Friday 19 July 2024

What makes a certain muṣḥaf?

A muṣḥaf is not just the words of the qurʾān.
It's not just the words in a certain spelling (rasm + diacritical points + ḍabṭ)
not just these words plus pronounciation signs plus pause signs.
In this post (and this blog generally) I ignore the qiraʾāt.
In this post I further ignore the features of a printed mushaf
(lines per pages, number of pages, catch words, marginal notes).
But there is an element that some orientalists ignore:
the titel box or rather the information therein.

The makers of Coran 12-21 claim to give "The Cairo Edition (1924)"
but their list of suras and the suras themselves have no number,
no information about the number of ayas,
no information on the order of revelation,
informations the KFE (1924) had:
Here the titelbox of 1952 (without information about the order of revelation:
Here the titelbox of UT0 (i.e. the origianl ʿUṯmān Ṭaha copy as printed in Damascus:
And here what the Suʿudis (KFC) made out of it (I call it UT1):
unchanged in UT2 (the text written in Madina):
Although claiming to show "The Cairo Edition (1924)",
what Coran 12-21 really shows is the Suʿudī version: without numbers (1-114), without information on the number of ayas,
without information about the order of revelation.

On top of this, Coran 12-21 has the wrong number of ayas (counting the basmala as verse 1),
and has no small letters to indicate pronounciation,
21:89 فَاسْتَجَبْنَا لَهُ وَنَجَّيْنَاهُ مِنَ الْغَمِّ وَكَذَلِكَ نُنجِي الْمُؤْمِنِينَ
21:88 نُجِۨی
In the two lines above ‒ as in the examples below ‒
always first the wrong Coran 12-21 text
and in the next line the correct Giza 1924 text (from Corpus Coranicum)

2:246 وَاللَّهُ يَقْبِضُ وَيَبْسُطُ وَإِلَيْهِ تُرْجَعُونَ
2:245 وَيَبۡصُۜطُ
7:70 فِي الْخَلْقِ بَسْطَةً فَاذْكُرُوا آلَاءَ اللَّهِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ
7:69 بَصۜۡطَة
88:23 لَّسْتَ عَلَيْهِم بِمُصَيْطِرٍ
88:22 بِمُصَۣيۡطِرٍ
77:21 عَلِمَ أَن لَّن
77:20 عَلِمَ أَلَّن
nor pause signs:
2:6 أُولَئِكَ عَلَى هُدًى مِّن رَّبِّهِمْ وَأُولَئِكَ هُمُ الْمُفْلِحُونَ
2:5 أُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ عَلَىٰ هُدًۭى مِّن رَّبِّهِمۡۖ
وَأُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلۡمُفۡلِحُونَ And while "the Cairo Edition (1924)" has three different tanwīn for each of the three vowels,
Coran 12-21 has just one, e.g.
105:6 فَجَعَلَهُمْ كَعَصْفٍ مَّأْكُولٍ whereas Giza 1924 has a sequential kastatain
2:6 أُولَئِكَ عَلَى هُدًى مِّن رَّبِّهِمْ
It took me three days to understand:
The makers of the web site have no idea what "Cairo 1924" is,
they take a random Arab Qurʾānic text (from tanzil.net) and call it "Cairo Edition, 1924" although it is not called that in their source.
They are only interested in translations.
Fine. But:
please don't call a text which does not even have waṣl-sign "Cairo 1924" -- please!

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