Abū Bakr b. ʿAyyāsh, Ibn Sālim al-Ḥannāṭ al-Kūfī (d. 193/809), was one of the two transmitters (rāwīs) of ʿĀṣim's Kūfan reading (qirāʾa) of the Qurʾān (the other being Ḥafṣ b. Sulaymān), and a member of the group known as aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth. The sources cite his name in some fourteen different forms, but he is mostly called Abū Bakr and sometimes Shuʿba (see al-Khaṭīb, 14/372–375; Yāqūt, 7/90–91). He was considered a mawlā (tribal client) attached to the Banū Kāhil of the Asad tribe (al-Bukhārī, 2/249). Abū Bakr was born in Kūfa between the years 94 and 97/713 and 71…