KFE again

>Although I have posted about the King Fuʾād Edition several times, here again.
First some sorts to demonstrate that the KFE was more linear than the Ottoman maṣāḥif,
it was not as linear as ʿUṯmān Ṭaha (always below with yellowish background):

And here is page alif from 1924:

and 1952:

Did you notice: the 1952 has (ا), where 1924 counted ا , but did not print it.

Angelika Neuwirth

Whatever she writes about prints is wrong.
Sometimes the translator, Samuel Wilder, improves the text: In the original she renders qiraʾa as "Vo­ka­li­sie­rung" (S.30), Weber has "the textual tra­di­tion of Ḥafṣ" (p.8)

Sometimes he makes it even worse.

Lithographien des Hafs-Textes näherten sich im Laufe der Zeit mehr und mehr der stan­dardisier­ten Ortho­graphie pro­faner Texte an. Die erste im Nahen Osten ge­druckte Koran­ausgabe sollte dieser Tendenz mit puris­ti­schen Prin­zipien ent­gegen­wir­ken. (S.275)
Lithographs of the Ḥafṣ [text] over time as­si­mi­lated more and more to the stan­dar­dized orthog­raphy of secular texts. The first printed Qur’an edition in the Near East (Qurʾān Karīm, 1344/ 1925) backed this tend­ency with purist prin­ciples

To begin with, something only libra­rians fuss over:
No Qurʾān Karīm was published in 1344/1925.
The King Fuʾād Edition has no title page, no half-title, no­thing on the spine, the title is infered = it is the pre­fered title = has to be in brackets:
[al-Qurʾān al-Karīm] 1342/ 1924 – dropping the definite article is a no no for Arabs, Persian might say Qurʾān-e Karīm, but the King Fuʾād Edition was published in Egypt ...

The translator rendered "sollte ... ent­gegen­wir­ken/ should coun­ter" with "backed", which is the opposite of what AN said.

Lets look at her first state­ment, the gradu­al secu­la­ri­sa­tion of lithog­raphies.
AN gives no source, cites no example.
Is not correct.
And I am not sure what exactely she means. Indian lithog­raphs (since 1829), Persian one (since 1827), Ottoman lithog­raphs or Cairene one (both starting around 1975)? Does she mean what she says – that the lithog­raphs gradually adopted a more common orthog­raphy for the Qurʾānic text, or that they used a text more standard than the manus­cripts had three hundred years earlier?
Below you see that the last 500 years did not mean secu­la­ri­sa­tion (year by year until 1342h.)

In any case, she is wrong: Even in the latest Ottoman lithog­raphes, or the last Egyptian one before 1342 you find ṣalāt  صَلَوٰة , zakāt زَكَوٰة , ḥayāt حَيَوٰة , الرِّبَوٰا ar-ribā, مِشْكَوٰة miškāt
and both كلمت and كلمة and نعمت and نعمة at the same places as in Indian, Morroccan and modern Sa'udi prints.
Neuwirth writes complete nonsence: the orthog­raphy has nothing to to with the technique (hand writing, lithography, offset).
Yes, there is a difference: While Indian and Moroccan maṣāḥif (callig­raphed or printed) follow Abū Dāʾūd Sulaimān Ibn Naǧāḥ resp. al-ʾĀrkātī faith­fully, Persian and Ottoman scribes have about 43543 alifs while Indian and Moroccans have 5157 less (in ʿalāmin, kitāb, ṣirāt but not in rahmān, ṣalāt, ribā etc.)
And if you look at the recent history in Egypt before 1924, there was an important lithog­raphy that was not more secular than the one before, but less:

So far I was in my field, the printed maṣāḥif. Now a bit on what is important to her:
Angelika Neuwirth’s project rests on three major pillars. Only the first is broadly ac­cepted; the other two are highly debated. To­gether, they form her attempt to place the Qur’an within the cultural and literary world of Late Anti­quity.

1.) The Qur’an emerged within a Late Antique environment
Islam belongs to the shared intellectual, religious, and literary world of Late Antiquity—a world shaped by:
- Jewish exegetical traditions
- Christian liturgy and homiletics
- Syriac and Arabic poetic culture
- expectations of the end of the world
- Scriptural reasoning as a cultural practice
Hence
- The Qur’an participates in the same discursive universe as other Late Antique texts.
- It responds to, reworks, and debates themes circulating in that world.
- It is not foreign but a scripture among other scriptures.

Pillar One: The Qur’an in Late Antiquity
Strengths
- It rightly rejects the outdated view of the Qur’an as an “Arabian anomaly.”
- It highlights real intertextual resonances with Jewish, Christian, and Syriac tra­ditions.
- It situates the Qur’an within a shared scriptural culture.

But “Late Antiquity” can mean:
- a period (3rd–7th century)
- a cultural formation
- a set of literary practices
- a theological discourse
Neuwirth shifts between these meanings without clarifying which one is operative.

The direction of influence is often assumed, not demonstrated
Parallels are frequently treated as evidence of dependence, but:
- parallels do not prove borrowing
- shared motifs may reflect a broader Near Eastern repertoire
- some supposed parallels are generic rather than specific

The pillar is broadly correct, but its explanatory power is sometimes overstated.

