Thursday, 1 October 2026

Cairo 1924

In the first years of the 20th 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 a tedious, year long dis­cussions by a committee (as many experts claim), but as a simple switch. All Fāzī print are ʿuṭmāni, all Indian prints have /al-ʿalāmīn, mālik, razaqnāhum/ with dagger alifs; so has the Būlāq type of 1895 and the most im­portant Muḫallalātī muṣḥaf of 1890.
When you compare a Fāzī print from the 19th century, a muṣḥaf by Hafiẓ Osman Kayş­zāde, the 1895 Būlāq print with­out vocal signs, the 1931 Algiers print, and ‒ most important ‒ the 1890 Muḫalla­lātī and 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))
So what was new?
‒ offset print without which the uplifting of kasras would have been impossible (today standard)
‒ streamlined Saǧāwandī pauses signs
‒ no more refereces to readings other than Ḥafṣ
‒ no more refereces 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 "words as units" (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 ( ٰ ࣳ ۧ ); 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 اَ اِ 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, 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 or
‒ (3) the "ʿuṯmānic rasm" as de­scribed by ad-Dānī and collea­guges
- (4) the "imlāʾī" text as found in the Ottoman and Persian imperies
‒ (5) the modern spelling (MSA)

Although we find (3) in all Western (Andalus, Maorocco, 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 exlicitly "the offical egyptina 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.
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: the sura title box is 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.





























BTW, compared to the Ottoman rasm, G24 differs only in about 5 150 places where it writes a dagger instead of an alif, whereas its spelling system yields roughly 32 000 different word‑forms when set against IPak.
Except for the sequence Iso­Hamza+Alif, which was adopted from the Maghreb in 1308/1890 and 1342/1924 (alif+madda was not possible, since madda was already taken for elon­ga­tion ‒ btw, the Būlāq type print of 1299/1881 (Muṣ­ḥaf Tau­fīq) uses madda for /ʾā/), in the Muḫal­la­lātī print of 1308/1890 every­thing is already as in 1924.





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Monday, 28 September 2026

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:

Saturday, 12 September 2026

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
A34aIV 59شئشای
A16bII 251ذو فضلذوا فضل
A57bVI 133ذو الرحمةذوا الرحمة
A20aIII 7اولوا الالبباولا الالبب
A103bXIV 17من ورائهمن وراه
A46aV 64اطفأهااطفها
A98aXI 119لاملأنلاملن
A19bII 279رءوسراوس
A102aXVI 78والافـدةوالافادة
A5bII 81کسب سیئةکسب سیاة
A17aII 255لا یؤدهلا یاوده
A25bIII 119هانتم اولاءهانتم الا
A78aIX 52الحسنیینالحسنین
A116bXVII 62قال ارءیتکقل اریتک
A23aIII 72قالتقلت
A80bIX 95بما کانوا یکسبونبما کنوا یکسبون
A85aX 28ایانااینا
A22aIII 49جِئتُکمجایتکم
A67aVII 155شِئتَشایت
A46bV 73ما من الهما من الیه
A101aXIII 31دارهمدیرهم
B51aXXXIV 15جنتانجنتین
A103aXIV 9بالبینتبلبینت
A40bIV 176ان لم یکنالم یکن





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Thursday, 10 September 2026

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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Cairo 1924

In the first years of the 20 th century the normal muṣḥaf in Egypt was Ott oman: with proper اللٰه , with both original alif (i.e. hamz w...