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.





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Lucknow 1890

The first images of a muṣḥaf by Naval Kishore came from Oxford: black and white, wrong order and low resolution. It made be happy.
Now I found a muṣḥaf by him from 1890 in Heidelberg with the opposite problem: too high resolution, as you can see here:




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Indonesia

Unlike Malaysia, which aligns itself muṣḥaf­wise closely with Saudi Arabia, and South Africa, which is under Pakis­tani influence, Indone­sia had to chart its own course — not only because it is the most populous Muslim‑majority country, but also because it has been pursuing its own path since 1848. Before 1976 when a commi­tee to define standards for the pro­duction of maṣā­ḥif was established, there were a) local traditions, b) reprints of a 542page Bom­bay muṣ­ḥaf c) re­prints of a 604page muṣ­ḥaf by Muṣṭafà Naẓīf Qadir­ġalī; all follow Asian ortho­graphy, but not exactly the same. So, Indo­ne­sians knew that prints to not have to be iden­tical to be true copies of the qurʾān: they were not con­fused by small dif­ference.
From the 1930s to 1974 the Bombay muṣ­ḥaf was the norm, espe­cial­ly since the five million copies printed by Toppan printing company in 1960 as part of the Japa­nese repa­ra­tion for damage during the WWII occu­pation.
Besides defining a Braille muṣḥaf (see below), the experts had two guide lines: Ǧalāl ad-Dīn as-Suyūṭī's Al-Itqān fī ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān esp. chapter 76 Marsūm al-ḫatt adāb al-kitāba): and bringing the Ottoman (Bah­riye) and Indian (Bom­bay) spelling closer to each other: the easies are the pause signs:
all MSI have the six ʿalāmāt al-waqf of KFE
the Baḥriye/Otto­man/MNQ does not get signs for iqlāb (small mīm before bāʾ after nūn sākin), nor for assi­milation (šadda on the second ḥarf) = it stays as simple as before (trusting the teachers to teach this)
Turks, Iranians and Indonesian write the words in its proper form, whereas Maghri­bians, Indians and now central Arabs write the verse as it has to be pro­nounced connected.
While after 1985 the 604‑page ber­kenār muṣ­ḥaf of ʿUṯmān Ṭaha became a global standard, Indonesia did not join this develop­ment, because it had already intro­duced a 604‑page muṣḥaf by reprinting Muṣṭafa Naẓīf Qadir­ġalī’s Ottoman‑ortho­graphy muṣ­ḥaf aimed at pesan­tren and/or maʿāhid tahfīz. This made a shift to UT less attrac­tive.
btw, the calligrapher was not named, the (re-)print is known by the press, the Marine press. Maṭbaʿa Baḥrīya.

Bombay reprints

Bombay Nov 1960 low resolution

Bombay 1967

all images are from Ali Akbar

MSI 1985

Verse	1985	2002	2016	2016	Dānī	ADSIN
2:2
2:5	وَاُولٰۤىِٕكَ هُمُ	وَاُولٰۤىِٕكَ هُمُ	وَاُولٰۤىِٕكَ هُمُ
2:22
2:43	الرّاكِعين			الركعين
2:65
2:69	النّاظِرِيْنَ		النّٰظِرِيْنَ
2:116
2:257	اوليـٔهُمُ	لولياؤُهُمُ		اَوْلِيَاۤؤُهُمُ
2:167
2:187
2:191
2:198
2:233
3:7
3:33
3:35
3:43
3:54
3:114	الْخَيْراتِۗ		الْخَيْرٰتِۗ
3:134
3:146
4:18
4:24
4:43
4:95
4:95
4:100
4:117
4:162
6:143	نَبِّـُٔوْنِيْ			نَبِّـُٔوْنِيْ
12:59	اُوْفِ الْكَيْلَ	اُوْفِى الْكَيْلَ		اُوْفِى الْكَيْلَ
25:49	لِّنُحْيِ َۧ بِهٖ			لِّنُحْيِ َۧ بِهٖ
26:176	لْـَٔيْكَةِ		لْـَٔيْكَةِ
32:10	بِلِقَاۤئِ		بِلِقَاۤءِ
33:51	وَتُؤْوِيْٓ		وَتُـْٔوِيْٓ
51:47	بِاَيْىدٍ		بِاَيْىدٍ
88:22	بِمُصَۜيْطِرٍۙ		بِمُصَيْطِرٍۙ