2) Early Meccan surahs as a form of “Arabic psalmody”
(Highly controversial)

Neuwirth argues that the earliest Meccan passages are psalm-like.
She sees them as:
- short, rhythmic, highly allusive
- focused on praise, divine majesty, eschatology
- structurally similar to Late Antique hymnody and psalmody
Calling early surahs “psalmody” risks:
- importing biblical categories into an Arabic context
- flattening differences between Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic traditions
- ignoring indigenous Arabian poetic forms
The analogy is evocative but not philologically rigorous.
The comparison is typological, not genetic
Neuwirth moves from “this resembles a psalm” to “this is modelled on psalm.”
The model underestimates the autonomy of Arabic poetic culture

Michael Zwettler’s work on oral Arabic poetry shows that early Qur’anic style can be explained within Arabic oral poetics without invoking biblical psalmody.
Devin Stewart’s analysis of saǧʿ (rhymed prose) de­monstra­tes that the Qur’an’s early style fits Arabic rhetorical tra­ditions, not psalmic ones.
Fred Donner sees early Qur’anic proclamations as prophetic oracles, not psalms.

3.) Middle Meccan surahs as “communal productions”
(Even more controversial)

Neuwirth proposes that as the early com­munity around Muhammad formed, the Qur’an’s discourse became:
- more dialogical
- more argumentative
- more engaged with communal identity formation

She interprets some middle Meccan passages as reflec­ting the voice and con­cerns of an emerging com­munity, not solely the voice of a single pro­phetic figure.

- The Qur’an becomes a site of communal reflection.
- The text incorporates responses to internal debates and external challenges.
- Revelation is seen as a process invol­ving inter­action between the pro­phet and his audience.

- It challenges traditional Islamic views of revelation as top-down.
- It raises questions about author­ship and com­po­sitional layers.

Nicolai Sinai sees the Qur’an as a prophetic discourse, not a communal one.
Guillaume Dye criti­cizes Neuwirth for under­estimating re­dac­tional com­plexity.
He argues that the Qur’an shows signs of later editorial activity, not com­munal co-pro­duc­tion in Mecca.
Fred Donner sees the early com­munity as mono­theistic but not yet distinctly Islamic.
Sean Anthony stresses the pro­phetic autho­rity structure of early Islam.

Der Text des Koran liegt mitt­ler­weile in zahl­reichen Druck­ausgaben vor, unter denen der für seine Vokali­sierung nach der Tradition des Ḥafṣ (gest. 180/796) von ʿAṣim (gest. 128/ 745), Hafs ʿan ʿAsim, zurück­ge­führ­te Text dank des einfluß­reichen ersten inner­islamischen Koran­druckes der Azhar-Hoch­schule (Kairo 1925) besondere Ver­brei­tung erfahren hat (S.30)
the Ḥafs ʿan ʿĀṣim text, has become par­ti­cular­ly wide­spread due to the impact of the first inner-Islamic Qur’an printing prompted by the Azhar school (Cairo 1925)(p.8)

She writes twice that the 1924 edition was the first by Muslims, and the first in the Middle East – some­thing sooooooo absurd for the readers of this blog, that I abstain from dis­pro­ving her.

Ḥafṣ became dominate after non-Arabic empires (Ottoman, Safa­vid, Timu­rid) pre­fered it be­cause it is closest to common Arabic.



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UTs with colour

The Quranic Universal Library speaks of four variants of Madina-UT:
KFGQPC V1 layout (1405h print) – written in Damas­cus without the mistakes
KFGQPC V2 layout (1421h print) – written in Madina after UT had writ­ten his first Warš
leaving out V3(UT3 1438h) = no end-of-aya at the start of a line, no sura-title-box at the bottom of a page, and:
KFGQPC V4 layout (1441h print) – with the proper sequential fatḥatan.

These images are from QUL. Whether the marks are made by them or by the KFGQPC I do not know.
Anyhow they are close to Dār al-Maʿrifah (grey = mute, red = very long, orange = long, green = nasal, blue = clear ....) and sign that are in a grey box must be ignor­ed when no pause is made (again: as in later DaM)

the same pages as printed in Madina:

There are two more maṣāḥif on the net. They follow more or less muṣḥaf Wāṯiq allaḥ Brunai 2006, but with­out the green dots above, after, and below alif, but without an extra colour for hamza with­out kursī.

Asma Hilali again

A.H. writes in the intro­duction of the journal that the KFE was both edited and calli­graphed by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Rifāʿī,
who had nothing to do with it. It was edited by al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād. It was set with about half of the sorts designed by Muḥammad Ǧaʿfar Bey (m. 1916) ‒ stacked ligatures, and mīm without white in the middle were used in the afterwords, but not in the qurʾānic text because Ḥifnī Bey Nāṣif wanted it to be clear = easily readable (and with space between words, and between lines).
And she give a sources:

La décision du roi Fuʾād de confier au cheikh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Rifāʿī (m. 1936) la tâche d’éditer le Coran a-t-elle représenté une initiative marginale aux yeux des historiens de l’islam moderne² ?   ²ʿAzab, Ḫālid & Ḥasan, Muḥammad, Diwān al-Ḫaṭṭ al-ʿarabī fī Miṣr. Dirāsa waṯāʾiqiyya li-l-kitābāt wa-ahamm al-ḫaṭṭāṭīn fī ʿaṣr Usrat Muḥammad ʿAlī, al-Iskandariyya, Maktabat al-Iskandariyya, 2010, p. 383.
... Muḥammad ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Rifāʿī (m. 1936), ce dernier étant le calligraphe du Coran du Roi Fuʾād.

On p. 383 there is nothing of what Asma claims. Just that ar-Rifāʿī wrote a muṣḥaf for the king – nothing about the Amīrīya edition of 1924!

Both her claims are typical Asma Hilali = her imagintion without factual base.
And for a typeset muṣḥaf, for a muṣḥaf famous for being typeset, that it was calligrahped is even more Asma-like than ordinary.



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