Muhammad ibn Tayfour Sajawandi


ʿAbū ʿAbdullāh Muhammad Ibn ʿAbū Yazīd Tayfūr Sajāvandī Ghaznavī, also known as Abū al-Fazl as-Sajāwandī al-Qāriʾ was a 12th-century Islamic scholar, mystic, Qāriʾ and theologian. He is preliminary known for his contributions to the Islamic traditions of recitation and pronunciation, creating a set of rules and markers used to indicate the pronunciation and pauses of Quranic recital, known as Sajawandi stop signs or Rumuz al-Awqaf as-Sajāwandī. He is also credited as being the first known person to use coloured circles as a means of separating verses in the Quran, a design choice which has persisted til today, with the addition of a verse number inside of the circle. In Persian, the term muṣ·ḥaf sajāwandī مُصْحَف سَجَاوَنْدِي may today be used to denote an elegantly written Quran, accounting for the association between Sajawandi and his use of lavish red and golden dots as pause markers. His son Ahmad ibn Muhammad Sajawandi was also a well-known chronicler, commentator on the Quran, poet and orator.

Name

His full name is Abu'l Fazl Muḥammad Ibn Ṭayfūr Sajāwandī Ghaznavī, though in short form he is commonly known simply by this nasab Ibn Ṭayfūr Sajāwandī. Sajāwandī and Ghaznavī are his nisbahs meaning "from/ of Sajawand" and "from/ of Ghazna", respectively. He is known by a number of teknonyms, mainly ʿAbū al-Fazl meaning "father of al-Fazl", ʿAbū ʿAbdullāh meaning "father of Abdullah" and ʿAbū Jaʿfar meaning "father of Ja'far". He is likewise attested with a number of honorifics such as Shams ad-Dīn, Burhān ud-Dīn and Shams ul-'Ārefīn .

Life

He was born in the town of Sajawand in the Ghaznavid Empire at the end of the 11th century. Little of his life is known, however while being noted mainly for his work in tajwid as well as his Quranic recitation manuals, he has also been remembered as a noteworthy mystic, earning him honorifics such as Imām al-Zamān, Shams ad-Dīn and Shams ul-'Ārefīn. This suggests that he must have had quite a large following during his lifetime. He would've been a contemporary with Sana'i, however it is not known if he likewise had any association to the court of Bahram Shah. He was part of a line of influensial Ghaznavid-era imams from Sajawand, with a certain Imam Yunus Sajawandi appearing in the Jawami ul-Hikayat wa Lawami ur-Riwayat of Muhammad Aufi as an influensial figure at the court of Ibrahim of Ghazna only two generation before. Out of his four known sons, Imam Ahmad Sajawandi as well as his grand-nephew Imam Siraj ud-Din Muhammad Sajawandi were also religious leaders and great scholars in their own right.

Signs of Sajawandi

Sajawandi, in his book Kitāb al-Waqf wa al-Ibtidāʾ, identified five degrees to which recommendation to whether or not pausing in-between recited sentences may alter the understood meaning of the section of text or not. Summarizing these five recommendations, he set a sign to each of them for the Qāriʾ to have as a reminder when reciting each Quranic sentence, including a sixth sign for situations where stopping is prohibited.
These six signs can be summarized thusly: