Many things that experts present as remarkable about the 1924 Egyptian Government print of the Qurʾān, the King Fuʾād Edition, are simply wrong:
it was not the first print made by Muslims for Muslims (Neuwirth),
it did not finally fix a fluid text (Bobzin),
it did not spread Ḥafṣ throughout the Muslim world (Bauer),
it was not an immediate success with Sunnis and Šiʿites (Reynolds),
its spelling did not impose itself everywhere "(with only extraordinary exceptions)" (Reynolds),
it was not edited and calligraphed by a Turkish/Ottoman calligrapher (Asma Hilali),
it was not produced to increase King Fuʾād chances to become caliph (Aziz Hilal),
its spelling was not due to the technical constraints of metal type (Milo),
it was not the first in Egypt using the "rasm ʿuṯmānī" instead of "imlāʾī",
nor the first world-wide claiming to do so on its title page,
it was not an Azhar Qurʾān,
nor the result of 17 years of delibarations of a committee,
it is not "the Cairo Edition" — not even
a Cairo print,
it is not the restoration of the original written text by applying the works of ad-Dānī and Ibn Naǧāḥ to the Ḥafṣ oral text (Bergsträßer).
Muslims hat printed
maṣāḥif since 1803 (Kazan), 1827, 1829 in Iran and India (from the 1860s on in high runs).
The oral text had been fixed for centuries.
Ḥafṣ — being the closest to the standard pronunciation — was made the standard reading by the non‑Arab Mamluks, Safavids, Ottomans, and Timurids: becoming
the reading in Asia.
The 827 page KFE never was a commerical success anywhere, not even in Egypt.
Its spelling became a success due to the 522 page Šamarlī (calligraphed 1975 by Muḥammad Saʿd Ibrāhīm al-Ḥaddād following the page layout of Muṣṭafa Naẓīf Qadirġalī) and the 604 page Madina
Muṣḥaf (calligraphed 1978 by ʿUṯmān Ṭaha following the page layout of Ḥafiz ʿUṯman/Osman Qayšzade/Kaışzade) ‒ the first just in Egypt, the second in the Arab word and in Malaysia (and among Salafites) ‒ decenies after 1924 and only for a tiny minority of Muslims (Indonesians, Indians, Bengalis, Pakistanis, Turks, Iranians, Africans are often overlooked or underestimated).
pace Reynolds, Iran never reprinted the KFE, nor adopted its spelling; they just adopted the Ottoman 604 pages berkenar layout.
Asma Hilali unfortunately demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the material history of the King Fuʾād Edition. In her concluding remarks at the IDEO conference on Le Coran du Caire 1924, she claimed that it had been ‘edited and calligraphed by ʿAbd al‑ʿAzīz al‑Rifāʿī’, although the
one thing to know about the KFE is that it was
typeset.
There is not the slightest indication that the
muṣḥaf should have pushed King Fuʾād to the calliphat; it was not distributed (nor displayed) at any of the caliphal promotion conferences.
Ḥifnī Bey, the initiator of the project, sought a Qurʾān that was easy to read ‒ with a strict right‑to‑left sequence of characters, determining the temporal order of pronunciation, plus exact positioning of
ḥarakāt ‒ not only in the right order of marks, but in the proper relation to "their" letters. ‒ Looking at /alʾān/ (4:18), Muḫallalātī and the Indians have the dagger for /ā/ above the
hamza, the normal place of a vowel sign. KFE has it to the left: a tiny bit clearer.
Type did not force him, he wanted it that way.
