I tend to think: marking the end of verses is important,
not putting a number each time,
because the end-of-verse-sign imply the numbers.
I admit: there are two things that make is complicated
In Muṣḥaf al-Muḫallalātī the end-of-verse of all seven canonical systems are indicated,
so the numbers are not that easily countable, but they are there.
In some maṣāḥif the same sign is use of end-of-verse and for an obligatory stop within a verse,
the "fake" ends not being counted in the number-of-verses given in the sura-title-box ‒
something clear only to the experts.
Muhammad Hozien has (for the time being) established the
first printed
muṣḥaf with numbers after each verse:
Istanbul 1298/1881
But the early print of the 11-lines
muṣḥaf by Hafiz Osman, the Elder hat numbers
before the verses, not as common today:
after the verses:
I still do not see the big difference to the same Hafez Osman, the Elder putting an ع at the end of
each tenth verse and an عشر at the margin:
or Muḥammad Amīn Rušdī using the abjad ten: ے
above the last word of the tenth, twentieth, thirdith ... verse there is a ے
In the manuscript there were no numbers; they were added 1370/1951 for the ʿIrāqī State print.
Attention
Sometimes the same (or similar) sign can stand for different things.
While small ʿain with /ʿašara/ at the margin says: 10 or 20 or 30 ..., it can stand for
rukūʿ;
above, in the last line, at the end of verse 29, one just has to know ...
... on the next image, i.e. in India there is a big ʿain on the margin with numbers in it:
To another example that one and the same sign can stand for different things.
The sign is called the short one/
quṣair or the dagger/
ḫanǧar
In the now common Western, Andalusian, African system
it stands for a "missing" vowel letter, an alif needed to lengthen a
fatḥa not in the
rasm;
four times in the first line, twice in the second ‒ twice, because the third
quṣair is not a fill-in alif, but a converter/changer of the alif in the shape of yāʾ into a "noraml" alif;
in the last word the vowel letter is not missing, it is just ambiguous.
In the East (India, Indonesia, Persia, Ottoman Empire ...) the same sign is neither a replacement vowel nor a vowel converter but a vowel
sign, a
long fatḥa (or turned
fatḥa).
While in the West there is the vowel sign
fatḥa plus a lengthening letter sign, in the East, there is just a
long vowel
sign.
In the West there are only three vowel signs (plus sukūn) hence a lengthening vowel is necessary.
In the East there are three short, three long vowel signs (plus sukūn) ‒ or five or seven.
looks the same, but is not the same, letter in the West, vowel sign in the East:
And there is more diversity:
While in the now standard IndoPak system this /ā/ stands only when no alif follows, there are spelling that have it, even if an alif follows:
This is Hūd 22-25 from an Indian manuscript from around 1800: you find the long vowel marks irrespective of what follows:
BTW, the red dots are end-of-verse-markers, and after /taḏakirūn/ there is a rukūʿ, cf. the ʿain on the margin.
The same text according to the new Iranian system, in which vowel letters without ḥaraka ‒ with which they would be consonants ‒ are long vowels; the letter before the vowel does not carry a vowel sign:
On the right of the image below there are inscriptions on buildings in Aleppo,
on the left from a muṣḥaf written by an-Nairizī;
both use the quṣair irrespective of an alif following or not:
Below from the ʿIrāqi State muṣḥaf of 1951:
again the dagger even when followed by an alif
and they make mistakes: four times they both put a normal fatḥa and this long fatḥa; the co-existence of different systems confused them:
‒
