Būlāq 1299/1881/2

As far as we know the first Egyptian muṣ­ḥaf was type set in 1299/1881/2 in der Govern­ment Press Būlāq
it did not have verse numbers but empty space to be filled out by scribes.

Turkey and Syria: Computer Set

Although Turkey has excellent maṣāḥif both based on old and on new manuscripts,
it has the ugliest muṣḥaf that sold well.
In the 1990s Turks not used to Arabic writing liked this:

Now they take a PC set one, like

(I hight­light­ed /fī/ and /fĭ/ and the hamza after a highly re­com­mend­ed pause.)

the last one is published by Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı (Directorate of Religious Affairs).

In Syria in the middle of the civil war the minstry of auqāf published a new standard mushaf:

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Turkey and Syria: Calligraphers

Both in Turkey, like Mehmet Özçay

by Muhammad (Mehmet) Abay

Hüseyin Kutlu:

and in Syria there are great calligraphers, here al-Bārī

ʿUṯmān Ṭaha




Abū ʿUmar ʿUbaidah Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ al-Banki / ابو عمرعبيدة محمد صالح البنكي

Efim A. Rezvan

I intended to para­phrase the good points and correct the bad ones in Efim A.Rezvan's "A History of Printed Edi­tions of the Qur’an" in The Oxford Handbook of QUR­’ANIC STU­DIES.
Unfortunate­ly the first part is about manu­scripts and other non-print matters.
The part about the St.Pe­ters­burg and Kazan Qurʾāns is fine ‒ but not new.
The section on prints after Kazan (pp 268-270) is all wrong, not worth a critique.

picture: https://mnaber.org/img/cache/thumbnail/pZEanzZW1ilzNgi4DQVqO0vo96q0wLpj1lIKFzY0

Best Sellers

The first best selling print was St.Petersburg-Kazan:

Next came "the Flügel" published 1834 in Leipzig by the publishing house Tauch­nitz, which pirated it in 1837 with an edition officially by Gustav Reds­lob, but basicly the Flügel without paying him: both were best sellers but only among orienta­lists.
By that time both in Iran and India printing maṣāḥif had began, but only after 1865 they were mass produced, and affordable.
Since they were even sold in the Ottoman empire, the ban against printing the scripture was lifted: So maṣāḥif written by Hafiz Osman and Muṣ­ṭafā Naẓīf Qadir­ġalī became best selling in Istanbul, Syria and Egypt.

here one of serval MNQ from Tehran

The important editions by Muḫalla­lātī and al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād (HH) did not sell well ‒ the KFE at least not to Egyptians; they prefered the 522 pages written by Muṣṭafā Naẓīf Qadir­ġalī ‒ now often in the reform /Andalu­sian/ HH ortho­graphy, but at least until 1967 in new editiona in the original ottoman spelling.
on the left from a 1981 MNQ Cairo edition on 522 pages, on the right the original:

a MZQ from Bairut

The top seller in Egypt was a line by line copy of the MNQ 522pager written by Muḥammad Saʿd Ibrāhīm al-Ḥaddād famous under the name of the publisher: aš-Šamarlī.

What is mistly ignored: Šamarlī published MNQ in the new orthography even in the 1960s:

The government press, al-Amīriyya, tried to compete: in 1976 they produced a type set version with 15 lines on 525 pages. For more than a decade they made at least four different sizes: from small in flexibel plastic to Mosque size.

on the left from the pocket version 1977, on the right the normal one

the large Qaṭarī reprint 1988

Although the KFE was almost only sold to oritentalists, in the seventies many publisher "remade" it on there light tables (layout tables): the cut films they had made of the 12 liner and rearranged them: either just more lines on a page

or more and longer lines:

None of these were best sellers, but combined that distributed the new spelling in spite of the KFE being extremely unpopular.

Now in the Arab world and Malaysia ʿUṯmān Ṭaha versions dominate.
In India and Bangla Desh reprints of Tāj Comp. Ltd version can be found everywhere, while in Pakistan there is fierce competion.
In South Africa Taj's 848 pages 13liner dominates, although the latest version of WII (Waterval Islamic Institute) is set in a UT like font.

one change made

while 2:264 was a mistake made inadvertently in Cairo

on 56:2 Qaṭar made a conscious change

Because 55:2 is written without alif in Al-Mushaf Al-Sharif Attributed to Uthman Bin Affan in the Topkapı Palace published by Tayyar Altıkulaç (İSAM) who adviced the Qaṭāris they followed the old manuscript.

mistake corrected

A mistake made in Cairo in 1924 got corrected in Madina.
The typesetter in Būlāq made a mistake in 2:264.
ʿUṯmān Ṭaha copied it faithfully.
The King Fahd Complex corrected it.
The hamza should not sit on the tooth.

