NoStandard: ان لن الن

Thursday, 13 March 2025

الن vs. ان لن

There are many false assertions about the King Fuʾād Edition:
that it is type printed ‒ it is type set, but offset printed
that it established Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim as the most widespread reading
‒ the three gun powder empires ‒ Mameluke, Timurid, Safavid ‒ did that,
because for their non-Arabic elites that reading is the easiest,
because closed to Standard Arbic
that it fixed the text once and for all ‒ in reality the oral text was fixed centuries ago,
the written text had minor variations, AS HAS the KFE.
Here I will not write about the more than 900 changes that the 1952 edition brought in the qurʾānic text (including the sura title boxes), but just about one word in 73:20: /allan/.
This is not about /allan/ in general.
At most places it has a fixed spelling,
e.g. 18:48 لن

at 72:12 ان لن

just about 73:20 where we find a back and forth. In 1924 (in the Giza print) we have لن in the first line

unchanged in the first small Būlāq print

changed in 1347/1928/9

back in 1952

the same in the small edition of 1955

and in the small edition of 1962

But in 1959: ان لن
(Havards holds all these editions ‒ Muḥammad Hozien took the pictures)

So far for real KFEs, which means
‒ published by the Government Press/Amiriyya
‒ no title page = [p.1] is completly empty
‒ an-nās on p. 827
‒ 12 lines per page
‒ catch word on each right page
‒ ǧuz, ḥizb, saǧada, sakta in medallions on the margin
‒ text after an-nās with abǧad pagination
‒ big format (27 x 19 cm) printed by the Survey of Egypt)
small format (20 x 15 cm) printed by the Amiriyya itself in Būlāq
(when a library has a 24 cm codex it is a cut and rebound big edition)
‒ no duʿāʾ ‒ a secular edition, by and for the state, not al-Azhar, as often claimed
‒ no eulogies after ʿUṯmān bn ʿAffān, ʿAlī bn Abī Ṭālib etc. in the information after the qurʾānic text
‒ no bookmark

Let's move on to "reprints" by private printers or foreign states.
China Bekin 1955 (1924 text ‒ without dedication to Fuʾād)

Sowjet Uzbekistan, Taškend 1960 (1952 ‒ without dedication to Fuʾād)

Cairo Šarikat al-Iʿalānāt aš-šarqiya 1961

Jordan, first (1977, 4th edition)

Jordan, second (1993, reprint of Bairut/Damaskus 1975, with yellow floral frame that disappeared due to high contrast)

Bairut 1977

Bairut Dār al-Qurʾān (Muḥammad Baṣṣām al-Istwānī) 1398/1978
(the bookmark on the bottom of the images shows that it not an KFE)

Paris Dār al-Fikr 1981 (with french on opposite page)

Kuwait Mogahwi Press 1981

Qaṭar 1985 ‒ with added nūn

Bairut Dār al-lubnānī 1985, with "all right" by Maḥmūd al-Ḥuṣarī

With tafsīr

And as last group: private editions with the KFE set text, but rearranged
Muṣḥaf al-Malik, Cairo 1935

Cairo ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān Muḥammad/Dār al-Muṣḥaf 1971

Bairut 1983

Damascus 1983 Marwān Sawār

Neither a reprint, nor a rearrangement of KFE set lines, but a reSet is the Hyderabad edition of 1938. It has been photomechanical reproduced in London (i.a. for Sharja), Islamabad, and Bairut (for the Libyan World Islamic Call Society). See what the Indians did, what was made for the Libyans;