a map of Zamalek, Gizeh, Bulaq

My first post on the 1924/5 King Fuʾād Edition included a map of Cairo 1920, on which I had marked the Amīriyya Press and the Land Registry (Egyptian Survey Authority) with arrows in the Nile, as well as Midan Tahrir and the place where the govern­ment printing press is located since 1972. Also the Ministry of Edu­ca­tion and the Nāṣi­rīya Peda­go­gi­cal College, where three of the editors worked. The area bet­ween Bab al-Luq (in the south-east) and Taufiqia (north of the main railway station) is called Isma­ilia: the area bet­ween the Nile and al-Qāhira (proper) was built up (copying Baron Haus­mann's Paris) under Ismail Pascha (1863‒1879 Wali/Go­ver­nor; in 1867 the Sublime Port recogni­zed the title of "Khedive" for him and his suc­cessors); today simply: Down­town.
Everything to the right of the Nile plus the islands is Cairo, everything to the left (Imbaba, Doqqi, Giza) not only does not belong to the city of Cairo, but is in another province.

The two Arabic texts are the 1924 and 1952 printer's notes, both from the copies in the Prus­sian State Library, which owns copies from five editions.
Important: the typesetting workshop and the offset work­shop were well connected by car, tram and boat. The assembled pages did not have a long way to go. Nevertheless: typesetting the text in Būlāq, making a rough proof (Bürstenabzug), making adjustments on the proof (like placing kasra withIN the tails of end-ḥāʾ/ǧīm/ḫāʾ and end-ʿain/ġain, sometimes reducing the space before kāf and after rāʾ/zain and waw); transporting the adjusted proofs to Giza, making plates, printing; transporting the bodies of the book to Būlāq where it was bound and embossed, took more time than planned: Although printed "1342" in the book (see top insert on the map) it was 1343 by the time the books were ready. So the first edition was embossed:

The October-Conference on The Cairo Edition

Last weekend the conference on "the Cairo Edition of the Qurʾān, 1924" took place in a room of the AUinC.
While the Arab titel مصخف الملك فؤاد ١٩٢٤م is fine, the English title (the French one pro­minent at the beginning of the year had dis­apperead) is a testimony to utter ignorance ‒
ignorance either of logic, ignoring the func­tion of the definite article
or ignorance of the world of Cairo prints and book­shops ‒ there are thou­sands of Cairo Edi­tions of the Qurʾān a few miles east of the AUC, even fewer miles south-west of the IDEO.
(Anyhow, I find it strange that the English title is not "the 1924 King Fuʾād Edition of the Qurʾān in the Ḥafṣ trans­mission" ‒ multi­lingual con­feren­ces should have the same title in all its lanugages.)
    Sadly, I find both reasons ‒ carelessly calling an edition "the edition"
    and calling an edition "the edition" because s/he never bothered to study different editions,
    plausible.
    It is common among these young scholars to speak of "the palimp­sest"
    for the scriptio inferior of the pamlimpset or the lower text
    ‒ why should they make a difference between "a" and "the"?
    And because they are not interested in having a look into the maṣā­ḥif
    local Muslims use, they just assume that all Muslims have some­thing very
    similar to what most Orienta­lists have. Many scholars explicite­ly wrote that
    the KFE is most common in the Muslim word and for religious purposes.
    Shows that they have no idea of the real Muslim world.
    Sorry: Do not confuse the KFE with Islam on the ground(s).
    Unfortunalely Islamology is 90% theology and philology,
    only 10% social anthropology and sociology of religions.

In the "Call for Papers" (anony­mous, hence offi­cially by the IDEO, in fact by Asma Hilali) one can read about 50 times "l'édition du Cairo, le coran du Caire, ظبعة القاهرة etc.), during the conference all except the Blind African herself spoke of the Govern­ment Copy, the print of the Amī­riyya, the KFE ... ‒ unfor­tunatly the official English title is still the old one, the il­lo­gical one; the IDEO hasn't even made up its mind whether there should be a comma bet­ween "the Cairo Edition of the Qurʾān" and "1924" (cf. the image above) ‒ in both cases the year is an ac­ciden­tal property not an essen­tial one, while in "the 1924 Cairo Edition of the Qurʾān" the year would be es­sential, defining.
Here I repeat what I wrote to the guys in charge in Cairo ten times:
There are about a thousand "Cairo Edition of the Qurʾān" ‒ to put the definite article in front defies logic ‒:
at least ten editions of the Warš trans­mission, one being THE Warš Edition for decades;
here are two of the four title pages (normally bound in one volume):

Here two images from a 1929 Cairo Warš Edition ‒ without a title page, as was common at the time:

And here from two of the oldest al-Qahira pub­lishers, i.e. not from Bab al-Khalq, al-Faggala, from Bulaq or even Giza but from "behind" al-Azhar, first one from Subīḥ:

than from Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, first from 1930 for Maġribian Arabs:

others:

