Efim Rezvan: Orthography in EQ3

The editors of Brill's Encyclopedia of the Quran thought it wise to let Efim Rezvan write an article, unfortunately about a subject, he did not master.

I just want to point out some of the mistakes:
"Arabic writing at that time conveyed only consonants"
As I have shown, Arabic at the time had just letters, that could stand for consonants and vowels.
"..., which permitted a shift from a scriptio defectiva to a scriptio plena."
Although Rezvan does not say it explicitly ‒ nor does he state the contrary ‒, he gives the im­pression that the early manu­scripts had no diactrics, nor vowel signs. But ALL early manu­scripts has SOME dia­critics and vowel (and hamza) signs.
"al-Ḥajjāj [intro­duced] a system to designate long and short vowels"
Since we still do not have ONE system to designate ALL long and ALL short vowels, I'd like to read more about the system of the 8th century.
"In practice only two of the systems noted by Ibn Mujāhid became wide­spread: the Kūfan, Ḥafṣ (d. 246⁄860) ʿan ʿĀṣim (d. 127⁄744), and, to a lesser degree, the Medinan, Warsh (d. 197⁄812) ʿan Nafiʿ (d. 169⁄785)."
just wrong. That TODAY only four systems are widely used ‒ of which he mentioned only two ‒ does NOT mean AT ALL, that at Ibn Mujāhid (245-324/859-935)'s time or in the following centu­ries 12 of his 14 riwāyāt were hardly used. The opposite is true: more than his fourteen were used.
"It is possible that [the St.Peters­burg/Ka­zan] edition played a decisive role in the centu­ries-long process of standar­dizing qurʾānic ortho­graphy."
"The final stage of the work on the unifi­cation of the qurʾānic text is connected with the appearance in Cairo in 1342⁄ 1923-4 of a new edition of the text"
nonsense
it was "Drawn up by a special panel of Muslim scholars"
nonsense, it was ONE man, Egypt's main recitor of the qurʾān (šayḫ al-maqāriʾ al-miṣrīya)
"today accepted throughout the Muslim world"
just wrong.
"in Zaydī Yemen, traditions remain which go back to a different transmitter of the text, Warsh."
it seems that Yamanī Zaydīs read Qālūn
The last two paragraphes are gibberish.

Printing of the Qurʾān (EQ) by Michael W. Albin

In his 1990 article Early Arabic printing Michael W. Albin writes one should not compete with The Guiness Book of Records: the first Qurʾān print in the Empire, the largest one, the smallest one. Ironically his "Printing of the Qurʾān" in the Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an Vol. IV: P‒Sh (2004) devotes more space to the "first printed Qur'an in the Ottoman Empire" than to any other topic, and it qualifies as "the worst Encyclopedia article ever published."

The chapter on the First states:
"None of the earliest Qurʾāns printed in Egypt have survived."
not considering the possibility that there were no earlier ones printed in Egypt before the ones that did survive.
"the first printing of portions of the Qurʾān (ajzāʾ) [in] April 1833"
"Certain aspects of the edition, however, are clear. It was printed in tablet or sheet form"
Nothing is clear about the supposed print, not even that it took place, and what is "tablet form", what "sheet form"? Clay tablets, paper sheets?
"and is often referred to as ajzāʾ al-Qurʾān, in distinction to a complete muṣḥaf."
"We do not know whether the text was typeset or litho­graphed."
"Before printing the 1833 edition, Muḥammad ʿAlī asked Shaykh al-Tamīmī, Muftī of Egypt, to put his seal on the printed copy, so that it could be sold or other­wise dis­tributed. The shaykh agreed to this"
"Ignoring opposition, Muḥammad ʿAlī authorized the first Egyptian printing of the Qurʾān." ‒ definite article and no "portions of" anymore: THE whole thing!
"It is doubtful, whether this edi­tion re­ceived the tra­di­tio­nal attention of scholars and cor­rec­tors before printing."
Remember, we know no­thing about the sup­posed edition, so it goes without saying: every­thing about it is doubt­ful.
"sixty sheets (alwāḥ; sing. lūḥ) were printed for dis­tri­bu­tion to students, pre­sumab­ly students in the govern­ment’s schools."
Nobody knows whether this really happened, and in what form were the sheets pre­sumab­ly dis­tri­buted?
"The Qurʾān portions printed in 1833 were no doubt sold to the popu­lace."
I doubt it.
"It appears that sometime late in 1857 a project to correct the impounded maṣā­ḥif (see muṣḥaf) was begun."
So now, they are the complete thing, not por­tions, parts, selections, but maṣā­ḥif!
And he goes on: "Distribution of the 1833 muṣ­ḥaf no doubt suffered from ..."
So Albin is devoting page after page on an imagined muṣ­ḥāf, that never existed, he oscilliats between some sheets, tablets, ajzāʾ and a com­plete muṣ­ḥaf.

