Saturday, 22 May 2021

Taj Compagny Ltd editions

The most important publisher of maṣāḥif world wide is the Taj Com­pagny Ltd.
It was founded 1929 in Lahore. They expanded to Bombay and Delhi. After partition the main office was in Karachi, later offices in Rawal­pindi and Dhakka were added. As you can see below Pesha­war was another pub­lishing place.
They published maṣāḥif with nine, ten, eleven, twelve, 13, 16, 17 and 18 lines. 848 pages with 13 lines of qurʾānic text plus 14 pages prayers and explanation became the South African standard. Another muṣḥaf with 13 lines has 747+4 pages, an other one has 15 lines (611 berkenar pages) ...
They were reprinted from Kashgar to Johannis­burg, sometimes copied line by line,
the one on 611 pages with 15 lines was reprinded by many pub­lishers around the world, from Delhi to Medina (starting in 1989)
... 16 lines (both with 485 pages of q.text, and with 549 of q.text plus additional ten pages), with 17 lines per page (489+4 pages), 18 lines (486+3 pages), plus many bi­lin­gual editions.
Inside Pakistan they were copied indirectely: Many publishers had calli­graphers rewrite editions with exactely the same page layout, line by line copied.
So although tremendiously influencial, they had no commeri­cal success. Twice they went bankrupt. In 1980 and in 2004 "Taj Compagny Ltd" was refounded.
Besides systemic differences to the "African" way (long vowel signs, nūn quṭnī, no leading hamza sign but alif as hamza für /ʾā, ʾī, ʾū/, ḥizb = quarter juz <not half>) there are a couple of silent alifs in the "Asian" tradition (but even by one publisher not consistent, but all allowed):
For 5:29 and 7:103 I added early examples from Lucknow prints.

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