Most Indians, most Arabs, most Turks, think that all editions of the
qurʾān are the same.
And they are right:For 150 years most copies printed in Karatchi, Delhi, Dhakka, Johannisburg are the same.
Since 1985 most printed east of Libya and west of Persia follow the orthography of the 1952 Egyptian state edition,
and most copies printed in Turkey (since 1950 ???) are practically identical.
Nevertheless, Gabriel Said Reynolds is completely wrong, when he states
the various editions of the Qur’an printed today (with only extra-ordinary exceptions) are identical, word for word, letter for letter."Introduction" to The Qur'ān in its Historical Context, Abingdon: Routledge 2008, p. 1
from left to right: Syrien, Qaṭar, Kuwait (al-Ḥaddād), Bahrain, Saudia, VAE (both UT1), Dubai, Saudia(UT2), Kuwait (UT1), Oman, Kerbala, Ägypten (Abu Qamar)
Yes, nowaday most
maṣāḥif produced in the Arab
mašriq are similar, but Morocco, Libya, Sudan, Turkey, Tartaristan, Brunai, Indonesia follow different rules, and the Indian Standard (Pakistan, Bangla Desh, UK, South Africa, Surinam, Nepal, Ceylon) is numerically more important and quite different.
"Nowadays" because before 1980 a Ottoman
muṣḥaf written by Ḥafiz ʿUṭmān the Elder (1642‒1698) was prevalent in Syria, and two Ottoman
maṣāḥif written by Ḥasan Riḍā and Muḥammad ʾAmīn ar-Rušdī respectively were produced for Dīwān al-Awqāf al-ʿIrāqī (still 1980 the governments of Qaṭar and Saʿūdī ʿArabia had copies printed of the one based on Rušdī ‒ and 1415/1994 in Tehran): It took some seventy years before the 1924 edition (or rather its 1952 offspring) had created a regional standard.
Because there are THREE well established standards and a few in Indonesia, a new one in Brunei, several (competing ones) in Iran and many all over Africa ‒ where we do not only find different ways of writing the same reading (Ḥafṣ ʾan ʿĀṣim) but three more transmissions (Warš, Qālūn, ad-Dūrī ʿan Abī ʿAmr). And 100 years ago,
maṣāḥif were less standardized.
There are many more printed in Damascus (or Bairūt because of the war), produced in ʿAmman and the UAE and published on the world wide web, but these are mainly for study, not for devotion.
But here I will not focus on the readings (and their transmissions), but on different orthographies (of the transmission Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim).
Already 35 years ago Adrian Alan Brockett found out that the 1342/1924 King-Fuʾād-Edition had not established THE standard, that even the successor of al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād as the chief reciter of Egypt ‒ hence main editor of the "second edition" of 1952 ‒ ʿAlī Muḥammad
aḍ-Ḍabbāʿ (1304/1886-1380/1960), had edited different editions and approved of yet more dissimilar ones.
Brockett studied editions at a time when only Ḥafṣ and Warš were printed.
Today one finds many editions of Qālūn, some of Dūrī and both printed ones and just pdfs for most of the others, plus many editions about the 20 canonical transmissions,
plus sound files of recitations of most transmissions.
When Brockett wrote, the King Fahd Complex had not started to publish different variants ‒ Ḥafṣ, Šuʿba, Warš, Qālūn, Dūrī, as-Sūsī written by ʿUṭmān Ṭāhā plus an Indian Ḥafṣ ‒
but he had noticed that Gulf States published a) in the new Egyptian style, b) an Ottoman
muṣḥaf (the
muṣḥaf of Muḥammad ʾAmīn ar-Rušdī with minor modifications), c) in the Indian style.
1952:
Brockett's thesis is still the best English "book" available on differences between copies of the qurʾān,
although it was researched before the internet facilitated research,
before Unicode made it easier to reproduce Arabic script,
before it was easy to get hold of all the canonical transmissions and most of the thousands of variant readings (collected in three different editions).
His main conclusions ‒ the oral transmission and the one in writing reinforced each other, controlled each other, never were left without the other,
and there is no single standard of writing, and no single standard of reciting the qurʾān,
and the differences between transmissions (and within transmissions) are minor, they never change the meaning of a paragraph ‒
stand intact.
But it was a thesis, no published book.
Because the young student was not allowed to have it read by fellow researchers, it is full of mistakes,
mistakes which would have been eliminated before publication as a book.
I personally have no use for Brockett's "transliteration", which is neither that nor a transcription.
I am sure that Brockett ‒ as many readers ‒ did not know what the two terms mean:
a transliteration must render the Arabic letters faithfully and must be reversible (not necessarily pronounceable),
a transcription must render the sound of the words faithfully, must be pronounceable, should be readable after some instruction, but has not to be reversable, because different sequences of letters can be pronouned (hence transcribed) the same way.
I personally, hate his terminology, but at least he defines his ‒ odd ‒ terms at the outset:
"graphic" means: part of the rasm,
"oral" means: not part of the rasm.
I say: utter nonsense!
Both the rasm and the later signs (dots,
hamza, waṣl, shadda, fatḥa, kasra, ḍamma, signs for
imāla, tasḥīl, išmām etc.) are graphical,
and have to be pronounced = are oral ‒ but there are some otiose letters, which have to be written in a real transliteration (as in R-G Puin's).
"oral only" is closer to what he means, but "in the oldest manuscripts not written, at that time: only recited" is it.
Sorry, "oral" is not good enough.
I hardly can read his "transcription". Why does "a wavy line" means sometimes "oral", sometimes "lengthened"?
Anyhow, here and now, there is no need for Brockett's "transliteration", we have Arabic letters!
In spite of my criticism, his thesis is a great work of scholarship ‒ and tremendous work, done before we just googled different editions of the qurʾān.
The content of this blog and my
German one, you can find as
book.
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