Thursday 18 April 2024
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.
‒
Monday 15 April 2024
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:
Sunday 14 April 2024
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
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