When was the KFE made?

Aziz Hilal's article Le Coran de 1924, histoire et enjeux politiques is excellent, well researched and important, but I see a problem, that I see with many authors:
he often takes what is said/writ­ten at face value.
E.g. he believes that already in 1912 the govern­ment wanted an new mushaf, that "the committee" started to work long before 1919.

Asma Hilal writes in her intro­duc­tion/"Liminaire" to the journal the opposite, that King Fu'ad initiated the book in 1924

And he believes that its publica­tion in 1924 had to do with Fu'ad's am­bition to become caliph.
So he has to assume that the project got "for­gotten"(oublié) and later revived (évoqué à nouveau),
As I see it, he overlooks three important points:
that Egypt declared its inde­pen­den­ce from the Ottoman Empire at the end of 1914 (after 300 years),
that the KFE was not a newly deviced written version as the Muḫalla­lati, but that the initi­ators wanted a non-Ottoman ver­sion (in a dif­ferent spelling and not in high-court-nasḫ),
that the main objective of (modernists in the Ministry of Educa­tion like) Hifni Bey was an easily read­able version:
  baseline,
  clear (positional) link between vowel sign and base letter,
  space between words,
  space between lines
I assume that the date of 12/13. January 1919 when the members of the commitee, the proof reader of the press and the Shaikh al-azhar signed is fictious, it is a couple of days before Hifni Bey died.
I assume that al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād wrote the muṣ­ḥaf to be set half a year or so before the book got printed, but that the govern­ment wanted to include the ini­tiator of the pro­ject among the signia­tories, so it had to be dated before his death.

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Aziz Hilal is better than his fellows because he puts the emergence of the muṣḥaf into a histori­cal context
‒ the power struggle between king/the palace, parlia­ment/the bour­geoisie (and azhar/the ʿulemaʾ) and
‒ the caliphal aspirations after the abolition of the Otto­man cali­phate on 3.3.1924,
forgetting Egypt's having left the Ottoman Empire after the start of WWI
His most original discovery is, that the only discussion of the KFE is by a German, by Gotthelf Bergsträßer,
that Egyptian, Turkish, Arab, Indian, Indo­nesian and Persian ʿulemaʾ, politicans and intel­lectu­als ignore it, or ‒ at least ‒ were silent and mute about it.
As important examples he cites
‒ the Diary/Journal by Muḥammad al-Aḥmadī al-Ẓawā­hirī, Šaiḫ al-Azhar 1929‒1935
‒ al-Azhar by ʿUṯmān Tawfīq and ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Yūnus, 1946
‒ al-Muslimūn wa-l-Aqbāṭ fī iṭār al-ǧamāʿa al-waṭaniyya, by Ṭāriq al-Bišrī, 1981, 899pp.
None mentions the KFE at all.

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Omar Hamdan's article is almost useless.
His conlusion ‒ that the KFE does not closely follow the old mss, but either ad-Dānī/Abu Daʾud or a modern print (maybe the Mu­ḫalla­lātī), was obvious before he started looking at it.
If he had compared the KFE with both the Muqniʿ and the Tanzīl, and with an Indian print, a Maġribī print and the Mu­ḫalla­lātī (plus an Ottoman print) instead of only with mss., the paper would have been useful.
I assume that it would have shown that it follows most closely the Maġrib (indirct­ly Abu Daʾud Sulaimān Ibn Naǧāḥ).

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some quotes from Azīz Hial's article:
Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl al-Ǧīzāwī (1874-1927), en poste entre 1917 et 1927
Signalons que son nom est mystérieu­sement remplacé par « ṣāḥib al-faḍīla, šayḫ ǧāmiʿ al-Azhar ».
((In the first small edition there is a seal: Muḥammad ʿAbu'l-faḍl))
Dès 1912, le gouvernement égyptien comptait éditer un muṣḥaf qui dépasse en qualité et en précision celui de Riḍ­wān al-Muḫalla­lātī.
La postface à la première édition date du 10 rabīʿ al-ṯānī 1337 (13 janvier 1919)
Pourquoi ne pas se contenter de reprendre le muṣḥaf de Riḍwān al-Muḫallalātī et le corriger ?
si la postface de ce muṣḥaf porte la date du 13 janvier 1919, pourquoi attendre le 10 juillet 1924 pour le publier ?
C’est dans ce contexte que le muṣḥaf, oublié depuis 1919, est à nouveau évoqué, afin de fournir un supplément de légitimité à la candidature du roi Fuʿād.

