Reddit reply in r/AcademicQuran: qiraat and ahruf help — January 31, 2025 | Ali Shukri Amin

The dominant opinion until ibn al-Jazari was not that all the variations came from the Prophet but rather that the Prophet allowed variations - even more than are compiled in the Uthmanic rasm. Then Uthman compiled the Quran according to Muhammad's reading and not the dispensation to deviate from it. From there, variations were a part of the Quran in terms of vowelization, dotting, and some skeletal changes - but so long as some respected teacher recited that way and it was grammatically correct it was accepted. Ibn Mujahid then codifies the 7 he thinks are the best and represent all of the valid variations, to which ibn al-Jazari adds 3, and there are another 3 that others add.

Nonetheless, it was a minority opinion that the variations were comissioned or recited by the Prophet himself. Some significant time after ibn al-Jazari, this became the dominant view. I believe the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction among traditional scholars now.

Ibn al-Jazari swung the pendulum because he came up with an absolutely brilliant theory about the Ahruf and the Qira'at which I don't want to describe here. Anyways, despite how great and creative the theory is, it isn't based on historical evidence inasmuch as it is based on trying to theologically reconcile everything. So, while it's really cool, the evidence kind of contradicts it.

Yasir Qadhi is an interesting case study in this regard. He went from believing the popular lay misconceptions about Ahruf/Qira'at (as described in certain passages of his Introduction to the Sciences of the Qur'an), to being very publicly confused, to learning that the majority of earlier traditional scholars did in fact hold that only the Rasm goes directly back to Muhammad and the Qira'at are a kind of gloss on top.

But while that was happening to him because this wasn't his field of expertise, modern traditional Qira'at scholars kind of always knew this. Even the ones that hold al-Jazari's view know the other one and teach it.