Cairo 1924

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 tafsīr ))
‒ no more references to verse ends other than Kufan → number after each verse
‒ 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 the 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

Clarification
When we talk about a muṣḥaf, that is a written or printed qurʾān, we must keep different things apart:
‒ 1 the oral form of the Qurʾān, its reading, a system of reci­ta­tion. It defines how the text is pro­nounced, some­times a dif­ferent vowel, a doubled con­sonant, how hamza is treated, elon­ga­tions, as­simi­lation, where pauses are manda­tory, possible, or for­bidden. (Ibn al-Ǧazarī treats in his Kitāb an-Našr not only the rasm, the letters, but the pauses as well.)
It is transmitted orally, corrected oral­ly, and mastered orally.
It can be written differently ‒ fixing most aspects or leav­ing them to be taught orally.
In our case it is Ḥafs ʿan ʿĀṣim.
‒ 2a the text The written form is the concrete realization of ortho­graphy: the spell­ing system for re­present­ing Ḥafṣ on the page (or in the data stream) ‒ a bundle of deci­sions:
‒ the rasm, the letter skele­ton;
‒ the spelling of long vowels;
‒ the spelling of initial hamza;
‒ mute/otiose letters;
‒ the writing of (partial) assimi­la­tion;
‒ auxiliary signs: verse numbers, signs for pause, saǧa­da, juzʾ, ḥizb and saktah.
Some aspects follow early manu­scripts (in which alif, waw and yāʾ were not only written for /ʾ, w, y/ and /ā, ū, ī/, but for /a, u, i/ as well, dif­feren­tiat­ing between words that would be homo­graphs with­out a con­ven­tionally intro­duced spelling dis­tinc­tion (where one form viola­tes phono­graphic expec­ta­tions) and for marking the end of a word ending with a letter with­out an explicit end-of-word-form (waw, dāl, ḏāl, rāʾ, zai).
In Asia/India/Indone­sia long vowels are written by long-vowel-signs while Africa/Anda­lu­sia/the Maġrib has only three short vowel signs, needing extra length­en­ing letters: when there is no ḥarf al-madd in the rasm a small vowel letter is added. (Al­though the dagger/alif ḫan­ǧa­rīya has the same shape ‒ even has the same uni­code code point ‒ in the East it is a vowel sign (khaṛā zabar), where­as in the West it is a small letter.)
In Asia alif never has a hamza-sign above (nor below) because it is hamza: the ḥara­ka acti­va­tes its hamza­ness: /ʾa, ʾi, ʾu/, while in the West a small head of ʿain is needed
‒ both vowel dots/stro­kes and the ham­za sign did not exist when spelling was fixed.
This layer is often mis­under­stood. It is a spell­ing system, chosen and applied by human editors. Dif­ferent systems can re­pre­sent the same reci­ta­tion; the same system can be used for dif­ferent reci­ta­tions.
‒ the graphic form
While the text (2a) represents the under­lying data, graphic form is how the text is rendered. The text is basic; the graphic forms are variants. Linguistically and com­pu­ta­tionally, a ḍamma re­mains a ḍamma, and a sukūn re­mains a sukūn, regard­less of regional vari­a­tions.
For a visual gallery (including Otto­man, East African, and Indian forms of ḍamma and sukūn), see: A Visual Guide to Quranic Graphic Variants.
‒ The book is the physical rea­li­za­tion: page size, margins, type­face, lay­out, title pages, appen­dices, indices, catch­words, headers .... This layer answers questions like:
‒ Are rukūʿāt marked in the text? On the margin?
‒ How many lines per page?
‒ Is there extra space bet­ween words?
‒ Are there numbers after each verse, and are alter­native ends of verse in­di­cated?
‒ Must each juzʾ begin on a right‑hand page?
‒ Does every page finish with a verse-end?
‒ Is there an index? A colo­phon? A table of aḥzāb?
‒ Are the cartouches on the margin for aǧāzʾ, sa­ǧadāt, sakta?
‒ Are the suras counted or named only?
‒ Is the chronology of revelation indicated?
This layer is the most visible to readers, yet the least under­stood in scholar­ship. It is also the layer in which printers, not scholars, often have the final word.


↩︎ return

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 and ductus to Maġribī spell­ing, base­line type and post‑verse 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.


































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maṣāḥif by and for Murids (Senegal)

I know three maṣāḥif by Murids, two in colour, two in seven volumes, one in 30 parts.
The colour muṣḥaf in 30 parts was printed in Bologna.

