NoStandard
Thursday 10 October 2024
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.
Tuesday 8 October 2024
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
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:
‒
Monday 7 October 2024
Turkey and Syria: Calligraphers
Sunday 6 October 2024
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.
Friday 4 October 2024
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.
Tuesday 1 October 2024
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:
‒
Monday 30 September 2024
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:
In the time before Medina/UT1 there is even a UT0 from Suʿudia: the World Association of Muslim Youth in ar-Riʾāḍ published it, likely printed in Damascus by a publisher who have
made one before. The WAMY-version has most of the mistakes
on the next two pages I compare UTo with UT1:
in the titel boxes most information is gone
the numbers (1 to 114) ‒ both in the page header and in the title boxes ‒ are gone
the pause لا signs are gone:
the last mistake, the mīm/lazim that should not be there:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
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...
-
At the start of this year's Ramaḍān Saima Yacoob, Charlotte, North Carolina published a book on differences between printed maṣāḥi...
-
There are several types of madd sign in the Qurʾān, in South Asian masāhif: madd al-muttasil for a longer lengthening of the vowel used...
-
There is a text in the web Chahdi is an expert on The Qur’an, its Transmission and Textual Variants: Confronting Early Manuscripts and Wri...