a bombshell

Morteza Karimi-Nia has published a book Codex Mashhad, and a web site.
Most interest­ing:
Sura order like Codex Masʿud
Orthography
The orthographic rules in the main body of Codex Mashhad exhibit a clear pro­pensity towards scriptio defec­tiva, signaling palaeo­graphic anti­quity of the codex. Its style in many instances neither conforms to the fully developed normative ortho­graphy of modern times, nor alignsoften divervs from the “Uthmānic rasm” documented in works such as al-Muqniʿ by Abū ʿAmr al-Dānī and Mukhtaṣar al-Tabyīn by Abū Dāwūd Sulaimān b. Najāḥ. For instance, šaiʾشئ is always written with an additional alif as شای, ḏūذو with an additional alif as ذوا; and the word ʾulūاولوا is always written with waw for /u/, and without for /ū/ as اولا.

The most salient orthographic feature of Codex Mashhad is the omission of alif as the sign of long vowel /ā/; examples of this can be found on nearly every page, at a pro­portion far sur­passing other known ḥijāzī codices. Several notable cases rarely seen in early ḥijāzī manu­scripts from the first century will briefly be mentioned here.

The words قرآن and عذاب are almost always written without alif as قرن and عذب ‒ very rare and strange in three-letter words. Apart from many occur­rences of قل/قلوا instead of قال/قالوا and کن/کنوا instead of کان/کانوا, we come across مل (f. A16a) for مال (Q. 2:247), and صل (f. B60b) for صال (Q. 37:163). Yet other examples are: ایما (f. A20b) for ایاما (Q. 3:24), امما (f. A8b) for اماما (Q. 2:124), الذن (f. A31b) for الذان (Q. 4:16), اطع (f. A35a) for اطاع in (Q. 4:80), ارد (f. A42b) for اراد (Q. 5:17), مئدة (f. A49b) for مائدة (Q. 5:114), ثنی (f. A77b) for ثانی (Q. 9:40), این (f. B29b) for ایان (Q. 27:65), اینا (f. A85a) for ایانا (Q. 10:28), اعنه (f. B19a) for اعانه (Q. 25:4), and فودک (f. B20b) for فؤادک (Q. 25:32).

The addition of alif in some words seems to indicate the vowel kasra. Examples are: جایتَهم (f. A49a) for جِئتَهم (Q. 5:110), جایتُکم (twice on f. A22a) for جِئتُکم (Q. 3:49 and 50), شايتَ (f. A67a) for شِئتَ (Q. 7:155), جایتُکَ (f. B22b), for جِئتُکَ (Q. 26:26), جاینکَ (f. B20b), for جِئنٰکَ (Q. 25:33), and قد جايتُکم (f. B80a) for قد جِئتُکم (Q. 43:63). cf. Ahmad al-Jallad suggests that after kasra ىا stands for hamza.

The omission of alif while connecting two words, in such cases as بلحق (f. A58b) for بالحق (Q. 6:151), بلبینت (ff. A103a, B80a & B103a) for بالبینت (Q. 14:9, 43:63, & 57:25), and بلغیب (f. B56a) for بالغیب (Q. 36:11), is indicative of the oral trans­mission of the Qurʾān in the first/seventh century. To this, one can add the omission of yāʾ in such cases as اوف الکیل (A96a) instead of اوفی الکیل (Q. 12:59).

The omission of alif as a bearer of ḥamza is also common in Codex Mashhad. Examples include: اطمننتم (Q. 4:103) on f. A36b; وامرتن (Q. 2:282) on f. A19b; أطفها (Q. 5:64) on f. A46a; اطمنوا (Q. 10:7) on f. A83b; لاملن (Q. 11:11, and 32:13) on ff. A98a & B44a, امتلت (Q. 50:30), on f. B92b; اطمن (Q. 22:11) on f. B7a; انشنا (Q. 23:19, and 28:45) on f. B13a & B23b; and اشمزت (Q. 39: 45) on f. B67b.

On the other hand, contrary to current usage, the addition of alif as a symbol of Arabic ḥamza is common in the codex; examples include: نباونی (Q. 6:143) on f. A57a; راوس (Q. 2:279) on f. A19b; راوسهم (Q. 17:51 and 22:19) on f. A116a & B7b; افادة (Q. 14:37 and 16:78) on ff. A102a & A104b; الافادة (Q. 67:23) on f. B114b; سیاه (Q. 2:81) on f. A5b; and لا یاوده (Q. 2:255) on f. A17a.

