The seventeen years required by Egyptian scholars for the preparation of the Fuʾād Qurʾān, from 1907 to 1924, were necessary to ensure the correctness of the text in adherence to ‘the approved norms in terms of content and orthography’, which was an indispensable precondition for accepting the duplication of the sacred text. (Sabev, ‘Waiting for Godot’, 109.)there is no book Waiting for Godot by O.Sabev, and in his Waiting for Müteferrika there is nothing on the KFE, not on page 109, nor anywhere else.
But in G.Bergsträßer's article Koranlesung in Kairo Part 1 he writes, that a typewritten leaflet claimed that the preparations (Vorbereitungen) started in 1907, that the text was set, checked, revised by the chief recitor ordered to do so by the Azhar (im Auftrag der Direktion der Azhar). That the plan was to have printing plates being made in Germany, but that the outbreak of war had made that impossible, therefore the book was printed in Giza.
First, I do not see what Conidi writes, that seventeen years were necessary to establish a correct text (in Egypt the text could only be the reading of Ḥafs; its oral text is fixed for centuries, and whether one uses the letters defined by ad-Dānī ((as al-Muḫallalātī did in 1890 and much later editors in Lybia)) or the ones defined by his pupil Abu Daʾûd ((as common in Morocco)) is of minor importance -- as I see it, the chief recitor choose the letters used in the Moroccan prints just changing the very few letters special to the reading of Warsh;
(BTW, Indonesian scholar worked 1974-84 for their standard, but first they came from all over the country, while Egypt is rather centralized, and they work on three standards at the time, among them a Braille standard, something completely new.)
and I do not see what scholars were involved beside the chief recitor.
Second, I do not understand what happened between 1907 and the outbreak of the war, and what happened between 1915 and 1924.
It all does not make sense.
As I see it: after November 1914 when Egypt ceased to be a province of the Ottoman empire and the (hitherto) Governor took the same title as his (erstwhile) overlord: sulṭān, Egypt wanted to have a copy of the qurʾān different from the Ottoman model. And Abū Mālik Ḥifnī Bey ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismaʿīl ibn Ḫalīl Nāṣif (16.12.1855‒25.2.1919) , responsible for state run schools, expressed the wish for a print easier to read for "his" secular students. While the students at religous madrasas were used to the calligraphic style of qurʾān manuscripts, (and they did not realy read because their teacher recited the text), the modern students were used to school book, novels and news papers.
He wanted a print with a clear base line, and clear right-to-left, not top-to bottom as in elegant calligraphy.
For all of this no lengthy deliberations were necessary.
