Wednesday, 7 October 2026

Lahore, India 1935 (AHI: Anǧuman-i Ḥimāyat-i Islām)

I have read that the Taj Comp. Ltd. changed the Indian verse numbering by adopting the Verse numbers from the KFE.
I can't confirm this. The Naval Kishore prints have already the same Kufan system as has Istanbul and Cairo.
Yes, Pickthall had 18:18 split after "treshhold" (ۚج or ‍‍ط ) but that was not all-Indian practice.

But in 1935 something happened in Lahore: the Anǧuman-i Ḥimāyat-i Islām published a beautiful "faultless" muṣḥaf.
The makers of the muṣḥaf had two Indien maṣāḥif of reference, and the literature about rasm and dabṭ; and they consulted the Egyptian Government edition: they were proud to declare that their Kufan verse numbering system was identical to that of the KFE.
Unfortunately they made all mistakes that are commonly made in India:placing of the /ā/dagger before the hamza
seperating the proclitic /wa-/and from its main part; this conjunction can not stand at the end of a line (no different from fa-, li-, ba-; ʾa- interrogative, and oath marking).

And they made a horrible crime: wanting to learn from the best muṣḥaf of the West, they destroyed one of the clearest rule of Indian writing: letters without any mark are silent. As Morocco and the KFE do not have that rule, al-Ḥaddād introduced the ṣifr mustadīr; using it in India is a capital crime. When all naked letters are mute, to cloth a letter with a circle to mark its muteness is more stupid than the devil can think of!

Tuesday, 6 October 2026

Iran Nastaʿlīq

In my German blog I have posts about Iran 2 3 4 5 6. Here I have a lot about older prints.
Nastaʿliq is normally not used for Arabic.
But there are exeptions:

Lahore, India 1935 (AHI: Anǧuman-i Ḥimāyat-i Islām)

I have read that the Taj Comp. Ltd. changed the Indian verse numbering by adopting the Verse numbers from the KFE. I can't confirm this...