Sunday, 11 April 2021

IDEO's call for papers

The Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies in Cairo calls for papers for two conferences, one in October, the second in three years.
Strangely the Arabic call is first for a conference on the King Fuʾād Edition (1924) of the qurʾān, then for one of the "al-Qāhira print,"
the French conference is on « le Coran du Caire »/ « l'édition du Caire »,
the English one on "The Cairo Edition".
As there are about a thousand editions of the qurʾān published in Cairo, it just does not make sense to call a particular edition "l'édition du Caire".
Of course, once the edition is intro­duced correc­te­ly ‒ as the King Fuʾād Edition (KFE), the Egyptian Govern­ment Edition of 1924, the Educa­tion Ministry Edition (because there later was a Minsitry of the Interior Edition), the Amīriyya Edition (of 1924), (or wongly) the Amīrī Edition (taking Fuʾād as the Amīr, instead of refering to the Govern­ment Press/ مطبعة), the Gizeh print, the Survey of Egypt Gizeh 1924 print [at the time its name was مصلة المسحة , now it is الهيئة المصرية العامة للمساحة , hence it is named simply مصحف المسحة ], the 12-line-edition of the Qurʾān / المصحف ١٢ سظر, the official Egyptian edition of 1924, the edition pre­pared by Egypt's šaiḫ al-maqāriʾ Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḫalaf al-Ḥusainī al-Mālikī aṣ-Ṣaʿīdī al-Ḥaddād (1282/1865‒1357/ 22.1.1939) ‒ one can refer to it as "Cairo edition", or "the 1924 edition", but not to "The Cairo Edition," nor "al-Qāhira print," nor "Azhar Edition".
The Azhar had almost nothing to do with it.
It was prepared by one man alone; of the four men that signed three are not called "šaiḫ", are not ʿulamāʾ, are not expert qurʾāno­logists, have never written anything on religious sub­jects.
Abū Mālik Ḥifnī Bey ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismaʿīl ibn Ḫalīl Nāṣif (16.12.1855‒25.2.1919) had been chief inspector of the Arabic depart­ment in the min­istery of edu­ca­tion. In his youth he had learned the qurʾān by heart, later he became a lawyer, was part of the modern intel­li­gen­tzia of the capital.
Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿUmar al-Iskandarī (1292‒1357/1875‒1938) and Muṣṭafā (al-)ʿInānī (d. 1362/ 1943) were teachers at the Peda­go­cial Seminary next to the Ministery of Educa­tion and have jointe­ly written books on educa­tional matters.

When you make a multi­lingual con­ference on "der Erste Welt‎krieg," it should be about "la Pre­mière Guerre Mondiale" (not about "La Grande Guerre"), one on the July Revolu­tion 1830 should be on la Révolu­tion de Juillet 1830 (not Les Trois Glori­euses), and one on World War II, should be on вторая мировая война (not on Великая Отече­ствен­ная Война).
But in the English call for papers 16 times "the Cairo edition" is used, a term for which no Arabic equi­valent exists. (( When you google the Arabic term that come first to your mind "muṣḥaf al-Qāhira" you get hits, but nothing near the KFE.)) Hence in the Arabic call first ten times "the King Fuʾād muṣḥaf" is used and then six times the "Qāhira print", alt­hough al-Qāhira is the Old City founded by the Fati­mides, where most private printers reside (have their siège social) and most had their work­shop too, Būlāq lying out­side, Gizeh, where the King Fuʾād Edi­tion WAS printed even on the other side of the Nile: in an other Gou­ver­ne­ment /muḥā­faẓa. Twice "the Cairo edition" has as ac­ciden­tal quali­fica­tion "of 1924", which is not good enough ‒ "the 1924 Cairo edition" with "1924" as neces­sary at­tribute, as defining pro­perty would be acceptable, but the Domini­cans never use that term, nor "the 1924 Egyptian Govern­ment edition," nor "the edition of the Min­istry of Educa­tion"(the Ministery of Interior had later maṣāḥif printed as well), nor "the edition pre­pared by the Šaiḫ al-maqāriʿ al-maṣrīya."

Strangely the Domanican Institute manipulates the image of the title box of the Fatīḥa:
Only the top and right side are okay, the bottom and left side (below in lighter yellow) are mirrored by software,
and more important: the text in the middle is NOT from the 1924 Gizeh print! The original is not self centred, but stands in rela­tion with the title box of al-baqara on the oppo‎site page.

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