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The paper by Asma Hilali can be reduced to one sentence:
While in the 19th century, the Flügel edition served many Orien­ta­lists as text of reference,
now the text of the KFE, the Madina Mushaf (Ḥafṣ by the KFCom­plex) and the simplified text of tanzil.net serve as reference.
Here I have to congratulate. Three years ago, in the inviation to (her) conference, she had written

... l’édition du Coran du Caire ... est d’une importance capitale dans la société musul­mane moderne et con­tem­po­raine ... L’édition du Caire met à dis­position des musul­mans ... une version du texte corani­que qui devien­dra pro­gressive­ment la ré­férence reli­gieu­se, litur­gique ... la plus popu­laire dans le monde isla­mi­que. ... la popu­larité du Coran du Caire n’a jamais été remise en cause. ... un événe­ment religieux s’adressant aux musul­mans ... Ainsi, l’avène­ment du Coran du Caire a une portée qui dépasse la sphère de la croyance et qui prend sa place dans l’histoire de la civi­li­sation islamique : histoire des institu­tions, histoire maté­rielle, histoire de la pensée reli­gieuse et des études isla­miques.

All this bla-bla is gone. Al-ḥamdu-llāh

So one can't say that A.H. has learned NOTHING in the four years that she prepared the conference and journal nummer.
But although she thanks Alba Fedeli, Antoinette Ferrand and Dennis Halft for commenting and correcting her text,
she still gets most things about the KFE wrong,
and she lies: She writes that Ali Akbar had said that the KFE has no singular place, is just one among maṣāḥif from Singapore, Bombay, Lucknow and Istanbul.
During the conference Ali Akbar had said: There is no trace what so ever of the KFE. Maybe, students in Cairo or Mekka Pilmgrims have brought a copy, but we do not know!
There are unbelievable statements by A.H.:
Although the KFE is important, because it is the first type set offset print of the qurʾān,
A.H. writes in the intro­duction of the journal that the KFE was both edited and calli­graphed by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Rifāʿī,
who had nothing to do with it. It was edited by al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād. It was set with about half of the sorts designed by Muḥammad Ǧaʿfar Bey (m. 1916) ‒ stacked ligatures, and mīm without white in the middle were used in the afterwords, but not in the qurʾānic text because Ḥifnī Bey Nāṣif wanted it to be clear = easily readable.
Is it that A.H. is stupid or is this the con­sequence of the fact that she has never held a copy in her hands, that the IDEO did not acquire one of the many copies on the market?
That she calls putting a number after each verse « versification » (instead of « numérotation » ) suggests the former.
She claims that there was a special Ǧamāl ʿAbd al-Nāṣir edition, which I doubt because she does not give the date of publi­cation, and a King Fārūq Edition, which is definetly wrong.

‒ ­

Best Sellers

The first best selling print was St.Petersburg-Kazan:

Next came "the Flügel" published 1834 in Leipzig by the publishing house Tauch­nitz, which pirated it in 1837 with an edition officially by Gustav Reds­lob, but basicly the Flügel without paying him: both were best­sellers but only among orienta­lists.
By that time, both in Iran and India print­ing maṣā­ḥif had began, but only after 1865 they were mass pro­duced, and afford­able.
Since they were even sold in the Ottoman empire, the ban against print­ing the scripture was lifted: So maṣāḥif written by Hafiz Osman and Muṣ­ṭafā Naẓīf Qadir­ġalī became best selling in Istanbul, Syria and Egypt.

here one of several MNQ from Tehran

The important editions by Muḫalla­lātī and al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād (HH) did not sell well ‒ the KFE at least not to Egyptians; they prefered the 522 pages written by Muṣ­ṭafā Naẓīf Qadir­ġalī ‒ now often in the reform /Andalu­sian/ HH ortho­graphy, but at least until 1967 in new editions in the original Ottoman spelling.
on the left from a 1981 MNQ Cairo edition on 522 pages, on the right the original:

a MZQ from Bairut

The top seller in Egypt was a line by line copy of the MNQ 522pager written by Muḥammad Saʿd Ibrā­hīm al-Ḥaddād famous under the name of the publisher: aš-Šamarlī.