The omission of nūn while linking to another letter such as lam is very note­worthy, for examples in إلم یکن (ff. A31a & A40b) for إن لم یکن (Q. 4:12 & 176), إلم تفعل (f. A46a) for إن لم تفعل (Q. 5:67), إلم ینتهوا (f. A46b) for إن لم ینتهوا (Q. 5:73), and ألا تعبدوا (f. A90a) for أن لا تعبدوا (Q. 11: 26).

The omission of wāw in the words like الا (f. A25b) instead of اولاء (Q. 3:119), ابنا الله (f. A42b) instead of ابنوا الله (Q. 5:18), نبا (ff. B62a & B111a) instead of نبوا (Q. 38:21 and 64:5), دعا (f. B70b) instead of دعوا (Q. 40:50), الی (f. B53a) instead of اولی (Q. 35:1), and البلا (f. B60a) instead of البلوا (Q. 37:106) is also notable in Codex Mash­had.

Using a denticl ىـ to show /ā/ was common in the early ḥijāzī Qurʾāns but faded over time. There are ample instances of such usage in Codex Mashhad: إليه (f. A46b) for إله (Q. 5:73), دیرهم (f. A101a) for دارهم (Q. 13:31), قرطيس (f. A50b) for قرطاس (Q. 6:7), and جنتین (f. B51a) for جنتان (Q. 34:15).

I see two main phenomena: alif is hamza, and: The orthography reflects phono­logical realization rather than morpho­logical structure. ­ ‒ ­

don't confuse = don't mix

I started to blog six years ago.
So I sometimes: I repeat myself ‒ because some do not get it.
I said & I say: Most aspects are independent = can be freely combined.

This is Ḥafs: this Qālūn:

here some words in Ḥafṣ, Qālūn, and (mostly) Warš

To say it clearly:
Never confuse rasm and reading (or transmission, or path or variant)!
There is neither a Qālūn rasm, nor a Ḥafṣ rasm ‒ how competent those who say so, might (otherwise) be.
­ ­ ‒ ­

7:137 ‒ the main change from al-Ḥaddād to aḍ-Ḍabbāʿ

I get not tired to repeat: al-Ḥaddād copied many thinks from a Faz print.
allah without written /ā/ is most striking.

كلمة in 7:137 is remark­able too. ad-Ḍabbāʿ writes ت; the Libyian muṣḥaf has ت, but all Warš copies and the two Tunisian Qālūn maṣā­ḥif have ـة. I don't see a com­pelling reason for the 1952 change. ad-Dānī does not mention the Kufan muṣḥaf, the one ʿĀṣim follows.

You might say: "These are just 16 manuscripts, probably there are 16 others with tāʾ." I looked at the manuscripts, in which Marijn van Putten found niʿmah and niʿmat, raḥmah and raḥmat in iḍāfah/status constructus, and I found only one form.
Okay, ad-Dānī says: "-t", and Ibn Naǧāḥ: "-h"

So it should be "-h" =

aḍ-Ḍabbāʿ's reason is this:

‒ ­

mistake made, mistake copied

In 1924 the King Fuʾād Edition mis­placed both hamza signs and mu­tat­ing small alifs (daggers) after the yāʾ-tooth – something that was not done in the West or in the East.
But now "everybody" copies the mistake, even Merkaz Ṭabʿ-o Našr and MSI without acknowledging their borrow­ings from Medina.:

BTW, in the data stream of (most, all ?) institutions both hamza sign and mu­tat­ing small alif sit on the tooth (there is no kašī­da/ tat­wīl in the files), but the King Fahd Complex inserts space in their special Ḥafṣ KFGQPC font. The image on the left shows the same text in two dif­ferent fonts: Ḥafṣ and Warš, the former moves the hamza-sign to the left.

Some rules are so obvious and internalized that they only catch your eye when broken. In writing, the rule dictates that a tooth/nabrah can never stand bare: a tooth without a dot (or dots), with­out a dagger alif, or without a hamzah sign (the miniature ʿayn head) just doesn't exist.
Just because the KFE and UT misplace the mutating alif after the y-tooth, the Markaz TabʿoNašr does it too. Although not a strong argument against I show both old manuscripts and "the Šamarlī" and the MSI not partaking in the crime.

Qaṭarī Warš

In Algeria there are state near editions of Warš (like 2026 the one for the Parisian Mosque "Coran du Cen­ten­aire" calligraphed by Mohammed Ben Saïd Chérifi), others by members of a bro­ther­hood, especial­ly by/for the Tiǧanīya and the Šaḏi­līya. In Qaṭar the latter one was reprinted.