Apart from these 100% Cairo Editions, there are editions con­ceaved in Morocco resp. Algeria, but pro­duced in Cairo ‒ the Moroccan ones without pro­duction place, the Algerian ones with an Algerian publisher's name. (Only the third edition of the third sherifian muṣ­ḥaf was produced in Morocco.)
In the literature another one is mentioned, which I have not seen ‒ so I rest sceptical:
al-Qurʼān al-karīm : innahu li-Qurʼān karīm fī kitāb maknūn
Majmaʻ al-Buḥūth al-Islāmīyah. Lajnah Murājaʻat al-Maṣaḥif
[Cairo]: [Jāmiʻ al-Azhar], [1964]
OCLC-No: 22354261
"Aqarrat hādha al-muṣḥaf al-sharīf wa-diqqah rasmihi wa-ḍabṭihi wa-ʻaddaʼa ayātaha Lajnah Murājaʻat al-Maṣāḥif bi-Majmaʻa al-Buḥūth al-Islāmīyah bi-al-Jāmiʻ al-Azhar bi-al-Qarār ... 1964."
qāf is written with a dot above the letter, fāʼ with one below the letter, and no dot over final nūn 518 pages ; 25 cm
Of two "Cairo Edition"s before 1924 I do have image:
the one written by the same calligrapher as the 1308/1890 edition, ʿAbd al-Ḫāliq Ḥaqqi (?) Ibn al-Ḫawaǧa, produced by a famous printer around the turn of the century (-1919) behind al-Azhar: aš-Ṣaiḫ Aḥmad ʿAlī al-Melīǧī al-Kutubī:

Plus one printed in al-Maṭbaʻa al-ʻĀmiriyya:
InnahuLi-Qurʾān Karīm, 1318/1900:

One of the talks in the IDEO conference led from Venice and Ham­burg, Kazan and Leipzig to the first com­plete Qurʾān printed in Cairo, the Bulaq 1881/2 print ‒ both in one volume in in several (possibly both in 10 and in 30) leather­bound parts. It is well known both from the Enyclo­pedia of the Quran and from Kein Standard:

It has 13 lines per page, 603 pages in the one-volume-edition.

In 1308/1890 the most important of all Cairo editions was published ‒ it was mentioned but no copy was shown ((even the Geburtstagskind, the 1924 Gizeh print was not there)). It was not analysed or discribed in detail. Good heavens!

In 1885 an other important Cairo edition saw the light of day ‒ this one as well with "ar-rasm al-ʿuṯmānī":

Let's mention two more early "Cairo Editions":
One written by they same calli­grapher who wrote the tremend­ously import 1308/1890 edition, ʿAbd al-Ḫālliq Ḥaqqi (?) Ibn al-Ḫawaǧa, by the editor Šaiḫ Aḥmad bin ʿAlī al-Melīǧī al-Kutbī, who had a press near al-Azhar until 1919.

Innahu li-Qurʾān karīm fī kitāb maknūn lā yamassahu illā al-muṭahhirūn tanzīl min ...
Miṣr : al-Maṭbaʻah al-ʻĀmirīyah, 1318 [1900]
364 p. ; 20 cm.

Only one of the participants has made research for the con­ference. Aziz Hilal dis­covered, that he did not find any reports on the pre­para­tions for the edition, nor reports on its pub­li­cations or its re­per­cussions. It was a non-event at the time.
Ali Akbar had to report, that in Indo­nesia (+ Singa­pore, Malaysia, southern Thai­land) no copies of the KFE were sold. Nor could he locate a survving copy Azhar students or pil­grims to Mecca might have brought into the area.
Necmettin Gökkır informed the par­ticipants, that in the Turkish Republic very few experts took note of the edition. Neither the state religious autho­ri­ties nor normal Muslims were inter­ested in the KFE.
Michael Marx's “Inno­vation, Mile­stone, Stan­dard? Remarks and Reflec­tions about the Cairo 1924 Print from a Histo­ri­cal Per­spective” is wrong because there is NO Cairo 1924 Print, the copy was printed in Gizeh, and he did not explain what the ino­vation(s) was resp. were. As for the "standard" he refered to Arno Schmitt.
I could not detect for all the papers which of the topics named in the Call for Papers they dealt with. Only A.Hilali's concluding remarks belonged clearly to a tailor-made topic.
Interesting that the three languages English+French+Arabic
had turned to Egyptian+English+Arabic and that Hilal's talk consisted to 38% in imala (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh).