What is mostly ignored: Šamarlī pub­lished MNQ in the new ortho­graphy even in the 1960s:

The government press, al-Amīriyya, tried to compete: in 1976 they produced a type set version with 15 lines on 525 pages. For more than a decade they made at least four differ­ent sizes: from small in flexibel plastic to Mosque size.

on the left from the pocket version 1977, on the right the normal one

the large Qaṭarī reprint 1988

Although the KFE was almost only sold to oritentalists, in the seventies many publisher "remade" it on there light tables (lay­out tables): the cut films they had made of the 12 liner and re­arranged them: either just more lines on a page as was first done around 1933 in the "muṣḥaf al-malik" al-maṭbʿa al-miṣiriyya (Muḥammad Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Laṭīf) printed in offset I assume:

die rechte Seite bekam immer einen Kustoden. Gelegentlich wurde eine Schmuckzeile ein gefügt, damit eine Sure auf einer neuen Seite anfangen kann.

Der Verleger hat zu seinem neu umbrochenen und neu gerahmten auch einen Tafsīr veröffentlicht:

Marwān Sowār, Damascus:

Dār aš-Šurūq:

or more and longer lines:

some editions with tafsir keep the original pages

other rearange the text

None of these were best sellers, but combined they spread the new spelling in spite of the KFE being extremely unpopular.

Now in the Arab world and Malay­sia ʿUṯmān Ṭaha versions dominate.
In India and Bangla Desh reprints of Tāj Comp. Ltd versions can be found every­where, while in Pakistan there is fierce competion.
In South Africa Taj's 848 pages 13liner dominates, al­though the latest version of WII (Waterval Islamic Insti­tute) is set in a UT like font.
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on Flügel, Vollers ­‒ Marijn van Putten again

Please skip this post.
It is not on print editions of the qurʾān.
Just on a twitter thread by a Leiden scholar, a brilli­ant linguist.

If you think: "typo, don't be so strict!"
van der Put published it a week ago, published it a second time un­changed in "Thread reader" and there are two years 1934 and 1950. In my view there are both wrong.

Anyhow, I am too young: For me Flügel's sorry effort was only laughing­stock. I am asto­nished that Marijn van Putten devotes time to it. On Twitter he calls "Flügel's well-inten­tioned mess ... Schlimm­besse­rung ... 'cor­recting' [the Arab texts that he finds in the mss.] in his print edition.
From what he writes it is obvious, that he is not aware that Bobzin wrote that the verse num­bers are not his, but those of Hinkel­mann.

And he ignores "Die Divergenzen zwischen dem Flügel- und dem Azhar-Koran" by Arne A. Ambros in Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes Vol. 78 (1988), pp. 9-21

His ignorance is helpful. Other­wise, he would not have devoted a fresh ‒ an unnecessary ‒ look at the book.

What is even stranger:
He dismisses Karl Vollers' Volkssprache und Schriftsprache im alten Arabien (1906)
although Vollers comes to conclusions that resemble his in "The Language of the Uthmanic Codex"

I thought he is a bright linguist, who stupidly writes about things he does not under­stand. After this thread I know better.

Postscriptum
After he was alerted to the mistake, he tweeted "lol" ‒ by now deleted.
I do not believe that it was a typo, I am convinced that van der Put believed in what he wrote. Why?
Because almost everything he writes about printed copies is wrong.
In his thread on niʿmat allāh ‒ unlike the con­ference held in Berlin and the twitter thread, in his by now pub­lished article he is correct: "niʿmat allāh/rabbi-ka", some of his Grace of God-places are in fact Grace of your Lord-places -- he compares early manu­scripts which the Cairo Edition al­though here ALL standards (Maghrib, Gizeh24, Turkey, India, Indo­nesia) agree completely.
In his iǧtabā-hu-thread
he speaks of "modern print editions" al­though HERE there are two different standard groups: Africa vs. Asia. ‒ Each time he gets it wrong.
Like most Arabist/linguists he has not studied modern editions: he writes about a field he largely ignores. So, I take it that he did not know a thing about the Flügel edition.

