Showing posts with label Braille. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Braille. Show all posts

Tuesday, 14 July 2026

Indonesia

Unlike Malaysia, which aligns itself muṣḥaf­wise closely with Saudi Arabia, and South Africa, which is under Pakis­tani influence, Indone­sia had to chart its own course — not only because it is the most populous Muslim‑majority country, but also because it has been pursuing its own path since 1848. Before 1976 when a commitee to define standards for the pro­duction of maṣāḥif was established, there were a) local traditions, b) reprints of a 542page Bombay muṣḥaf c) reprints of a 604page muṣḥaf by Muṣṭafà Naẓīf Qadirġalī; all follow Asian ortho­graphy, but not exactly the same. So, Indo­ne­sians knew that prints to not have to be identical to be true copies of the qurʾān: they were not con­fused by small dif­ference.
From the 1930s to 1974 the Bombay muṣ­ḥaf was the norm, espe­cial­ly since the six million copies supplied in 1960 as part of the Japa­nese repara­tion.
Besides defining a Braille muṣḥaf (see below), the experts had two guide lines: Ǧalāl ad-Dīn as-Suyūṭī's Al-Itqān fī ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān esp. chapter 76 Marsūm al-ḫatt adāb al-kitāba): and bringing the Ottoman (Bah­riye) and Indian (Bom­bay) spelling closer to each other: the easies are the pause signs:
all MSI have the six ʿalāmāt al-waqf of KFE
the Baḥriye/Otto­man/MNQ does not get signs for iqlāb (small mīm before bāʾ after nūn sākin), nor for assimilation (šadda on the second ḥarf) = it stays as simple as before (trusting the teachers to teach this)
While after 1985 the 604‑page ber­kenār muṣ­ḥaf of ʿUṯmān Ṭaha became a global standard, Indonesia did not join this develop­ment, because it had already intro­duced a 604‑page muṣḥaf by reprinting Muṣṭafa Naẓīf Qadir­ġalī’s Ottoman‑ortho­graphy muṣ­ḥaf aimed at pesan­tren and/or maʿāhid tahfīz. This made a shift to UT less attrac­tive.
btw, the calligrapher was not named, the (re-)print is known by the press, the Marine press. Maṭbaʿa Baḥrīya.



Bombay reprints

Bombay Nov 1960 low resolution


Bombay 1967

all images are from Ali Akbar

MSI 1985

Verse 1985 2002 2016 2016 Dānī ADSIN
2:2
2:5 وَاُولٰۤىِٕكَ هُمُ وَاُولٰۤىِٕكَ هُمُ وَاُولٰۤىِٕكَ هُمُ
2:22
2:43 الرّاكِعين الركعين
2:65
2:69 النّاظِرِيْنَ النّٰظِرِيْنَ
2:116
2:257 اوليـٔهُمُ لولياؤُهُمُ اَوْلِيَاۤؤُهُمُ
2:167
2:187
2:191
2:198
2:233
3:7
3:33
3:35
3:43
3:54
3:114 الْخَيْراتِۗ الْخَيْرٰتِۗ
3:134
3:146
4:18
4:24
4:43
4:95
4:95
4:100
4:117
4:162
6:143 نَبِّـُٔوْنِيْ نَبِّـُٔوْنِيْ
12:59 اُوْفِ الْكَيْلَ اُوْفِى الْكَيْلَ اُوْفِى الْكَيْلَ
25:49 لِّنُحْيِ َۧ بِهٖ لِّنُحْيِ َۧ بِهٖ
26:176 لْـَٔيْكَةِ لْـَٔيْكَةِ
32:10 بِلِقَاۤئِ بِلِقَاۤءِ
33:51 وَتُؤْوِيْٓ وَتُـْٔوِيْٓ
51:47 بِاَيْىدٍ بِاَيْىدٍ
88:22 بِمُصَۜيْطِرٍۙ بِمُصَيْطِرٍۙ


Braille


Pakistan and Jordan were amomg the first. Indonesia, Tunesia, Lybia, Saʿūdīa each produced a Braille muṣḥaf of their own.
Arabic Braille ist written from the left. And today all countries write/punch one line: letter, sign, letter, sign...
In the 1950s Egypt adopted an other system: signs in an extra line above the letters. But that is history (What Natalia Suit wrote in Quranic Matters Material Mediations and Religious Practice in Egypt, Bloomsbury,2020 was the opposite of the reality at the time of publishing.
1985 the Indonesian commitee (Muker ʿUlemaʾ) decided that Braille would render imlāʾī rather than ʿUṯmānī. Many blind Indonesian Muslims did not like this.
So in 2010 a revison was made. /ṣalāh/ and /zakāh/ stayed as they were (no waw), different madd-sign were not deviced (because madd wāǧib is within a word, madd ǧaʾiz at the end of a word, so the following word-space "makes" it ǧaʾiz. The greates simplification styed as before: mute letters are not rendered in braille (except after fatḥatan), so no mute-sign is needed.
saktah is "(س)" in Braille
išmām "( إش )"
imala "( إم )"
tashīl is not marked in Braille
extra signs for /ʾā/اٰ , /lā/ لا
ي ,ى ,ئ are three different signs
šadda stands BEFORE the letter it doubles!

But for some other things: braille follows ʿuṯmāni after 2010; now, the muṣḥaf for the visually impaired is not much different from those for normal Muslims.

Thursday, 18 April 2024

Braille

In 1951 a UNESCO conference defined Braille for Arabic. Soon Jordan (1954), Pakistan (1963), Egypt, Kuwait, Turkey, Saudi Arabia (1997) moved toward pro­ducing Braille maṣā­ḥif. N. Suit has seen several in Cairo with the text in two lines: one for the "letters" and one above for the "dia­critics". Since I have no informa­tion about it, I'll just write about the Indone­sian Al-Qur'an Mushaf Stan­dar Braille pro­duced in 2012/3, that puts every­thing in one line, basi­caly a sequence of con­son­nant and vowel sign.
The Doubling-Sign (šadda) is put before the letter, madda ‒ if used ‒ after the vowel sign.
A foun­da­tion for the blind (Yaketunis: Yayasan Kese­jah­te­raan Tuna­ne­tra Islam) and the Mini­stry for Reli­gious Affaires (Kemenag) made two basic decisons:
‒ to be faithful to the pro­nounci­ation (not to the "ʿUṯmānic writing")
‒ to divert some­times from Braille for Arabic or Malay in Arab script (Jawi).
So first: words that have /ā/ with­out alif (ṣalāt, kitāb, hayāt, ribā, maulāhu ...) are brail­li­zed as if they were written with alif. For رحمن this is not done, because Saudi scholars claim that it is for­bid­den.
The same is true for words with /ū/ but without a leng­thening waw in the rasm, where the Wester­ners/Anda­lusian/modern Arabs add a small waw, and the Easter­ners/Asians/In­di­ans&Co use a turned ḍamma. In Braille a normal waw is en­coded e.g. لَا يَسۡتَوُۥنَ or لَا يَسۡتَوٗنَ as لَا يَسۡتَوُونَ
That was true before 2020. I think now the turned ḍamma sign für /ū/ is used.
The Braille mushaf has Braille signs for many unpro­nounced letters like alif wiqāya after final wau, accu­sa­tive alif (after an-tanwīn) and most otiose alifs and waws, but not for otiose yā's (bi’aidin 51:47, bi’ayyikumu 68:6).
Although there is a Braille code for إ
it is not used in the Braille Qur'ān: just أ for all three vowels,
becauseit is not needed ← kasra ( ِ ) is obli­gatory.
Qurʾānic madd has a Braille sign, but was not used by all publishers. Now, there is a tendency to come closer to the written/type set maṣāḥif. The original decision to follow the sound is replaced by: to follow the rasm if it does not confuse to much. Today all signs used in a printed Indonesian muṣḥaf have a Braille equivalent, even nūn qutnī. Alif madd is used (as in normal Arabic) for /ʾā/)
While the first punched books were either just جزء عم Juz ʿAmma or com­prised several volumes, now­a­days there are tabletts that create touch­able text on the fly. This allows soft­ware to test new appro­ches, e.g. to de­fine Braille code for iẓḥar, idġām, iqlāb, iḫfa' Unlike printed maṣāḥif in with coloured letters, in Braille maṣāḥif a "read­ing sign" is placed bet­ween the chang­ing and the chang­ed letter.







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Lucknow 1890

The first images of a muṣḥaf by Naval Kishore came from Oxford: black and white, wrong order and low resolution. It made be happy. Now I f...