In the first years of the 20
th century the normal
muṣḥaf in Egypt was
Ottoman: with proper اللٰه , with both original alif (i.e.
hamz when with a
haraka-sign), and often alif as mater lectionis (5 150 times more often than in the "ʿUṯmānic rasm" ‒ which has 5 150 more dagger alifs). ‒
“Imlāʾī” suggests the modern standard orthography of MSA, which it is not: This becomes immediately clear from the spelling of words such as raḥmn (for raḥmān) and ṣalū (for ṣalāt), forms that deliberately diverge from normal. al-Ribā;
2:275 (3x);276;278; 3:130; 4:161;
al-Ṣalāt; 70 x
ṣalātī;
6:162;
ṣalāti r-rasūli;
9:99;
ṣalātaka;
9:103;
a-ṣalātuka;
11:87;
ṣalātihim;
107:5;
al-Zakāt; 32x from 2:43 to 98:5;
al-Ḥayāt; 55x from 2:85 to 89:24;
wa-Manāta; 53:20;
al-Najāt; 40:41;
ka-miškātin; 24:35;
bi-l-ghadāti; 6:52; 18:28;
The King Fuʾād Edition of 1924 is in the "ʿUṯmānic rasm" but not as the result of tedious, year long discussions by a committee (as many experts claim), but as a simple switch. All Fāzī prints are
ʿuṭmāni, all Indian prints have /al-ʿalāmīn, mālik, razaqnāhum/ with dagger alifs; so has the Būlāq type of 1895 and the very important Cairo Edition of 1308/1890 by Muḫallalātī.
When you compare a Fāzī print from the 19
th century, a
muṣḥaf by Hafiẓ Osman Kayşzāde, the 1895 Būlāq print without vocal signs, the 1931 Algiers print, and 1890 Muḫallalātī CE with the 1924 KFE,
you see, that 1924 did not introduce the
rasm ʿuṯmānī to Egypt. ((in this image I have no Indian print, although they follow the
rasm ʿuṯmānī, because I believe that al-Ḥaddād was not influenced by them, but by Morocco and by al-Muḫallalātī))
(Būlāq 1895 uses madda for /ʾā/ not for extra long elongation)
So what was new?
‒ offset print without which
the uplifting of kasras would have been impossible (today standard),
‒ streamlined Saǧāwandī pauses signs,
‒ no more references to readings other than Ḥafṣ,
‒ no more references to verse ends other than Kufan → number after each verse,
(( no
tafsīr ))
‒ more space between lines, between words,
‒ baseline ductus (no stapled ligatures; all
harakat sign excately above/below letter)
(this is standard now),
‒ three "mute"/not to be prounced-signs:
waṣla at the start, zero and circle at the end of words.
So there were many switches:
‒ from scholarly to for state school students and foreigners (baseline, numbers, no alternatives),
‒ from "isolated words" (Ottoman and Persian) to "words in context" (Ipak and And), i.e. notating assimilation between words,
‒ from having short and
long vowel signs to needing always
ḥuruf al-madd, therefore introducing small, substitution vowel letters ( ٰ ࣳ ۧ ), when there are none in the
rasm; already Muḫallalātī had this Western system, which follows the Arab grammar,
‒ from "imlāʾī" to "ʿuṯmānī"
(rasm),
‒ from Asian to African (spelling):
‒ اللَه instead of اللٰه
‒ ءادم instead of اٰدم
‒إِ أَ instead of اَ اِ
(in Asia alif
is hamza, in Africa its "just" the seat of
hamza)
‒ sequential
tanwīn (for
iḫfāʾ or
idġām) instead of
iẓhār nūn
‒ from notating
the difference between spoken /ī/ and shortened /ĭ/ to writing them the same.
What we have in chronological order, is
‒ (1) the original spelling that we find in the scriptio inferior of the Sana'a palimpest and in Codex Mashhad
‒ (2) the spelling that we find in the (true) ʿUṯmānic
maṣāḥif, like the
CPP, or
CA1 or other
early mss.
‒ (3) the "ʿuṯmānic rasm" as described by ad-Dānī and colleaguges
- (4) the "imlāʾī" text as found in Ottoman and Persian
maṣāḥif
‒ (5) the modern spelling (MSA)
Although we find (3) in all Western (Andalus, Morocco, West Africa, Libya) and all Eastern (India, Pakistan, Indonesia, South Africa, Ceylon, their diasporas)
maṣāḥif, experts and geniuses call (3) "Cairo": not excact, and the result of flagrant ignorance (what was understandable for a German scholar in 1930 is inexcusable for www-verse youngster today. BTW, Bergsträßer calls the KFE explicitly "the offical Egyptian qurʾān" and implictely "the al-Ḥusainī-al-Ḥaddād-
muṣḥaf", never anything with Cairo, he and Jeffrey know that there were hundreds of different CEs, no "CE".).