According to Albin the 1924 muṣḥaf is "known as "royal (amīriyya) edition”. Utter nonsense. Egyptians called it , مصحف 12 سطر or مصحف المساحة or مصحف الأميرية either by the (almost unique) number of lines per page, by the printer (the Survey of Egypt in Gizeh) or by the publisher (the Royal Press, al-maṭbaʿa al-amīriyya) ‒ not by the King ‒ why else would it have the feminin form?
Albin is able to top this:
He calls the guy who headed the committee that pre­pared the 1924 edition Shaykh Muḥammad ʿAlī l-Ḥusaynī, which is so wrong that the editors of the EQ wanted to preserve it, to show to the world that this article was written by a librarian, not an Arabist. (If Alī and al-Ḥ. were joined, the ī of Alī would be short Ali'l-Ḥ., but since it is really Aliyyun the names are not joined: the man is Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḫalaf al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād al-Mālikī.)
"Many Qurʾāns printed elsewhere have been modeled on its ... printing con­ven­tions"
I know of two editions that used the same printing tech­nique as the 1924 Gizeh print: Kabul 1352/1934, an edition largely ignored, and a line identical resetting with the Bulāq sorts in Hyderabad 1938 (each side opposite Pickthall's English translation in two volumes ‒ reprinted by the Islamic Call Society in the 1970s in one volume).
The committee "adopting the recitation conventions of Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim"
It is not a recitation con­vention marked by can­ti­lation notes, but a transmission of a "reading".
And on the field of qiraʾa, the committee had nothing to decide, nothing to adopt. The riwāya in Egypt was (I guess for 400 years already) Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim.
"When the first printing (i.e. that of 1924) was sold out, the National Library of Egypt determined to bring out another edition. ... The 1924 edition remained the basis of sub­sequent editions in Egypt."
All wrong, the second printing (1925) added seals/rolls to the signi­taries names, and added one word to the text about the edition, and the National Library had nothing to do with it, the Govern­ment Press in Būlāq (al-Amīriyya) did it.
In the next year, or a year later, they changed the spelling of ʾallan in 73:20 ‒ a spelling that was not kept in the big revision in 1952.
Albin confuses the small changes (in the back matter) of 1925 with the big revision in 1952.
Whereas the committee for 1924 was only one ʿālim plus three men from the state educa­tion sphere, men who could not contribute to the project, just sym­bolizing state involvement, the committee for 1952 were four ʿulamāʾ, headed ‒ as in 1924 ‒ by the (then) chief qāriʾ ʿAlī Mu­ḥammad aḍ-Ḍab­bāʿ (not Ḍibāʿ as far as I know). In 1952 there were about 900 changes (only three in the rasm).
Contrary to what Albin writes, the 1952 edition became the basis of sub­sequent edtions in Egypt (and later in the Mašriq).
And Albin invents an edition "called" so and so:
"The government issued an edition reviewed by the iden­tical committee in 1936 called the Fārūq edition, after the Egyptian king, Fārūq (r. 1926‒52). The version was cor­rected by Shaykh Naṣr al-ʿAdlī, chief corrector at the government (amīriyya) press. In addi­tion to the signatures of the five persons involved, the work bears the seal of the Shaykh al-Azhar."
((note the change from "royal" to "govern­ment press" for amīriyya!))
If he had consulted the 1936 print, he would have seen that it was not only made by the same men as in 1924, but that nothing had changed, not even the dedication to King Fuʾād!. Albin's (and Reynold's) "King Farūq Edition" is mere invention (as so many things in his article ‒ or at best hearsay.).
BTW, the private (re-)print of 1938 is not by Maktabat al-Šams al-Islāmiyya, as Albin writes, but by Maktabat al-Šarq al-Islā­miyya wa-Maṭ­baʻa­tu­hā, un­less the librarians in Amster­dam and Jeru­salem got it wrong.
LATER ADDITION

HSU CHENG-HSiANG writes in his Ph.D. THE FIRST THIRTY YEARS OF ARABIC PRINTING IN EGYPT, 1238-1267 (1822-1851) A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL STUDY WITH A CHECKLIST BY TITLE OF ARABIC PRINTED WORKS

Although there is no complete publication of the Qur'an, some parts of it may have been produced for study, for it was an important part of the curriculum in many of Muḥammad ʿAli's new schools. (p.146)

Although it is difficult to prove that something is not the case, I think it very unlikely that the 1833 muṣḥaf existed.