The hafs reading is named after Hafs ibn Sulaymaan not because he initiated it or transmitted it, but because he recited best and in a most outstanding way one of the authentic qiraat traced back to the prophet. His qiraa/recitation is the one he learned from Aasim ibn Abi an-Najud, a tabi'ee, meaning the generation that met the prophet's companions but not the prophet himself. Aasim learned his recital from Abu abd al Rahman al Sulami who learned from the Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib.
Aasim had several students reciters and Hafs was but one of them who excelled most. Although Hafs was rejected as a hadith narrator, a science that is completely unrelated to the art of Quran recitation or capacity to memorize, he was however never questioned in the field of recitation itself, neither by those who deemed him untrustworthy in hadith nor by his fellow students.
As to the fact that Hafs would borrow books to copy them without returning them, with the only specific case mentionned being a book from his contemporary student colleague Shu'bah, what is important to mention firstly is that only Shu'bah made that claim, which is why no other explicit example of borrowing and not returning exists. Second, it was nothing strange and in fact the norm back then for even powerful narrators to borrow eachothers' books and copy the narrations they contained into their hadith collection. As to not returning Shu'bah's book, this could have been due to many things other than "stealing". Nobody ever accused Hafs in that context of being a book thief!
Further reading answering Sam Shamoun "Hafs: The Lying, Unreliable Transmitter of the Quran"
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