Wednesday, 8 April 2026

facts about the KFE

the KFA was written by Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḫalaf al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād alone
it was a sign of the independance from Istanbul (Nov 1914) (not from the UK Feb 1922)
it was the first offset printed muṣḥaf
it was set with less than 300 sorts out of the 470 designed by Muḥammad Ǧaʿfar Bey in 1906
(out which 406 were Arabic sorts, the rest: Persian, numbers, punctuation)
Muḥ Ḥifnī Bey Nāsif had advoated a muṣḥaf for people educated in state scholar, reading novels and news papers: baseline orientated without stacked ligatures

before it was printed, all kasras were lifted on the galley proofs
here you see the Amīrīya set text and the same text set in Hyderabad: mostly the same with the kasras just lifted, in the last example a different form of end-mīm was used (in the first line with the deep mīm kasratan are move slightly to the left)
the KFE(resp. al-Ḥaddād) did not reconstruct the spelling according to Ibn Naǧāh, he just follwed a Faz print
I base this assertion on two groups of facts: the adding of ġāli­ban in the information. first the original words 1342 to 1414:
the 1420 version
again in 2019
and in the grand edition:
and ‒ stated its sources (although ... see below),
‒ adopted ‒ except for the Kufic counting,
    and the pause signs, which were based on Eastern sources.
    ‒ the Maghrebi rasm (largely after Abū Dāʾūd Ibn Naġāḥ)
    ‒ the Maghrebi small substitute vowels for elongation
    ‒ the Maghrebian baseline hamzae before Alif at the begin­ning of the word (ءادم instead of اٰدم).
    ‒ the Maghrebic distinction into three kinds of tanwin (above each other, one after the other, with mīm)
    ‒ the Maghrebic spelling at the end of the sura, which assumes that the next sura is spoken imme­diate­ly after­wards (and with­out basmala): tanwin is modified accordingly.
    ‒ the Maghrebic absence of nūn quṭni.
    ‒ the Maghrebic non-spelling of the vowel shortening.
    ‒ the Maghrebic (wrong) spelling of ʾallāh.
    ‒ the Maghrebī (and Indian) attraction of the hamza sign by kasra

in G24 hamza with kasra is below the baseline ‒ in the Ottoman Empire (include Egypt) and Iran the hamza stays above the line

‒ noted assimi­lation like in the Magh­reb (an in India, Indo­nesia):
In both examples the first three lines are Ottoman
    (Rušdī, Ḥasan Riḍā in ʿIrāqī state editions, Muṣṭafā Naẓīf Qairġalī Cairo 1911),
in the middle Giza 1924
bellow Maġribī Warš editions ‒ note that in the older edition the second stem (vertical stroke) of لا is lam+šadda, while in the modern Algerian one, it is the first stroke

A new feature was the differentiation of the Maghrebic sukūn into three signs:
    ‒ the ǧazm in the form of an ǧīms without a tail and without a dot for vowel-lessness,
    ‒ the circle for never to be pronounced,
    ‒ the (oval) zero for "only pronounced if paused".
(while before ‒ as in IPak‒ the absence of any sign signifies "not to be pro­nounced").
Further, word spacing,
baseline orientation and
exact placement of dots and dashes.

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