Ibn Dhakwan an Ibn Amir

Abdullah ibn Dhakwan transmitted the reading of Ibn Amir al-Yahsubi, recorded here with Damascus as its reading centre, and stands beside Hisham's transmission as the second of the two riwayat through which the only Syrian reading among the seven survives.

Ibn Dhakwan's transmission renders the hamza in full rather than lightening it at a pause, the point on which it departs most clearly from Hisham's line of the same reading; the two riwayat otherwise largely agree. It does not apply the greater assimilation, applies imala in only a small number of words, and holds both detached and connected vowel lengthening to four or five counts. The closing mim of plural pronouns is left silent before a following vowel, no light pause is observed, the basmala follows three permitted modes between suras, and the takbir is not part of the reading. Verse numbering follows the Damascene count shared with Hisham's transmission.

As one of Ibn Amir's two transmitters, Ibn Dhakwan's reading carries the standing of the seven, among the readings Ibn Mujahid recognised in the tenth century by the number and independence of the chains that carried them. That the Damascene reading required two separate transmitters to preserve it, much as each of the other six regional readings did, is part of what let Ibn Mujahid treat geographic breadth, and not merely a single trusted narrator, as evidence that a reading had not been altered in transmission.