The b/w one is kaamil Serigne Bousso Imaam (2010). In it all verses at the start of a ṯumun, rubʿ, niṣf, ḥizb are fat (till the first pause):

Seven parts, colour, 212 pages:

a bombshell

Morteza Karimi-Nia has pub­lished a book: Codex Mash­had, and a web site.
Most inter­est­ing:
Sura order like Codex Masʿud
and
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 neither con­forms to the modern ortho­graphy, nor aligns with the “Uthmānic rasm” de­scribed by Abū ʿAmr al-Dānī (in the Muqni) and Abū Dāʾūd Su­lai­mān ibn Naǧāḥ (Muḫ­ta­ṣar at-Tabyīn). For instan­ce, šaiʾشئ is al­ways written with an addi­tional alif as شای, ḏūذو with an additional alif as ذوا; and the word ʾulūاولوا with waw for /u/, and with­out waw 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 are briefly 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 (2:247), and صل (f. B60b) for صال (37:163). Other examples are: ایما (f. A20b) for ایاما (Q. 3:24), امما (f. A8b) for اماما (2:124), الذن (f. A31b) for الذان (4:16), اطع (f. A35a) for اطاع in (4:80), ارد (f. A42b) for اراد (5:17), مئدة (f. A49b) for مائدة (5:114), ثنی (f. A77b) for ثانی (9:40), این (f. B29b) for ایان (27:65), اینا (f. A85a) for ایانا (10:28) اعنه (f. B19a) for اعانه (25:4), and فودک (f. B20b) for فؤادک (25:32).

The addition of alif in some words seems to indi­cate the vowel kasra, e.g. جایتَهم (f. A49a) for جِئتَهم (5:110) جایتُکم (twice on f. A22a) for جِئتُکم (3:49 + 50) ,شايتَ (f. A67a) for شِئتَ (7:155), جایتُکَ (f. B22b), for جِئتُکَ (26:26), جاینکَ (f. B20b), for جِئنٰکَ (25:33), and قد جايتُکم (f. B80a) for قد جِئتُکم (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 (6:151), بلبینت (ff. A103a, B80a & B103a) for بالبینت (14:9, 43:63, & 57:25), and بلغیب (f. B56a) for بالغیب (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 (4:103) on f. A36b; وامرتن (2:282) on f. A19b; أطفها (5:64) on f. A46a; اطمنوا (10:7) on f. A83b; لاملن (11:11, and 32:13) on ff. A98a & B44a, امتلت (50:30), on f. B92b; اطمن (Q. 22:11) on f. B7a; انشنا (23:19, and 28:45) on f. B13a & B23b; and اشمزت (39:45) on f. B67b.

On the other hand, the addition of alif as a symbol of ḥamza is common in the codex; examples include: نباونی (6:143) on f. A57a; راوس (Q. 2:279) on f. A19b; راوسهم (17:51 & 22:19) on f. A116a & B7b; افادة (14:37 & 16:78) on ff. A102a & A104b; الافادة (67:23) on f. B114b; سیاه (2:81) on f. A5b; and لا یاوده (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 (4:12 & 176), إلم تفعل (f. A46a) for إن لم تفعل (5:67), إلم ینتهوا (f. A46b) for إن لم ینتهوا (5:73), and ألا تعبدوا (f. A90a) for أن لا تعبدوا (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 (5:18), نبا (ff. B62a & B111a) instead of نبوا (Q. 38:21 and 64:5), دعا (f. B70b) instead of دعوا (40:50), الی (f. B53a) instead of اولی (35:1), and البلا (f. B60a) instead of البلوا (37:106) is also notable.

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 (more than /ā/), and: The ortho­graphy reflects phono­logi­cal realiza­tion rather than mor­pho­logical structure.

Folio	Qur’an	KFE	C. Mashhad	pic
A34a	IV 59	شئ	شای
A16b	II 251	ذو فضل	ذوا فضل
A57b	VI 133	ذو الرحمة	ذوا الرحمة
A20a	III 7	اولوا الالبب	اولا الالبب
A103b	XIV 17	من ورائه	من وراه
A46a	V 64	اطفأها	اطفها
A98a	XI 119	لاملأن	لاملن
A19b	II 279	رءوس	راوس
A102a	XVI 78	والافـدة	والافادة
A5b	II 81	کسب سیئة	کسب سیاة
A17a	II 255	لا یؤده	لا یاوده
A25b	III 119	هانتم اولاء	هانتم الا
A78a	IX 52	الحسنیین	الحسنین
A116b	XVII 62	قال ارءیتک	قل اریتک
A23a	III 72	قالت	قلت
A80b	IX 95	بما کانوا یکسبون	بما کنوا یکسبون
A85a	X 28	ایانا	اینا
A22a	III 49	جِئتُکم	جایتکم
A67a	VII 155	شِئتَ	شایت
A46b	V 73	ما من اله	ما من الیه
A101a	XIII 31	دارهم	دیرهم
B51a	XXXIV 15	جنتان	جنتین
A103a	XIV 9	بالبینت	بلبینت
A40b	IV 176	ان لم یکن	الم یکن

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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.
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