Hamzah al-Kufi

Hamza ibn Habib al-Zayyat al-Qari', Abu Umara al-Kufi al-Taymi, their client — the reader of Kufa and one of the seven canonical qurra'; a truthful ascetic (saduq zahid) in the judgement of the rijal critics, of the seventh layer, who died in 156 or 158 AH having been born in 80 AH ¹.

Ibn Hajar writes: Hamza ibn Habib al-Zayyat al-Qari', Abu Umara al-Kufi al-Taymi, their client: truthful, ascetic, occasionally erring, of the seventh layer; he died in the year six or eight and fifty and a hundred, and was born in year eighty ¹. In al-Dhahabi's Kashif appended to the Taqrib: he recited to several masters and heard Talha ibn Musarrif and Habib ibn Abi Thabit; Yahya ibn Adam and Hajjaj al-A'war transmit from him; Ibn Ma'in declared him trustworthy ¹.

Hamza al-Zayyat al-Kufi was a famous reciter of Kufa whose reading people took from him until it became one of the transmitted readings; alongside his imamate in recitation he was an ascetic and a reliable authority for the hadith scholars.

• Taqrib al-Tahdhib entry t. 1518 (Majmu'at al-Kutub scan, p. 165); the epithet "al-Qari'" and his place among the readers are explicit in the text itself.
• Two death-year reports: 156 or 158 AH; birth in 80 AH per the text.
• "Saduq, ascetic, occasionally erring" is the Taqrib's own grading; Ibn Ma'in's authentication comes from Kashif al-Dhahabi on the same page.