Friday, 7 November 2025

UT0.5 + UT2.5

There are two maṣāḥif written by ʿUṯman Ṭaha not produced by the King Fahd Complex (KFC), nor being a predecessor of theirs (the Dār aš-Šāmiyya muṣḥaf), nor pirated versions of a Medina Mushaf:
Muṣḥaf ar-Risāla, Bairut 1986
and the Global Foundation Mushaf from Saudia by الوقف العالمي للقـرآن الكريـم
note that the basmala which is not part of the sura is in blue, while it is in black in the fatiḥa, a tiny improvement, and verses ending at the end of a line
btw with the end of verse sign at the end of the line as in UT4
(above 16 end-mīm, not a single one with short tail)

on this one line (above) you do not see, what I want to show, that UT0,5 is closer to MNQ (top line) than all the other UTs, that are more in line with KFE (second line).
The image below shows clear cases of this on the left margin (and the whole page): While UT "normally" avoids stacked liga­ture, in this ex­cep­tion­ale muṣ­ḥaf ʿUṯmān Ṭaha is closer to tradi­tional calli­graphy, a bit away from news­paper style (i.e. base­line orientated):

UT puts into maṣāḥif he writes for "others" some­thing special to make them iden­tifi­able, like using on one page only end-mīm with a short tail to the left (instead of alter­ing between short tails and long verti­cal tails). In muṣ­ḥaf ar-risāla the mark is the curved fatḥa – not always, but most of the time:
Muhammad Hozien pointed this out. He provided the images as well – thanks.
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Nairīzī

Mirza Aḥmad an-Nairīzī (ca. 1650–1747) is the last of the classical Iranian calligraher s. Informations are hard to find, because often und...