Last weekend the conference on "the Cairo Edition of the Qurʾān, 1924" took place in a room of the AUinC.
While the Arab titel مصخف الملك فؤاد ١٩٢٤م
is fine, the English title (the French one prominent at the beginning of the year had disapperead) is a testimony to utter ignorance ‒
ignorance either of logic, ignoring the function of the definite article
or ignorance of the world of Cairo prints and bookshops ‒ there are thousands of Cairo Editions of the Qurʾān a few miles east of the AUC, even fewer miles south-west of the IDEO.
(Anyhow, I find it strange that the English title is not "the 1924 King Fuʾād Edition of the Qurʾān in
the Ḥafṣ transmission" ‒ multilingual conferences should have the same title in all its lanugages.)
Sadly, I find both reasons ‒ carelessly calling an edition "the edition"
and calling an edition "the edition" because s/he never bothered to study
different editions,
plausible.
It is common among these young scholars to speak of "the palimpsest"
for the scriptio inferior of the pamlimpset or the lower text
‒ why should they make a difference between "a" and "the"?
And because they are not interested in having a look into the maṣāḥif
local Muslims use, they just assume that all Muslims have something very
similar to what most Orientalists have. Many scholars explicitely wrote that
the KFE is most common in the Muslim word and for religious purposes.
Shows that they have no idea of the real Muslim world.
Sorry: Do not confuse the KFE with Islam on the ground(s).
Unfortunalely Islamology is 90% theology and philology,
only 10% social anthropology and sociology of religions.
In the "Call for Papers" (anonymous, hence officially by the IDEO, in fact by Asma Hilali)
one can read about 50 times "l'édition du Cairo, le coran du Caire, ظبعة القاهرة etc.),
during the conference all except the Blind African herself spoke of the Government Copy,
the print of the Amīriyya, the KFE ...
‒ unfortunatly the official English title is still the old one, the illogical one;
the IDEO hasn't even made up its mind whether there should be a comma between
"the Cairo Edition of the Qurʾān" and "1924" (cf. the image above) ‒ in both cases
the year is an accidental property not an essential one, while in "the 1924 Cairo Edition
of the Qurʾān" the year would be essential, defining.
Here I repeat what I wrote to the guys in charge in Cairo ten times:
There are about a thousand "Cairo Edition of the Qurʾān" ‒ to put the definite article
in front defies logic ‒:
at least ten editions of the Warš transmission, one being THE Warš Edition for decades;
here are two of the four title pages (normally bound in one volume):
Here two images from a 1929 Cairo Warš Edition ‒ without a title page, as was common at the time:
And here from two of the oldest al-Qahira publishers, i.e. not from Bab al-Khalq, al-Faggala, from Bulaq or even Giza but from "behind" al-Azhar, first one from Subīḥ:
than from Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, first from 1930 for Maġribian Arabs:
others:
Apart from these 100% Cairo Editions, there are editions conceaved in Morocco resp. Algeria,
but produced in Cairo ‒ the Moroccan ones without production place, the Algerian ones with an
Algerian publisher's name. (Only the third edition of the third sherifian muṣḥaf was
produced in Morocco.)
In the literature another one is mentioned, which I have not seen ‒ so I rest sceptical:
al-Qurʼān al-karīm : innahu li-Qurʼān karīm fī kitāb maknūn
Majmaʻ al-Buḥūth al-Islāmīyah. Lajnah Murājaʻat al-Maṣaḥif
[Cairo]: [Jāmiʻ al-Azhar], [1964]
OCLC-No: 22354261
"Aqarrat hādha al-muṣḥaf al-sharīf wa-diqqah rasmihi wa-ḍabṭihi wa-ʻaddaʼa ayātaha Lajnah Murājaʻat al-Maṣāḥif bi-Majmaʻa al-Buḥūth al-Islāmīyah bi-al-Jāmiʻ al-Azhar bi-al-Qarār ... 1964."
qāf is written with a dot above the letter, fāʼ with one below the letter, and no dot over final nūn
518 pages ; 25 cm
Of two "Cairo Edition"s before 1924 I do have image:
the one written by the same calligrapher as the 1308/1890 edition,
ʿAbd al-Ḫāliq Ḥaqqi (?) Ibn al-Ḫawaǧa, produced by a famous printer around the turn
of the century (-1919) behind al-Azhar: aš-Ṣaiḫ Aḥmad ʿAlī al-Melīǧī al-Kutubī:
Plus one printed in al-Maṭbaʻa al-ʻĀmiriyya:
InnahuLi-Qurʾān Karīm, 1318/1900:
One of the talks in the IDEO conference led from Venice and Hamburg, Kazan and Leipzig to the first complete
Qurʾān printed in Cairo, the Bulaq 1881/2 print ‒ both in one volume in in several
(possibly both in 10 and in 30) leatherbound parts. It is well known both from the Enyclopedia of the Quran and from Kein Standard:
It has 13 lines per page, 603 pages in the one-volume-edition.
In 1308/1890 the most important of all Cairo editions was published ‒ it was mentioned but no copy was shown ((even the Geburtstagskind, the 1924 Gizeh print was not there)). It was not analysed or discribed in detail. Good heavens!
In 1885 an other important Cairo edition saw the light of day ‒ this one as well with "ar-rasm al-ʿuṯmānī":
Let's mention two more early "Cairo Editions":
One written by they same calligrapher who wrote the tremendously import 1308/1890 edition,
ʿAbd al-Ḫālliq Ḥaqqi (?) Ibn al-Ḫawaǧa, by the editor
Šaiḫ Aḥmad bin ʿAlī al-Melīǧī al-Kutbī, who had a press near al-Azhar until 1919.
Innahu li-Qurʾān karīm fī kitāb maknūn lā yamassahu illā al-muṭahhirūn tanzīl min ...
Miṣr : al-Maṭbaʻah al-ʻĀmirīyah, 1318 [1900]
364 p. ; 20 cm.
Only one of the participants has made research for the conference.
Aziz Hilal discovered, that he did not find any reports on the preparations for the edition,
nor reports on its publications or its repercussions. It was a non-event at the time.
Ali Akbar had to report, that in Indonesia (+ Singapore, Malaysia, southern Thailand)
no copies of the KFE were sold. Nor could he locate a survving copy Azhar students or
pilgrims to Mecca might have brought into the area.
Necmettin Gökkır informed the participants, that in the Turkish Republic very few experts
took note of the edition. Neither the state religious authorities
nor normal Muslims were interested in the KFE.
Michael Marx's “Innovation, Milestone, Standard? Remarks and Reflections about the Cairo 1924
Print from a Historical Perspective” is wrong because there is NO Cairo 1924 Print,
the copy was printed in Gizeh, and he did not explain what the inovation(s) was resp. were.
As for the "standard" he refered to Arno Schmitt.
I could not detect for all the papers which of the topics named in the Call for Papers they dealt with. Only A.Hilali's concluding remarks belonged clearly to a tailor-made topic.
Interesting that the three languages English+French+Arabic
had turned to Egyptian+English+Arabic and that Hilal's talk consisted to 38% in imala (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh).
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