Al-Kisa'i

Abu al-Hasan, ‘Ali Ibn Hamzah al-Asadi, better known as Al-Kisa'i (119-189AH), was one of the transmitters of the seven canonical Qira'at, or methods of reciting the Qur'an. He is also the founder of the Kufi school of Arabic grammar which formed a rivalry with its Basri counterpart founded by Sibawayh.

Of Persian origin, he learned Arabic grammar from Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi as well as Yunus ibn Habib. As a result, he gained fame during the reign of Harun al-Rashid, so much that he was entrusted with the instruction of the caliph's son, al-Amin. Some of his notable students were Hisham b. Muawiyah and Yaḥya al-Farā'. The two primary transmitters of his method of recitation were al-Layth and Al-Duri, the latter of whom was also a transmitter for the method of Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala', the namesake of another one of the seven canonical recitations.

Al-Kisa'i died in the year 804CE. Of the seven canonical transmitters, Ibn Amir ad-Dimashqi was the oldest and al-Kisa'i was the youngest.

Al-Kisā'i is the author of one of the collections of Stories of the Prophets, which includes information not found in other collections nor repeated in later exegesis. Al-Kisā'i often expanded upon early exegesis by elaborating a fuller narrative storyline and by adding folkloric elements from non-extant oral traditions that often parallel those from Christianity. Al-Kisā'i's collection included Shem and Eleazar as prophets, two figures who would not appear in later literature as prophets.

One of the more famous incidents of his career was his debate with Sibawayh that had been organized in Baghdad by Abbasid vizier Yahya ibn Khalid. The incident became known as al-Mas'ala al-Zunburīyah, "The Question of the Hornet," because one of the sentences involved translates as "I have always thought that the scorpion was more painful in stinging than the hornet, and sure enough it is." At issue was the form of the last word in the Arabic sentence. Sibawayh proposed:

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