Bobzin, Bergsträßer, Brockett, Puin, van Putten know a thousand times more about, Arabic, the Qurʾān or Islām than I do. Yet, I dare to say: this sentence by XY is nonsense. ‒ Because they do not know enough about printing, or because they do not keep the oral form, the text, the graphic form and the book gestalt apart.
1
The Azhar Koran prompted a veritable flood of printed editions of the Koran throughout the Islamic world, as there was now a recognized authority on which the Koran text could be based.
Hartmut Bobzin: “Von Venice to Cairo: On the History of Arabic Editions of the Koran” in Sprachen des Nahen Ostens und die Druckrevolution, eds.: Eva Hanebutt-Benz, Dagmar Glaß, Geoffrey Roper Westhofen 2002. p. 171
Bobzin's statement that Muslims did not have a text before 1924 is absurd, mistaking the switch from Ottoman spelling to Maġribī spelling, from Ottoman calligraphy to baseline type, and from informing about several end-of-verse-systems to simple Kufan numbering with the final
standartization of the text. His base mistake: He does not see (does not hear), that the oral form was fixed centuries ago, and that the graphic elements are not of equal importance: ductus and sura title boxes are not as important as the
rasm, and while some
rasm differences are discussed for a single word, others for a grammatical category. ‒ and: The
King Fuʾād Edition of 1924 is no
Azhar Koran!
the various editions of the Qur’an printed today (with only extra-ordinary exceptions) are identical, word for word, letter for letter.
Gabriel Said Reynolds "Introduction" to The Qur'ān in its Historical Context, Abingdon: Routledge 2008, p. 1
Yes, there is less varity than hundred years ago, but
maṣāḥif from Kazan, Bakū, Ankara and Istanbul are very different from those from Djakarta; those from Casablanca, Dakar, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and Kano are not only different from each other, but very different from those from Khartum or Karachi. In Bairut, Medina, Tehran
maṣāḥif with different spellings are produced.
Quelle für den Konsonatentext sind natürlich nicht Koranhandschriften, sondern die Literatur über ihn; er ist also eine Rekonstruktion, das Ergebnis
einer Umschreibung des üblichen Konsonantentextes
Of course, the source for the consonant text are not manuscripts, but the literature about it; it is therefore a reconstruction, the result of a rewriting of the usual consonant text
Gotthelf Bergsträßer: "Reciting the Qurʾān in Cairo" in Der Islam XX (1932)
Bergsträßer valued al-Ḥaddād and held his
muṣḥaf in high esteem, although it was not a critical edition based on the oldest manuscripts. Seeing that it was not ‒ as is common ‒ an adaptation of a recent print, and having noticed a
Tabyīn by Ibn Naǧāḥ in his study, he assumed that the Chief Recitor had reconstructed the old written form by applying the rules of ad-Dānī and Abū Dāʾūd Sulaimān Ibn Naǧāḥ to the oral text he knew by heart.
Yes, al-Ḥaddād had not just adopted an Ottoman
muṣḥaf, not even Muḫallalātī's of 1308/1890, but his work was based an an existing
muṣḥaf, a Warš print from Faz, which he "just" ḥafṣified.
In which treatise, Dr. Bergsträßer, you suppose al-Ḥaddād found that there are three kinds of
tanwīn? Where the rule that alifs must have a
waṣl-sign or a
hamza? Where that he must add substitute vowel letters to lenghten
fatḥa, kasra or
ḍamma? Where, for God's sake, did he find the rule that /ʾallāh/ must be written as /ʾallah/?? Where did he find that
nūn aṣ-ṣilā, rukuʿā signs, and
iẓhār nūn do not belong to a proper
muṣḥāf?
The only possible explanation I see, is that he adopted a Faz print to the Eastern oral form.
Here the shift from 1911 to 1924:
some big alif are replace by daggers,
some naked alifs get a
waṣl-sign,
kaṣra draws the
hamza-sign,
sequental
tanwīn.
‒
placing of the /ā/dagger before the hamza