Braille

Pakistan and Jordan were amomg the first. Indonesia, Tunesia, Lybia, Saʿūdīa each produced a Braille muṣḥaf of their own.
Arabic Braille ist written from the left. And today all countries write/punch one line: letter, sign, letter, sign...
In the 1950s Egypt adopted an other system: signs in an extra line above the letters. But that is history (What Natalia Suit wrote in Quranic Matters Material Mediations and Religious Practice in Egypt, Bloomsbury,2020 was the opposite of the reality at the time of publishing.
1985 the Indonesian commitee (Muker ʿUlemaʾ) decided that Braille would render imlāʾī rather than ʿUṯmānī. Many blind Indonesian Muslims did not like this.
So in 2010 a revison was made. /ṣalāh/ and /zakāh/ stayed as they were (no waw), different madd-sign were not deviced (because madd wāǧib is within a word, madd ǧaʾiz at the end of a word, so the following word-space "makes" it ǧaʾiz. The greates simplification styed as before: mute letters are not rendered in braille (except after fatḥatan), so no mute-sign is needed.
saktah is "(س)" in Braille
išmām "( إش )"
imala "( إم )"
tashīl is not marked in Braille
extra signs for /ʾā/ اٰ , /lā/ لا
; ي ,ى ,ئ are three different signs
šadda stands BEFORE the letter it doubles!

But for some other things: braille follows ʿuṯmāni after 2010; now, the muṣ­ḥaf for the visually impaired is not much different from those for normal Muslims.





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another UT1 from Damascus

BerKenār ʿUṯmān Ṭaha started in Damascus, but today is mostly associated with Madina.
Between 1991 and 2013 when they moved to Bairut, Ṣubḥī Ṭaha and his Dār al-Maʿrifa was well known for photo­shop­ing UT1 for taǧ­wīd and for read­ings other than Ḥafṣ.







From the begin­ning he did not use the Dār aš-Šāmīya muṣ­ḥaf but UT1 from the KFC: the yel­low­ish words are from an early print, the ones below from a recent ob­vious edi­tion. That he had the ṣād-below-sign in 88:22 (p.593) shows – I guess – that the KFC's first print still had it.

In Januar 2008 he published the obvious edition with three in­no­va­tions:
– increased space bet­ween words
– boxes around fea­tures that did not apply if paused (ḥa­ra­kat, small ḥuruf al-madd, tanwīn signs and the two dots of tāʾ marbū­ṭa pro­nounced as /h/ before a pause), – white space after pos­sible pauses inclu­ding places where Indian Sa­ǧa­wan­dī has a pauses but Q52 had none.

Two or three years later these extra pauses with­out pause sign were re­moved with­out any ex­plana­tion. Two or three years later these extra pauses with­out pause sign were re­moved with­out any ex­plana­tion.

(click for better view – as in most blogger posts) –­

A Visual Guide to Quranic Graphic Variants

While the text is the data, the graphic form is the text rendered as an image ‒ the text is basic, the graphic forms are just variants.
First different forms of ḍamma ‒ they are the same whatever Unicode says.

next different forms of sukūn:

in the middle you see an East African muṣḥaf in which fatḥa+sukūn when they follow each other are joined (as if one sign)







below nūn ṣīla (nūn quṭnī) by the same calli­grapher, Hafiz ʿUṯmān the Elder: whether the nūn is near the tan­wīn or below the alif does not matter, it is the same. Whether it has an extra kasra or not, either.