minute things in Maghribian maṣāḥif

I wanted to post about signs used in Maghrebian maṣāḥif resp. in Medina maṣāḥif of readings used in the Maġrib (Warš and Qālūn). I decided instead to provide links to two pro­posals that contain the material: one by Professor Azzeddine Lazrek: Proposal to encode some Hamza Quranic marks and one by Roozbeh Pournader and Deborah Anderson: Arabic additions for Quranic orthographies ... and a third one by Khaled Hosny and Mostafa Jbire on thin nūn

I disagree often with the Unicode solution (encoding the same character twice with different shapes, encoding combined letters instead of combining marks), but the basic facts in these pro­posals are informative (esp. the images). That Lazrek's English is approxi­mative does not matter.

I regret that Pournader does not give verse and number (sura and aya) of his examples ‒ here it is XI:41 (Hūd) and that he gives his maṣāḥif appro­xi­ma­tive names, e.g. he calls the Muṣḥaf al-Mu­ʿa­lim (المصحف المعلم) by the editor Nous-Mêmes/Han­bal (هنبعل) the "Tunis Qaloon" although there are at least ten Tunis Qa­loons on the market: the best estab­lished the Muṣḥaf al-Jum­hu­riyya (edited during the reign of Ben ʿAlī), which one can find on the net (with­out page numbers, because one gets two pdf-pages for one book-page or a short sura).
What archive.org calls "Muṣḥaf al-Jum­hu­riy­ya al-Tunisī" really is the edition by Nous-mêmes.

Pournader's "Tripoli Qaloon" is less pro­ble­ma­tique as Muṣḥaf al-Jamahariya مصحف الجماهيرية from هـ1399/ 1989 is the only Tripoli Q. I know of, the most important for sure. While only an ignorant can call one of the hundreds of Cairo editions "the Cairo edition" and only a careless person one of the more than ten Tunis Qalūns "Tunis Qaloon", "Tripoli Q" may pass. You can download it from archive.org or here.



‒­ 25:49 ࣋ لنحيۦ لنحي

Braille

In 1951 a UNESCO conference defined Braille for Arabic. Soon Jordan (1954), Pakistan (1963), Egypt, Kuwait, Turkey, Saudi Arabia (1997) moved toward pro­ducing Braille maṣāḥif. N. Suit has seen several in Cairo with the text in two lines: one for the "letters" and one above for the "dia­critics". Since I have no informa­tion about it, I'll just write about the Indonesian Al-Qur'an Mushaf Standar Braille pro­duced in 2012/3, that puts every­thing in one line, basicaly a sequence of consonnant and vowel sign.
The Doubling-Sign (šadda) is put before the letter, madda ‒ if used ‒ after the vowel sign.
A foun­da­tion for the blind (Yaketunis: Yayasan Kesejah­te­raan Tuna­ne­tra Islam) and the Mini­stry for Reli­gious Affaires (Kemenag) made two basic decisons:
‒ to be faithful to the pro­nounci­ation (not to the "ʿUṯmānic writing")
‒ to divert some­times from Braille for Arabic or Malay in Arab script (Jawi).
So first: words that have /ā/ with­out alif (ṣalāt, kitāb, hayāt, ribā ...) are brail­li­zed as if they were written with alif. For رحمن this is not done, because Saudi scholars claim that it is for­bid­den.
The same is true for words with /ū/ but without a leng­thening waw in the rasm, where the Wester­ners/Anda­lusian/modern Arabs add a small waw, and the Easter­ners/Asians/In­dians&Co use a turned ḍamma. In Braille a normal waw is en­coded e.g. لَا يَسۡتَوُۥنَ or لَا يَسۡتَوٗنَ as لَا يَسۡتَوُونَ
That was true before 2020. I think now the turned ḍamma sign für /ū/ is used.
The Braille mushaf has Braille signs for many unpro­nounced letters like alif wiqāya after final wau, accusa­tive alif (after an-tanwīn) and most otiose alifs and waws, but not for otiose yā's (bi’aidin 51:47, bi’ayyikumu 68:6).
Although there is a Braille code for إ
it is not used in the Braille Qur'ān: just أ for all three vowels,
becauseit is not needed ← kasra ( ِ ) is obli­gatory.
Qurʾānic madd has a Braille sign, but was not used by all publishers. Now, there is a tendency to come closer to the written/type set maṣāḥif. The original decision to follow the sound is replaced by: to follow the rasm if it does not confuse to much. Today all signs used in aprinted Indonesian muṣḥaf have a Braille equivalent, even nūn qutnī. Alif madd is used (as in normal Arabic) for /ʾā/)
While the first punched books were either just جزء عم Juz ʿAmma or com­prised several volumes, nowadays there are tabletts

that create touch­able text on the fly. This always soft­ware to test new approches, e.g. to define Braille code for iẓḥar, idġām, iqlāb, iḫfa' Unlike printed maṣāḥif in with the letters are coloured, in the Braille muṣḥaf a "read­ing sign" is placed bet­ween the chang­ing and the chang­ed letter.
‒­

the edition on 848 pages with 13 lines

The Taj Company Ltd.

produced edition with nine, ten, eleven, twelve, 13, 16, 17 and 18 lines. Those on 611 pages (15 lines) and 848 pages (13 lines) are reprinted in India, Saudi-Arabia, China, South Africa, Bangla Desh ...

I admit: I do not have a Taj print with 13 lines but since Adrian Alan Brockett had copies of it and affirms that the 1978 South African edition is based on it (STUDIES IN TWO TRANS­MIS­SIONS OF THE QUR'AN 1984, p22, 26, passim) I assume that he is right.
There is an edition cir­cula­ting in South Africa that is line identical to this Taj edition: written by (ʿAbdul-)Ḫalīq (al-)Asadī without Yāʾ Barī and the cut off tails of خ ح ج ع غ typi­cal for the Lahorī style. Unlike the Taj/Water­val Islamic Institute edition it has catch­words.
Darul-Huda (South Africa) even uploaded a pdf of that mushaf to which it added the title page of Water­val Islamic Insti­tute.
Since 2022 there is a Water­val Islamic Institute edition that is page identical but ‒ for­tunate­ly ‒ not line iden­tical: when­ever a line ended with "و/and" that letter was moved to the next line where it belongs according to the rules of Arabic.
This new edition is not an offset reproduc­tion of a hand­written muṣ­ḥaf, but set on a computer.

on the left: Taj/WII. in the middle the new WII, on the right part of Ḫalīq Asadī

Darul-Huda has made a font set muṣḥaf on 848 pages (the South African "norm") but it is not line iden­tical: when ever possible verses end in the left corner of the page. So, one of the SA publisher has made a print with a font that looks like ʿUṯmān Ṭaha (with moved waws) and an other pdfs in an "Paki­stani-like" font with slightly diffe­rent pages.

Unfortunaley Darul-Huda places the long fatḥa after the upright hamza, not after it, as it does for lām: (/lā/ but /āʾ/).

Whereas South African do not understand that initial "alif" is a hamza, and that its vowel sign must sit above, below or after (never before), Indo­nesi­ans (and the King Fahd Complex) know it.

In the columns on the right (Dar us-Salam and King Fahd Complex) and the two on the left (from Indo­nesia) the vowel sign for /ā/, the up-right fatḥa, is always behind the hamza, the big alif. But in South Africa (the columns in the middle) often /āʾ/ is written for /ʾā/.
Here an other example of wrongly placed standing/turnded/long fatha

ʾauliyā'uhumu










not
ʾauliāy'uhumu




different, but without fault in the 16 liner by Daras-Salam, Uṯmān Ṭaja (Giza1924) and Indonesian:

a book by Saima Yacoob, Charlotte, North Carolina

At the start of this year's Ramaḍān Saima Yacoob, Char­lotte, North Caro­lina published a book on diffe­rences bet­ween printed maṣā­ḥif. Although her starting point and her con­clusions are worthy, the book is full of mis­takes.
Let's start with the positive:

• I believe that it would be a great loss to our ummah if we were to insist on abandon­ing [the existing] diversity [in] apply[ing] the rules of ḍabṭ ... • The framework of the science of ḍabṭ is that diacritics be used to ensure that the Qurʾān can be recited correctly by the average Muslim, and that there is enough regional standardization ... that the people of an area may read the Qurʾān correct­ly through the maṣāḥif published ... in that area. • Because of the flexibility [in] the science of ḍabṭ, new conventions of ḍabṭ may be added even today to meet the changing needs of Muslims in a parti­cular region. A modern example of this is the tajwīd color coded maṣāḥif.

This is an important point: maṣāḥif do not have to be identical to be valid. Only the last remark is wrong: color coded maṣāḥif are not "particular [to a] region".
I will give an example that springs from a particular region: The Irani Muṣḥaf with simple vowel signs:

While we used to have two basic ways of writing vowels (the Western/"Afri­can" with three vowel signs, sukūn, and three small leng­thening letters, the Eastern/"Asian" with three short vowel sign, three long vowel signs, and sukūn/ǧasm)); now there is a third (the new "Iranian" with six vowel signs in which the sign for /ū/ is not a turned ḍamma as in Indo-Pak and Indonesia, but looks like the Maġri­bian/Afro-Arab small waw, without sukūn, but with a second color for "silent, unpro­nounced"):

Only the vowel signs count, vowel letters are ignored when the con­sonant before has a vowel sign and they have none; when a con­sonant has no vowel sign is is read with­out vowel (sukūn is not needed). When a "vowel letter" has a vowel sign, it is a con­sonant. There are no small vowel lettes, no head of ʿain on/below alif (when there is a vowel sign, hamza is spoken)


The main point of the book is: there are different ways to mark the fine points, but that's okay. The maṣāḥif have the same text, but the notation is not exactely the same.

On page 2 of the book the diactrics are defined. Šaiḫa Saima Yacoob states that there are three kinds:
1.) "letters that are addi­tional or omitted in the rasm"
2.) "fatḥah, kasrah, ḍammah, shaddah, etc."
"Thirdly, those markings that aid the reader to apply the general rules of tajwīd correctly, such as the sign for madd, or a shaddah that indicates idghām, etc."

ALL wrong.
First come the dots that distinguish letter with the same shape:
د <‒>ذ   ص <‒> ض   ب <‒> ن ي   ط <‒> ظ
Second: fatḥa, kasra, ḍamma, šaddah, sukūn, plus in "Asia" turned fatḥa, turned kasra, turned ḍamma
Third: tanwīn signs and signs for madd ‒ in Asia there are three kinds of madd signs, in "Africa" three kinds of tanwīn signs for each of the short vowels
‒ small vowel "letters that are additional or omitted in the rasm" exist only in the African/Andalusian/Arab system
the tiny groups of small consonant letters (sīn, mīm, nūn) that modify pro­nounciation, and the signs for išmām and imāla come fourth and fifth.

On page 4 the šaiḫa writes: "the reader could easily get con­fused by the two sets of dots, those for vowels, and those that distin­guished similarly shaped letters from each other"
I disagree: the dots for vowels are in gold/yellow, green, red or blue, those distin­guishing letters with the same base form are in black (like the letters, because they are part of the letters). How can one con­fuse coloured and black dots?
BTW, "distinguished similarly shaped letters from each other" ‒ what I called the first function of diacritics ‒ is missing from her definition of ḍabṭ on page 2.

Yacoob sometimes repeats what is written in well known books, but makes no sense:
"symbols [for vowels] were taken from shortened versions of their original form, such as ... a portion of yāʾ for kasrah" (p.4).
While fatḥa and ḍamma look like small alif resp. waw, kasra is neither a shortened yāʾ nor a part of yāʾ ‒ to me it looks like a transposed fatḥa.

Unfortunately, I found very little information about the ḍabṭ of the South Asian muṣḥaf in Arabic. (p. 7)

okay, she did not find anything, but it is available and it is all in Arabic (although written by a Muslim from Tamil Nadu).

the Chinese muṣḥaf. (p. 7)

As far as I know, there is no printed Chinese muṣḥaf, definetly not "the Chinese muṣḥaf". I have two maṣāḥif from China: a Bejing reprint of the King Fuad Edition of 1924/5 and a Kashgar reprint of the Taj edition with the text on 611 pages like the South Asian one printed by the King Fahd Complex.
That a reprint of a Taj edition follows the IndoPak rules goes without saying, but that is not "the Ch. m."!


Enough, it goes on like this: mistake after mistake. I don't understand how a careful person can write a book like this ‒ and not revise it in due course.


­

orthography (one for two)

And there is the opposite: one tooth (one letter) where two are needed.
I guess this a remnant of the early Hiǧazi pro­noun­ciation being notated in the earliest manu­scripts with few hamzat except at the beginning of a word.
I show just two examples:
Mīkāl <--> Mikāʾīl because here the two tradents of ʿĀṣim diverge:

While the normal way is a "normal" yāʾ and an hovering hamza above (or with kasra: below) the connection.
In 26:176 in India the one yāʾ is ambi­guous:
the hamza above is a bit before,
the yāʾ-dots are a bit after the tooth.

in the top lines what is possible on computers (Unicode: hovering hamza)


in the middle Indian handwritten ambiguous solutions.




in the bottom line: Warš with one yāʾ

orthography (two for one)

In this blog I treat the quranic ortho­graphy ‒ not the extremely few different letters and the few differen­ces in vowelling, doubling of letters due to the different qirāʾāt ‒ but only the different con­ventions of writing Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim.
The main points you find here

In several posts I make clear that the Arabic script has just letters, not con­sonants and vowels. Many assume that the earliest "Hiǧāzī" manu­scripts had neither diacri­tical dots nor vowel marks ‒ both "invented" later. This is not the case. About 200 years later ‒ when the text was already well estab­lished ‒ Kufic manu­scripts (on land­scape parch­ments) were pro­duced with­out dots, but the earliest (portrait) parch­ments had dia­cri­tical strokes where necess­ary. But because vowel­ling was not yet establi­shed sometimes alif, yāʾ, and wāw were used for long or short (!) vowels.

Once vowelling (and "hamza-ing") were common, some of the added letters were super­fluous ‒ see on the left and below.
Orthographic differen­ces concern mostly alif, yāʾ, wāw and hamza (whether it is represented in the rasm by one of these vowel letters <because in the original Hiǧāzi pro­noun­cia­tion the "vanished hamza" had pro­longated the ori­ginaly short vowels> or by the inde­pen­dent letter head of ʿain.)

In the King Fuad Edition, the Šamarlī edition, in the edi­tions written by ʿUṯmān Ṭaha silent letters (that are not muted by pro­sody) are marked with a circel, when they are always silent, by an ovale, when pro­nounced when the reader stops after them ‒ for what­ever reason; silent when connected to the next word.

Here a reason why: because the pure rasm could be read in different ways. So before the "invention" of vowel signs/dots and the head of ʿAin for hamza, a vowel letter was added ‒ this by the way ‒ is a reason for adding a vowel letter for a short vowel. The personal pronoun انا (I) is an other example: you could say it has two alifs, but normally no /ā/, the first is hamza, the last helps not to confuse it with the particles ʾinna, ʾanna, ʾin ان










Here 4:83 with two words one after the other with the same rasm where it not for an "added" letter

In the next word yāʾ was "added" before kasra was common, to signal to the reader that the hamza is to be read as /ʾi/ ‒ /ʾī/ when the reader stops after it ‒ for whatever reason.

The pioneer on the matter was Brockett .... I have already posted on this matter. Allow me to added from the mentioned Muqnī

But not only alif can be otiose. So can yāʾ.

the monster fatḥa is no vowel sign, bur signals that there is a note on that word on the margin (see above)

now from Morocco, the model for the Gizeh print of 1024/5 ‒ if I am right

in prints/mss. from the Ottoman empire and Persia there is only one yāʾ

On 51:47 با يٮد al-Arkati writes:

The first MSI (Muṣḥaf Standar Indonesia 1983) had only one tooth بايۡدٍ
the second (MSI 2002) two: بايۡٮدٍ
I have to check what the third (MSI 2016) has.