Surat YāSīn

yet another mistake in KFE1924

The maker of the 1924 Cairo edition evidently did not understand the function of the mutating small alif: it is not a vowel sign but turns yāʾ or wāw into alif — in other words, a letter that looks like a yāʾ is an alif (alif bi‑šakl al‑yāʾ). In early Warš prints the mutat­ing alif is correct­ly placed above the yāʾ; the Cairo edition, by con­trast, places the sign some­times, correct­ly some­times not.
top: Warš prints; second: KFE; third UT0; fourth: Muṣḥaf al-Muʿal­lim, Tunis; 5^thTaj
It should sit above yāʾ, not after it. In Moroc­co this is always the case, in KFE it is some­times like it should be, some­times not.
Mikāl is dif­ferent from the others, be­cause Warš and Qālun (Tunis) have /mi­kāʾil/. While here there is a hover­ing sign and a tooth/نبرة/let­ter, in the other cases there is just one letter. What KFE and UT are doing is just wrong: they often have use­less tooth/نبرة !
This is the same scribal incon­sis­ten­cy, likely due to care­less­ness, that Otto Pretzl had already noticed.
I have added a last row in IPak. Here the dagger is neither a small alif, nor a mutat­ing sign, but a ā-vowel sign; it belongs to the con­sonant; the tooth/nabra is mute.
So, it is not only Abū ʿUmar ʿUbaidah Muḥam­mad Saliḥ al-Banki who does not care, KFE and UT are not perfect either.

Here the last words from KHO, MNQ and Arya­mehr. Yes, Otto­mans write the yāʾ with its dots even when it stands for /ā/, yes, Persians put the marks somewhere (in the right order, but whereever).
not convined yet?
Below is more to see: Algerian Warš: the mutat­ing small alif ON the tooth, KFC/UT Warš comme si, comme ça, UT-Ḥafṣ just bad:

/ṣalāt/ is not the problem, nor is /abnē/ UT-Warš – with them I just show that with wau and with end-yāʾ even UT places the mutating alif proper­ly: /mikaʾil/ has the /ī/ after the tooth – why?;
the rest shows that KFC/UT (and KFE before) write with­out thinking first; they have no idea were the mu­tat­ing small alif should be placed.

–­

2:72

I have shown that the King Fahd Complex has changed the text of the KFE.
As I can't find a single word of explanation from Madina, I will show the different ways of writing /fādāraʾtum/:
both Ḥafez Osmān the Elder (right, top) and the Moroccans (on the left I show the oldest Fès-print 1296/1879; context first, below just the word) write an alif: for Asians it is hamza (the sukūn above says: I am not mute, do pronounce my consonantal value /ʾ/!); for the Africans it carries hamza represented by a red point.
On the right the second (Muṣṭafà Naẓīf Qadarġalī) and the third (al-Muḫallalātī) have hovering hamza sign (without seat, but not on the base line)
The KFE (middle next to its exact copy by UT) puts the hamza sign on the baseline. Hence ʿUṯmān Ṭaha does the same (fourth on the right).
Unlike the Indians (left of KFE) who have a seatless hamza sign like the KFE, both Tunis (first Hanibal, then BenʿAlī) and Tripoli (left, last) have in their Qālūn maṣāḥif a hamza sign on an dagger-alif,
exactly what the KFC did when changing UT0 into UT1.

At the bottom I show other quotes from Qālūn maṣāḥif: while Qaḏḏāfī (third line) often has an alif (following ad-Dānī), the Tunisians (following Ibn Naǧāḥ) have hamza on a dagger.

Do any of the authorities recommand to put the hamza on a dagger?

No, its is an innovation made by KFC.

a counterfactual history ...

... of Qurʾānic printing.
The revisted KFEII (1952: 827 typeset pages, 12 lines) pro­vided the text (Q52) for three fully ber­Kenar maṣā­ḥif that is, each page begins with a new verse and ends with a verse, with no verse carried across a page break.

One realization was the 1383/1963 Cairo muṣ­ḥaf, a 486‑page edition set in 16 lines, com­plete­ly re‑flowed and strict­ly base­line‑oriented (Cairo: Ǧaʿfar Muḥam­mad Muṣ­ṭafà 1383/1963).

A second written by Šukrī Ḥaršu aš-Ṣīšānī for Ibn Katheer in Damascus: 17 lines on 486 pages (as well). The "winner" was the 1399/1979 Damascus muṣḥaf, the 604‑page handwritten edition by ʿUṯmān Ṭaha in an extremely linear calligraphic style.

Had the 1963 Cairo edition received broader attention — and had the Madi­na/KFC project adopted its dis­ciplined, fully berKenar page archi­tec­ture — it could realisti­cally have become the "stan­dard" UT is today.
In this counterfactual history, the development of Qurʾānic print­ing would have followed the 1963 model: a modern, base­line‑ori­ented ber­Kenar lay­out derived from the 1952 KFAII type, rather than the hand­written 604‑page form that ultima­tely prevailed.





 –­