Giza 1342/3 1924/5

The Giza print
‒ is not an Azhar Quran
‒ did not trigger a wave of Quran printings
    because there was finally a fixed, authorised text.
‒ did not immediately become the Qur'an accepted by both Sunnis and Shiites

‒ did not contribute significantly to the spread of Ḥafṣ reading;
‒ was not published in 1923 or on 10/7/1924.
But it drove the grotty Flügel edition out of German study rooms,
‒ had an epilogue by named editors (although ... see below), ;
‒ stated its sources (although ... see below),
‒ adopted ‒ except for the Kufic counting,
    and the pause signs, which were based on Eastern sources.
    ‒ the Maghrebi rasm (largely after Abū Dāʾūd Ibn Naġāḥ)
    ‒ the Maghrebi small substitute vowels for elongation
    ‒ the Maghrebian baseline hamzae before Alif at the begin­ning of the word (ءادم instead of اٰدم).
    ‒ the Maghrebic distinction into three kinds of tanwin (above each other, one after the other, with mīm)
    ‒ the Maghrebic spelling at the end of the sura, which assumes that the next sura is spoken imme­diate­ly after­wards (and with­out basmala): tanwin is modified accordingly.
    ‒ the Maghrebic absence of nūn quṭni.
    ‒ the Maghrebic non-spelling of the vowel shortening.
    ‒ the Maghrebic (wrong) spelling of ʾallāh.
    ‒ the Maghrebī (and Indian) attraction of the hamza sign by kasra

in G24 the hamza is below the baseline ‒ in the Ottoman Empire (include Egypt) and Iran the hamza stays above the line

















    ‒ noted assimilation like in the Maghreb:

In both examples the first three lines are Ottoman
    (Rušdī, Ḥasan Riḍā in ʿIrāqī state editions, Muṣṭafā Naẓīf Qairġalī Cairo 1911),
in the middle Giza 1924
bellow Maġribī Warš editions ‒ note that in the older edition the second stem (vertical stroke) of لا is lam+šadda, while in the modern Algerian one, it is the first stroke

A new feature was the differentiation of the Maghrebic sukūn into three signs:
    ‒ the ǧazm in the form of an ǧīms without a tail and without a dot for vowel-lessness,
    ‒ the circle for never to be pronounced,
    ‒ the (oval) zero for "only pronounced if paused".
(while before ‒ as in IPak‒ the absence of any sign signifies "not to be pro­nounced").
Further, word spacing,
baseline orientation and
exact placement of dots and dashes.

Nor was it the first "inner-Muslim Koran print".
Neuwirth may know a lot about the Koran, but she has no idea about Koran prints,
because since 1830 there have been many, many Koran prints by Muslims.
and Muslims were already heavily involved in the six St. Petersburg prints of 1787-98.
It was not a type print either, but ‒ like all except Venice, Hamburg, Padua, Leipzig, St.Petersburg, Kazan and the earliest Calcutta ‒ planographic printing, albeit no longer with a stone plate but a metal plate.

Nor was it the first to claim to reproduce "the rasm al-ʿUṯmānī".
Two title pages of Lucknow prints from 1870 and 1877.

In 1895, a Qur'an appeared in Būlāq in ʿuṯmānī rasm, which perhaps meant "unvocalised". Kitāb Tāj at-tafāsīr li-kalām al-malik al-kabīr taʼlīf Muḥammad ʿUṯmān ibn as-Saiyid Muḥammad Abī Bakr ibn as-Saiyid ʻAbdAllāh al-Mīrġanī al-Maḥǧūb al-Makkī. Wa-bi-hāmišihi al-Qurʼān al-Maǧīd marsūman bi'r-rasm al-ʿUṯmānī.

Except for the sequence IsoHamza+Alif, which was adopted from the Maghreb in 1890 and 1924 (alif+madda was not possible, since madda was already taken for elongation), everything here is already as it was in 1924.

Incidentally, the text of the KFA is not a reconstruction, as claimed by al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād (and believed by Bergsträßer); the text does not follow Abū Dāʾūd Sulaiman Ibn Naǧāḥ al-Andalusī (d. 496/1103) exactly, nor Abu ʿAbdallah Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ḫarrāz (d. 718/1318), but (except in about 100 places) the common Warš editions.
Also, the adoption of many Moroccan peculiarities (see above), some of which were revised in 1952, plus the dropping of Asian characters ‒ plus the fact that the epilogue is silent on both ‒ is a clear sign that al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād al-Mālikī adapted a Warš edition.
All Egyptian readers/recitors knew the Warš and Qālun readings. As a Malikī, al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād ‒ not to be confused with the scribe Muḥammad Saʿd Ibrāhīm al-Ḥaddād ‒ probably knew Warš editions even better than most.
There was the text, sup­posedly establi­shed in 1924, not only in the Maghreb and in Cairene Warš prints, but also already set in Būlāq in the century before.

Now to the date of publication.
One finds 1919, 1923, 1924 and 1926 in libraries and among scholars.
According to today's library rules, 1924 is valid, because that is what is written in the first printing.

But maybe it was a bit later. It says in the work it­self that its print­ing was com­pleted on 10.7.1924. But that can only mean that the print­ing of the Qurʾānic text was com­pleted on that day. The dedication to the king, the mes­sage about the com­pletion of the print­ing, can only have been set after­wards; it and the entire epilogue were only printed after­wards, and the work ‒ without a title page, without a prayer at the end ‒ was only bound after­wards ‒ probably again in Būlāq, where it had already been set and mounted ‒ and that was only in 1925, unless ten copies were first bound and then "published", which is not likely.
Or the first run was indeed published in 1924, and only the second run (again in Giza) was stamped: