Tuesday, 11 August 2026

yet another mistake in KFE1924

The maker of the 1924 Cairo edition evidently did not understand the function of the mutating small alif: it is not a vowel sign but turns yāʾ or wāw into alif — in other words, a letter that looks like a yāʾ is an alif (alif bi‑šakl al‑yāʾ). In early Warš prints the mutat­ing alif is correct­ly placed above the yāʾ; the Cairo edition, by con­trast, places the sign some­times, correct­ly some­times not.
top: Warš prints; second: KFE; third UT0; fourth: Muṣḥaf al-Muʿal­lim, Tunis; 5thTaj
It should sit above yāʾ, not after it. In Moroc­co this is always the case, in KFE it is some­times like it should be, some­times not.
Mikāl is dif­ferent from the others, be­cause Warš and Qālun (Tunis) have /mi­kāʾil/. While here there is a hover­ing sign and a tooth/نبرة/let­ter, in the other cases there is just one letter. What KFE and UT are doing is just wrong: they often have use­less tooth/نبرة !
This is the same scribal incon­sis­ten­cy, likely due to care­less­ness, that Otto Pretzl had already noticed.
I have added a last row in IPak. Here the dagger is neither a small alif, nor a mutat­ing sign, but a ā-vowel sign; it belongs to the con­sonant; the tooth/nabra is mute.
So, it is not only Abū ʿUmar ʿUbaidah Muḥam­mad Saliḥ al-Banki who does not care, KFE and UT are not perfect either.

Here the last words from KHO, MNQ and Arya­mehr. Yes, Otto­mans write the yāʾ with its dots even when it stands for /ā/, yes, Persians put the marks somewhere (in the right order, but whereever).
not convined yet?
Below is more to see: Algerian Warš: the mutat­ing small alif ON the tooth, KFC/UT Warš comme si, comme ça, UT-Ḥafṣ just bad:
/ṣalāt/ is not the problem, nor is /abnē/ UT-Warš – with them I just show that with wau and with end-yāʾ even UT places the mutating alif proper­ly: /mikaʾil/ has the /ī/ after the tooth – why?;
the rest shows that KFC/UT (and KFE before) write with­out thinking first; they have no idea were the mu­tat­ing small alif should be placed.


































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