UT1 UT2 UT3

After the King Fahd Complex had printed millions of UT1 they invited him to Madina to write for them a Warsh muṣḥaf, then an improved Ḥafṣ ‒ and later Qālūn, an other Warsh (this tome on 604 pages), ad-Dūrī and Šuʿba.
The new script is a bit more cursive, bigger (i.e. there is less empty space between lines) and has less letter variants. On the image above middle-hāʾ has three forms on the left, only one on the right, rāʾ (and zai) have two forms on the left, one on the right, tāʾ can have the two dots verticaly on the left, not on the right, and the two forms of final mīm are equally distributed on the left, while on the right the short stroke to the left predominates.
Here the page layout differs (with two more verses on the left), but, if I am not mistaken that occurs only in the last ǧuz: all in all minor changes.

The change from UT2 to UT3 brought:
headlines (sura titel boxes) never come at the bottom of a page,
rather as the head of the next;
end-of-aya-numbers never come at the beginning of a line
rather at the end of the line before.

And now comes a dif­ference that is con­nected to one of MY per observa­tions that is missed my most "ex­perts".
I say: Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḫalaf al-Ḥusainī al-Mālikī aṣ-Ṣaʿīdī al-Ḥaddād (1282/1865‒1357/ 22.1.1939) adopted many Andalusian/Maġribī/Western things without mentioning it in the postscript, which makes me thing that he copied a Moroccon muṣḥaf.
One of the points: Ottoman Egypt, Persia, India and Nusantara have one kind of tanwīn (one an, one un, one in) indepen­dant Egypt has three just as Morocco, but there is a problem. Ottomans did not know how fathatan is written.
When one compares the Warš muṣḥaf and the early Ḥafṣ maṣā­ḥif by UT the fathatan are different









Because UT is not only a good scribe but also a good ob­server:
he noticed that the second fatha (the left one) is above the first in Morroco, but below in the KFE ‒ I assume that the type setter just used kasratans lifted up.

A couple of years ago Madina noticed the mis­take and asked UT to correct it, which is done in UT3:

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UT0 UT1 UT2 UT3

It is common knowledge that the King Fuʾād Edition of the Ḥafṣ qirāʾa was an immediate success in the Muslim world. common knowledge, but not true. Orien­t­alists bought it, but hardly an Egyp­tian because with almost 850 big pages it is too bulky ‒ they pre­fered the edition written by Muṣṭafā Naẓīf Qadir­ġalī on 522 pages. Because the govern­ment pushed the new ortho­graphy, adapta­tions of the old muṣḥaf with 15 lines on 522 pages but with the new ortho­graphy were published. Later Shamarly paid Muḥammad Saʿd Ibrāhīm al-Ḥaddād to copy the MNQ line by line but in the new ortho­graphy and had it printed in dif­ferent sizes and with different covers. In the Sixties the Govern­ment produced a type set muṣḥaf on 525 pages. So, althought the King Fuʾād Edition was not a best­seller, its ortho­graphy was estab­lished in Egypt by 1975.
But for the Andalu­sian ortho­graphy of Ḥafṣ to con­quer the Arab world, the genius of a scribe and some oil money were needed. ʿUṯmān Ṭaha had learned calli­graphy in Aleppo and Istan­bul, were Hamid Aytaç / Ḥāmid al-Āmidī taught him.
He works precisely, not artistically, he follows the lead of the KFE by using stacked forms (earlier letters above later ones) only if and when the vowel signs can be places exactly above or below its seat, and each letter being always the same ‒ swash forms of rāʾ, zai, kāf, elon­gated nūn and end yāʾ being the exception.
He copied the qurʾānic text (not the taʿrīf) of the KFE of 1952 (i.e. the Moroccan text of al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād al-Mālikī with the modi­fica­tions (esp. pause signs) by ʿAlī Muḥammad aḍ-Ḍabbā) with even less stacked forms
on 604 pages as made common by Haǧǧ Ḥāfiẓ ʿUṯmān Ḫalīfa QayišZāde an-Nūrī al-Bur­durī (d. 1894) (each ǧuz ‒ except the last because of the many sura title boxes ‒ on twenty pages, all verses ending in the bottom left corner includ­ing 2:282) ‒ this tem­plate is called ber kenar/one edge.

Although his manu­script got several seals of being without mistakes (see above), it had five minor mis­takes; a part from them it is a faithful repro­duction of the KFE of 1952 with all its features (notab­ly pause signs).
I call all versions that have one to five of these mis­takes "ʿŪṯmān Ṭaha 0" (UT0) to mark the dif­ference to the Madina prints in which these mis­takes are corrected. As Muḥammad Hozien has pointed out, the are three dif­ferent styles printed by the KFC. I call them UT1, UT2 and UT3

But first UT0, the versions with scribal errors. On page 11 there is no error. I include it only because UT0 follows the KFE, but Madina (KFC) changes the writing: putting the hamza on a small alif a practice common in Tunisian manus­cripts and prints of Qālūn.

on the next page a fatha WAS missing, the editor added it above the mīm; it is dif­ferent from the ones written by UT himself:

on the next page we have هٰذان instead of هٰذٰن :

here a sukūn/ǧazm is missing on a final he

here at the end of the second but last line there is a lazim sign (م) that shoudn't be there

The Istanbul Çağrı publisher publishes many translations with UT0 next to the translation, till today with only one of the mistakes corrected.

on the bottom of the next page the missing sukūn was added: