Monday, 15 April 2024

the edition on 848 pages with 13 lines

The Taj Company Ltd.
produced editions 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 1398/1978 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.
Water­val Islamic Institute (Johannisburg) made a second print in 1400/1980, a third in 1405/1985, a fourth in 1409/1989, a fifth in 1413/1993, a sixth in 1417/1996, a seventh in 1420/1999, a eighth in 1423/2003, a ninth in 1428/2007, a tenth in 1432/2011, an eleventh 1435/2014, a twelfth in 1437/2015, plus two more before they had one set in a font with the ʿUthman Ṭaha handwriting.

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.
Nurul-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 ‒ once even to the next page.
This new edition is not an offset repro­duc­tion of a hand­written muṣ­ḥaf, but set on a computer ‒ and printed in India
on the left: Taj/WII. in the middle the new WII, on the right part of Ḫalīq Asadī

Nurul-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 last 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 Nurul-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 (Pak Company/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:




While outside of Pakistan ‒ e.g. India and South Africa ‒ publisher just steal the Taj Ltd. muṣḥaf, in Pakistan itself other pub­lishers (like Pak Company, Qudrat­ullah, Gaba) have calli­graphers make line iden­ti­cal copies, so there are at least ten 13liners on paper and on the web, in black and white and with colours for tajwīd.

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