The King Fuʾād Edition of the Ḥafṣ transmission of the Qurʾān is soon celebrating
its 100th anniversary ‒ that's what the Dominican Institute in Cairo (IDEO) says.
Actually Orientalists are doing it, the edition has nothing to do with the celebration.
It is not even there. The two Cairo institutions with functioning online catalogs ‒ IDEO and AUC
‒ do not have a copy. And the two institutions that might have one ‒ al-Azhar and
the National Library (Dar al-Kutub) ‒ have no online catalogue for the time being.
Fortuately, both the Prussian and the Bavarian Staatsbiblothek have
a copy of the original print of 1342/1924 (the Bavarian Academy of Sciences has another copy).
The French Biblothèque National (BnF) claimed to have five copies printed in 1919.
When I wrote them that this was impossible, they discovered that three of their catalog
entries refered to the same physical object and streamlined it to this:
Originaly they wrote that it was printed in
Al-Qāhiraẗ : al-Maṭbaʿaẗ al-Amīriyyaẗ, 1919
القاهرة : المطبعة الأميريّة, 1919
But in their copy one can read
المطبعة العربية ١١ شارع اللبودية درب الجماميز
Šārʿ Darb al-Ǧamāmīz connecting Bab al-Ḫalq (in the north-east) and es-Sayeda Zainab
(in the south-west) ‒ in the 1930s and '40s its southern part was named separetly
as Šārʿ al-Labūdīya ‒
definetly not in Būlāq, were the Government Press was located for 150 years before it was
transfered to Imbaba in 1972.
I don't know why the 1961 edition of the KFE was not printed in Būlāq,
but it seems to the case. My first idea, that the edition was not made by a government subsiduary, but a private
enterprise, is unlikely because the 1961 has not a continuous pagination (1-855), but three deparat one (2-827,
ا ب غ د ه و
, (1) ...(4))
When one reads IN the FRIST (and post '52) print(s)
that the print was accomplished by 7. Ḏulḥigga 1342 (= 10.7.1924),
this can not be the date of the publication. It can only be the day
when printing of the qurʾānic text was finished.
After that this note had to be set, the plates had to be made,
the gathering(s) with this note and the information that follow it
in the book had to be printed, all had to be made into a book block
and had to be bound (connected with the case).
By the time the book was published it was 1343/1925.
The cover of the first edition was
stamped ṭabʿat al-ḥukūma al-Miṣrīya sanat 1343 hiǧriyya.
Bibligraphicaly speaking, the date given on page [ص] can be used,
but in real life, the book was published only in the following year.
The Hounds of God and their handmaid did not know a thing about the King Fuʾād Edition, they even used
a picture from the 1952 edition to illustrate the 1924 one.
Okay, not everybody knows the 1924 Gizeh print has never been reprinted,
that the next edition was made in Būlāq on newly aquired machines with newly made plates
in a different formate and with changes in the back matter,
that the third edition had a word spelled differently,
but almost everybody not ignorant of all things qur'anic knows,
that the 1952 edition is a new edition ‒ different at 900 places.
Normally it is best to concentrate on the editions itselfs,
to scan them for differences, to read their backmatter carefuly,
but there are two texts on the 1924 edition worth studying:
Gotthelf Bergsträßer's "Koranlesung in Kairo" in Der Islam 20,1, (1932) pp. 1-42
and Abd al-Fattāḥ (ibn ʿAbd al-Ġanī) al-Qāḍī's Tārīḫ al-Muṣḥaf aš-Šarīf
(esp. pp. 59-66 in the 1952 edition by Maktabat al-Jundī).
Abd al-Fattāḥ al-Qāḍī writes of three editions:
al-Muḫallalātī's of 1308/1890
al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād's of 1342/1924
aḍ-Ḍabbāġ's of 1371/1952 on which he participated as one of the editors.
Back to the copies at our disposale: IDEO has one from 1354/1935
the first edition can be found in Berlin, Munich (BsB and in the Academy of Sciences), Bonn,
Kiel, Basel, Zürich (UZH), Nijmegen, Leiden
the 1344/1925 edition in Münster, Berlin (FUB), Kiel
1346/1927/8 in Leiden, Tübingen, Freiburg
1347/1928/9 in Würzburg, Munich, Erlangen-N, Bayreuth, Hamburg, Halle, Berlin (HU), Greifswald, Bamberg, Gießen, Kiel, Wien, Kopenhagen, Provo UT (BYU),
1936 Beirut (USJ)
many have a copy of the NEW King Fuʾād Edition of 1952
Berlin has two from 1952, one from before the revolution mentioning King Fuʾād on page [alif],
one with the page and its empty verso thrown out
Jena, Erfurt, Göttingen, Hamburg, Bamberg, Erlangen-N, Marburg, Eichstätt, Bonn, Mannheim,
Munich (BSB & LMU) Stuttgart, Tübingen, Leiden, Freiburg, Stockholm, VicAlbert, Aix-Marseille, Madrid,
Edinburgh U, Oxford, Binghamton NY, Allegheny PA, Columbus (OSU)
The second edition (1344) was reprinted by Maṭbaʿa al-ʿarabiyya in the 1930s, by the Chinese Muslim Society in Bakīn 1955 (without the page mentioning the king and with chinized graphics and probably by Maktabat al-Šarq al-Islāmiyya wa-Maṭbaʻatuhā in 1357/1938 ‒ I say "probably" because it could be a reproduction of the third or even later edition.
In 1938 the Nizam of Hyderabad had the text set with sorts he had bought from Būlāq, it was printed in two volumes along Pickthall's English translation in two volumes
and reprinted by Gaddafi's Islamic Call Society ‒ plus a French version alongside D.Masson's translation.
The 1952 edition, aḍ-Ḍabbāġ's edition, was reprinted a lot:
1379/1960 in Taškent/Ṭašqend
in Bairut/Damascus often mostly with an added ن in 73:20 (one of these was reprinted in ʿAmmān and made it
into the web archive
There were reproduction on less than 827 pages: the 1952 edition was photographed 1:1, the film was
cut and rearranged on a light table. Instead of 12 lines per page, we get 14 or 15 longer lines,
1983 in Qaṭar and in Germany. The German edition was made together with the Islamic Text Society (ITS), Cambridge.
Since its ISBN is a German one, I guess, the publishing place is Stuttgart, not Cambridge or London.
There were three editions: big and medium size leather bound, and a big one in cloth.
The qurʾānic text is a reprint of the 1952 al-Amīriyya edition,
the back matter was freshly set (not as neat as the original ‒ a pity!
As a rule, 827 page editions without title page are by the Government Press,
those with a title page are by private or non-Egyptian publishers ‒
the Frommann-Holzboog/ITS is the only non-Amīriyya one without title page,
no titel on the cover, nor the spine.
The text of 1952 was published by the Government Press after 1976 for about ten years
freshly set on 525 pages in several formats: with plastic cover, cartboard, leather, small, medium and large ‒ quite a success for a decade ‒ the last reprint was 1988 in Qaṭar.
And then came ʿUṯmān Ṭaha on 604 pages ‒ first with 100% the same text, later with different spelling at 2:72 and 73:20 and (most ? all ?) lāʾ pauses gone.
Tuesday, 12 October 2021
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