the first reader ranks below him in the list. A reader coming to the canon fresh should know that, because the numbering invites exactly the wrong inference.

Abu Jafar was a Medinan of the earliest stratum available, reciting in the city where the text had been continuously recited, and the accounts of his teaching describe a long career in the mosque. His reading is transmitted by Ibn Wardan and Ibn Jammaz, both Medinans, and both of them are reported to have read to Nafi as well, so the two Medinan readings are not two separate traditions but two selections drawn from one body of Medinan practice.