Abu al-Harith al-Layth ibn Khalid transmitted the reading of Ali ibn Hamza al-Kisai, the Kufan grammarian whose name closes the traditional list of seven canonical readers. His transmission is recorded under Kufa as its reading centre, the same city where al-Kisai taught, and it survives as one of two principal riwayat carrying al-Kisai's reading forward, alongside the transmission of al-Duri, the same figure who also carried Abu Amr's reading in a separate line.
Abu al-Harith's transmission renders the hamza, the glottal stop, in full wherever it occurs rather than softening or eliding it, and it applies imala, the inclination of certain long alif vowels toward the sound of ya, extensively rather than in isolated words. It lengthens both detached and connected vowel junctures to four or five counts, treats the closing mim of plural pronouns as silent before a following vowel, and observes no light pause at the points in the text where other readings mark one. The basmala is recited between suras, and the takbir, the declaration of God's greatness recited by some readings at the close of the text, plays no part in this one. Verse numbering follows the Kufan count, consistent with a transmission rooted in that city's scholarly tradition.
As one of al-Kisai's two riwayat, Abu al-Harith's transmission carries the standing of the seven, ranked among the readings Ibn Mujahid selected as mutawatir in the tenth century and never displaced from that list.