But because his article is very important, I annotate it where it talks on modern editions.
van Putten writes "Sadeghi[(& Bergmann 2010] defines the Uthmanic text type as agree­ing with the text of the 1924 Cairo Edition of the Quran" (p.272) without giving a quote or the page. ‒ I can' find it.
Several times he mentions "the Sanaa palimpsest" when he means to say "the lower text of ..."
More serious:
"the Uthmanic text type have been accurate­ly trans­mitted up until the Cairo edition." (p. 280)
There has been no accurate trans­mission from century to century, from muṣḥaf to muṣḥaf, but the Cairo edition of 1924 claims to be a recon­struction on the basis of the literature on the rasm, the ḍabṭ ...
When you have a manuscript from the 8th century and a print from the 20th, you know nothing about trans­mission; for that you have to study mss. from the centuries between.

A last point, although I know that many find it niggling, but I love correct language.
"ā is written plene" (three times) ‒ words can be written plene, sounds are written.

Kein Standard

In 1914 a few English- and Scotsmen controlled more than half of the globe (most of the seas and chunks of land too, includ­ing millions of Indians).
Kaiser Wilhelm found that unfair. He started a war.
Five years later Germany had shrunk.
Adolf Hitler found that unfair. He started a war.
As one of the results, German is not understood (less written) by most scholars and scien­tists anymore.
So today, there are people reading books and blogs that do not under­stand German.
Therefore, I will repeat in the Lingua Franca of the age, what I have written in German.
In 1834, years after an adequate copy of the Qur'ān was set and printed in St. Peters­burg (later in Kazan)
and when lithograph copies began to be produced in India and Persia,
the German orientalist Gustav Flügel came up with a new typeset copy,
with a text of his own ‒ not very different from rasm, ḍabṭ and ḥarakat recognized by Muslims, but different from the can­on­ized variants never­theless,
and with a numbering system of his Hamburg col­league Abraham Hinckel­mann (which diverges from all Muslim systems and places the numbers BEFORE the verse).


Already the cover shows Flügel incompetence: the little hā' above hā' signals "not a tā' marbuṭa", but in this position (above hā' in hudā), hāʾ can not be tāʾ, so it can not carry an ihmal sign:

The alif (before lām mīm) has no madda. raḥmān and ḏālika should have a dagger alif, Flügel's font doesn't have one. How could any scholar use such a print?

Although it came 50 years too late, it became the standard edition of European orientalists ‒ for about a century.
Later the Egyptian King Fuʾād Edition became the standard ‒ not as I see it ‒ because it was really better than most others, but because it was much better than the orienta­list sorry effort, and because most (Central European) orien­talists ignored the Magh­rebian and Indian prints (Ottoman and Persian prints had a few hundred more alifs as matres lectionis which does not make them inferior, but serves as an argument against them, besides them not indi­cating as­simila­tion of nūn sākin. ‒ Although most Muslims in Germany use Turkish prints, these are avoided by the scholars.)


This was typeset in 1299/1881/2 in the Egyptian Government Press and printed both in one volume (Prince­ton library 2273) and in ten and/or thirty leather bound volumes (on the market and "Exhibi­tion Islam," London).
13 years later printed in Bulaq as well:

In 1914 ‒ when the United Kingdom was at war with the Ottoman Empire ‒ Egypt declared its indepen­dence, the ruler changed from Wālī/Governor to Sulṭān ‒ Khedive had been the personal title, not a function or an office.
Now it was urgent that Egypt printed its own maṣāḥif. The statement that the "foreign ones" (Istan­bul was the capital, not foreign before 1915) had mistakes ‒ without given further informa­tion what and where ‒ is propaganda, no real informa­tion. Repetition does not turn it into fact.

Madd al-Muttasil and Madd al-Munfasil

There are several types of madd sign in the Qurʾān, in South Asian masāhif: