no standard, but standarization

Although there is no umma-wide standard, there are several standards (to different degrees enforced).
Since about 1980 all qurʾāns printed in Turkey ‒ except very expensive fac­simile editions ‒ are identical line by line
‒ not just word by word. Berkenar manu­scripts had normally 604 pages of text (605 when one cover page is counted), twenty pages for a ǧuz, one page for the Fatiḥa, and three extra pages for the last ǧuz because of the many title boxes.
Each ǧuz started in the first line on the right,
each page ended with a verse end resp. the verse number in the bottom left corner,
but within a ǧuz the calligrapher was free.
Not so today. Even when an edition seems to be a reprint, many (helpful) directives and (waṣl-)signs are eliminated, other directives are added, vowel signs are moved nearer to "their" letters, short and long versions of words are moved until all lines in all Turkish maṣāḥif are identical.

The King Fahd Complex in Medina noticed that most Africans and non-Arab Asians do not like "their" ʿUṯmān Ṭaha edition.
Adrian Alan Brockett reports (p.27 of his PhD thesis) of a Taj copy produced after the inde­pen­dence of Bangla Desh in 1972 (Dhacca had been removed from the list were the publisher had offices), readily avail­able in London shops at the time of his research

The interesting feature is that it has a certi­ficate from the Saudi Deputy Mufti Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad Āl al-Šaiḫ, dated 19/11/1389 (28/1/1970). The reason for the certi­ficate was that a formal question had been addressed from the head of al-Maḥkama al-Kubrā in Jedda to Dār al-Iftāʾ con­cerning the copy's spelling la'aXntum (59:13) for the usual laʾantum لانتم.

The certificate is in the form of a reply:

We hereby inform you that although this [Taj] impression appears to be the only one with this extra alif, this does not bar it from being allowed to be dis­tributed. This is because the extra alif is to be taken as one of those present in the graphic form but not to be pro­nounced. Similar oc­currences are found, for instance, in la0'awḍaʿū [9:47 ولاوضعوا] and and awlaXʾaḏbaḥannahu [27:21 اولااذبحنه], which are written [according to a report from Malik cited from al-Muqniʿ of a1-Dānī] in the original way"

(nuḥīṭukum annah bil-muqārana bayn tab'at hāḏa l-muṣḥaf wa-ṭabaʿāt il-maṣā­ḥif il-uḫra ẓahar an ziyādat al-alif tan­farid bihā l-ṭabʿa al-maḏkūra wamin al-jāʾiz an takūn min qabīl il-kalimāt illatī zīdat fīhā l-alif rasman lā nuṭqan miṯl laʾawḍaʾū0, aw laʾaḏbaḥanna­hu waġai­rihā ... ʿala l-kataba il-ūlā. See al-Dānī, al-Muqni', pp.47.8ff., 100.3f., 148.14ff.; al-Muḥkam, pp.174.5f., 176.11ff.)

The complex did not commission a new muṣḥaf, but choose the 611 page ber­kenar one from Taj Com­pany Ltd and improved the placement of the straight alif when it stood before alif (or lām) instead behind.

When waw was separated from the rest of the script unit, they did not correct it.

But Bergsträßer said it was the best

No, no, no
Bergsträßer wrote: It's better than Flügel.
And he is right.
But he did not know a thing about printed maṣāḥif, had never seen a Moroccan one, nor an Indian, just a few Ottoman prints and one Persian.
On pages 11, 13 of his article in Der Islam he points out a few mistakes in the King Fuʾād edition:
two wrongly placed hamza,
too many big alifs denoting dual,
hamza on the line + alif instead of alif-hamza + long-fatḥa.
He does not mention that on all three points Indian maṣāḥif follow his ideas (or are much closer to his than the 1924 print).
The reason: he had never studied an Indian muṣḥaf.

For us the 1930 world Bergsträßer lived in, is hard to imagine.
Based in Munich   Berlin, Leiden, Paris were far away.
He made it to Istanbul and to Cairo
-- but Baghdaḍ was too far (or too British?).
Karachi, Lahore, Bombay or Delhi were outside his word.
In 2020 one would advise him to fly to London, spent a month in India Office,
but even today I observe that young scholars mistake the 20% of Islamdom between Cairo and Baghdad for the Muslim World.

no Standard

Many think that the Ḥafṣ version written by ʿUṯmān Ṭaha and dis­tributed by the Saʿūdīs is the standard, because more such copies exist than others.
This is a misconception:
Turks who get one during the haǧǧ do not open it, give it away or put in a vitrine,
West Africans get a Warš copy written by ʿUṯmān Ṭaha,
Indians and most Asians (even Iranians) get a slightly improved copy of the Indo-Pakistani standard, known as the Taj Company Ltd. Standard
((the Saʿūdīs took the 611 page muṣḥaf ‒ earlier reprinted e.g. in Kašgār ‒ but paid attention that the standing fatḥa never precedes alif for /ʾā/ [not /āʾ/!]))

Maybe that the Saʿūdī copy according to the Egyptian govern­ment print of 1952 is the most printed, it is definitely not the most bought.
Muslims buy many more copies of the Indo-Pak version.
For a simple reason: there are five times as many Muslims hailing from the Indian sub­continent, from Indonesia and parts of Central Asia under Indian influence than Muslims from Egypt and the Arab Middle East.
But isn't the Egyptian text better?
First it is the Maghrebian rasm, with Maghrebian tanwīn signs,
with Maghrebian sukūn on (some) unpronounced letters and Indian ǧazm on un­vowelled letters,
with Egyptian ǧuz-/ḥizb-divisions, with a stream­lined Indian system of pause signs.
Second,
and more important:
The new "Arab" and the older "Indian" standard are of equal quality.
The Turkish is not as good because it notes /ā/ and /ī/ but not /ū/ when there is no ḥarf al-madd in the rasm and it ignores assimila­tion.
The Libyan is better because their rasm follows ONE authority and not a mix.

To make a good muṣḥaf, isn't easy because
the text, the sense, the words and the gramma­tical structure have to be right,
the sound, the pronunciation, at-taǧwīd have to be right
but pronunciation changes slightly depending on where one pauses,
so the little signs around the rasm have to take different pauses into account,
and they must indicate the grammatical structure even at places
where the case endings are never pronounced.
Turkish and Iranian standards are not as good as Arab and Indian,
because they do ignore assimilation.
But the Egyptian/Saʿūdī standard is better than the Indian, is it not?
It is not.
Let's look at tanwīn:
Tanwīn is a short vowel /a,i,u/ plus a unvowelled nūn (fatḥa/kasra/ḍamma + nūn sākin)
So the pronunciation rule for tanwīn is the rule for nūn sākin:
("dan" is Malay for "and", "contoh" for "example")
Depending on the following letter EIGHT things happen to unvowelled nūn:
1.) fully pronounced, iẓhār إظهار before the letter h, ḥ, ḫ, ʾ, ʿ, ġ
8.) pronounced as mīm iqlāb يقلاب
4.) idġām kāmil bi-la-ġunna before rāʾ and lām:
the nūn is completely assimilated to the following letter, resulting in /rr/ resp. /ll/
3.) idġām kāmil bi-ġunna complete assimi­lation with nasaliza­tion before nūn and mīm
2.) idġām nāqiṣ bi-ġunna incomplete assimi­lation with nasali­zation before the glides yāʾ and wau
5.) iḫfāʾ suġra small reduction, not full articu­lated before k, q
6.) iḫfāʾ wusṭa medium reduction, reduced articu­lated before z, ḍ, ẓ, ḏ, ṯ, ṣ, s, š, ǧ, f
7.) iḫfāʾ kubra big reduction, weakly articu­lated before d, t, ṭ

In India, Indonesia, Turkey, Iran there is only one tanwīn sign for each of the three short vowels,
which is fine: the next letter makes clear, how the nūn has to be pro­nounced.
In Bombay (and other places in India and earlier in Indonesia) a small nūn is added after the tanwīn to stress iẓhār.
In Arabia there are not EIGHT different tanwīn signs, but three,
which does not really help: One still has to look to the next letter.
AND: For iqlāb there is no tanwīn sign encoded in the Unicode,
which leads to utter confusion:
In the digital data stream of the qurʾān tanwīn iqlāb is not encoded as tan­wīn. but as simple vowel sign!
So which is better?
Which should serve as Standard?

There are many sites in the web devoted to Islamic manu­scripts,
but only one devoted to both manuscripts and prints, Ali Akbar's Indonesian/Malay archipelago blog.
He gave me images from Indonesian "Bombay prints", always page 3, verses 5,6 of al-baqara:


The third spot I highlighted is an iqlāb mīm, common in all maṣāḥif, the first two iẓhār nūn, very rare ‒ why?

keinStandard XXII taǧwīd editions

A first impression: the beginning of al-Baqara from a Turkish online edition on the right
the same from a typical Indian edition on the left (plus one line from page 3 tucked in below the Turkish page),
three lines from the pioneer of taǧwīd editions; Dār al-Maʿrifa, Damascus
and at the bottom a line from Nous-mêmes-Édition (Tunis),
on the right a line each from two Indonesian
und Dar ar-Riyāḍa, Damascus.

Then the original edition by Dar al-Maʿrifa, then their clear edition with space between words, then the Dār ar-Riyāḍa, Damascus edition with arrows above.





finally from France, quite different:


Now in detail:


At first look: just different colours.
Really different systems.
Maybe some differences correlate with language.
Turks and Indians colour both "assimilating" letters the same way.
For them the letters assimilate each other.
Arabs colour the assimilated (passive) letter as silent.
Actually they to not see the assimilator as active, as annihilating the assimilated letter,
but the now-silent letter as having taken refuge under the assimilator,
as having become similar to it.
The important point is: the two letters function differently (hence different colour),
whereas Turks and Indians stress they having become similar.
I have to admit: I see it the Arab way: the first letter has (kind of) disappeared,
the second is doubled.


From Karbala: