Sunday, 30 May 2021

The Pope, The Cairo Edition

Among Catholics one may speak of "the pope", among "normal" people   one SHOULD say "the Roman pope", "the pope of the Occident", "the bishop of Rome", because ‒ leaving meta­phorical use aside ‒ there are two more popes: the Coptic and the Greek "bishof of Alexan­dria and all Africa" in Cairo ((the bishops of Antiochia and All the Orient are not styled as pope)). What is common know­ledge among Egyptian Christians is un­known to many people in the States or in the UK.
Unlike popes, of which there are only three at a time, there are literaly thousand Cairo editions of the qurʾān. But some young scholars write of "The Cairo Edition". Out of ignorance or stu­pi­ti­ty? Maybe they do not know the dif­ference between "a" and "the" ... When I alerted one, s/he added "collo­quially known", an other just shrugged h*r/s shoulders, a third admitted that s/he has never looked into another muṣḥaf ‒ although as Pro­fessor of Isla­mic Stu­dies s/he should have been to a mosque and/or an islamic book­shop and opened a muṣ­ḥaf used by local Muslims (and they certainly do NOT use the KFE/King Fuʾād Edition = idiot's "CE"!)
Sometimes one sees "the St. Peters­burg edition of the Qurʾān". I do not know how many editions exist ‒ certainly not just one: First we know of edi­tions in 1787, 1789, 1790, 1793, 1796 and 1798. Copies of these six edi­tions have no year on the title page or in the back­matter ...
... so one could treat them as one: the 1787-98 Mollah Ismaʿīl ʿOsman St. Petersburg edition: Because there are more, like the 1316/1898 Muṣṭafā Naẓīf Qadirġalī St. Petersburg edition
Note the title: Kalām Qadīm
which does not refer to an antique shop, to antiquarian,
but to the pre-existence of the kalāmullāh ὁ λόγος
"THE St.Petersburg" edition is illogical. Only ignorant or stupid people use that expression. (Of course some are ignorant, stupid AND amoral.))

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