02/11/2022
Inspiration Of Quran Literacy Institute :
The inspiration of our institution stems from the story of the remarkable men who were responsible for bringing the Qurʾān to us. The dominant way of reciting the Qurʾān today is the reading of Ḥafṣ on the authority of Imām ʿĀṣim. This particular chain contains lessons in resilience, connection with the Qurʾān, and the unbreakable bonds of family as well as those of the teacher-student relationship. Imām ʿĀṣim of Kūfah, the most widely followed of the ten Imāms of Qurʾānic reading, had many illustrious students of the likes of Imām Abū Ḥanīfah, Sufyān al-Thawrī, Sufyān b. ʿUyaynah and others. Yet the one who transmitted his Qurʾānic legacy to posterity was none of those but happened to be his stepson Ḥafṣ b. Sulaymān. This demonstrates the priorities of Imām Asim in tending to his family first and teaching them the Qurʾān first. The teacher of Imām ʿĀṣim in turn was the renowned Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, who sat by a single pillar in the Masjid of Kūfah for nearly seven decades teaching Qurʾān until his death. What inspired him to this prolonged service? He admitted to his students that it was what his own Qurʾān teacher ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān who related to him from his own teacher the Prophet, “The best of you are those who learn the Qurʾān and teach it to others.” This statement of the Prophet was the inspiration for the first teachers of the Qurʾān, and this is the beginning of the isnād of the Qurʾān today: the Prophet—ʿUthmān—Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
