wa-malaʾihī

Here a case against my argument that al-Ḥaddād just adopted a Faz print. Sometimes he did not copy Faz, nor al-Muḫal­la­lātī, not the Ottoman practise, ad-Dāni. /wa-mala­ʾihī/ (7:103, 10:75+83, 11:97, 23:46, 28:32, 43:46) is written with alif for /a/ plus yāʾ for /i/. Given the ḥarakāt-signs, one of these letters is super­fluous. "Every­body" puts the hamza on/below the yāʾ, but al-Ḥaddād below the alif. Algiers 1911 follows the KFE.

Imam aš-Šāṭibī: ʿAqīlat Atrāb al-Qaṣāʾid (the premier didactic poem on the rasm, the Uthmanic ortho­graphy).
Vers 190
وَمَلأً كَيْفَمَا جَا لَامُهُ أَلِفٌ
وَالْيَاءُ بَعْدُ عَنِ الْأَعْلَامِ قَدْ نُقِلَا
And Malaʾ [the noun "elite/chiefs"], however it occurs, its Lām is followed by an Alif,
and the Yāʾ [written] after it has been trans­mitted on the authority of the pro­minent scholars (al-aʿlām).
Explanation:
"however it occurs" (kayfamā ǧā): regard­less of its gramma­tical case or suffix — whether it has a singular pronoun (malaʾihī) or a plural pronoun (malaʾihim).
"and the Yāʾ after it" (wa-l-yāʾu baʿdu): Alif is written directly after the Lam. The early scholars put a Yāʾimmediately after the alif.
Aš-Šāṭibī declares that this is not a later invention but was securely transmitted by the primary early codex-authorities (al-aʿlām), such as al-Ġāzī ibn Qais and ad-Dānī.
Vers 192
فَالْيَاءُ شَرْطُهُمُ هِيَ الْهَمْزَةُ     الزَّائِدُ
الْأَلِفُ الْمُقَدَّمُ أَوْ عَكْسٌ فَقَدْ جُعِلَا
Thus, the Ya, according to their stipulation, is the seat of the Hamza, while the preceding Alif is the extra letter; or the reverse has likewise been established.
Explanation: One school treats the Ya as the kursi of the hamza and considers the Alif silent. The other school does the reverse, treating the Alif as the kursi and the Yāʾ as silent.
Vers 193
وَفِي سِوَى الْأَوَّلَيْنِ الْأَلِفَ فِيهِ رَأَى
أَبُو عُبَيْدٍ وَهَذَا الْعَكْسُ قَدْ فُصِلَا
And in all positions except the first two [which are Surah 7:103 and Surah 10:75], [Abu Ubayd] chose the Alif as the true holder of the Hamza within it [meaning from Surah 10:83 onwards among the seven places].
Abu Ubayd [held this view]; and this reverse position has been detailed [in the classical reference texts].
Vers 192
فَالْيَاءُ شَرْطُهُمُ هِيَ الْهَمْزَةُ     الزَّائِدُ
الْأَلِفُ الْمُقَدَّمُ أَوْ عَكْسٌ فَقَدْ جُعِلَا
Thus, the Yāʾ—according to their stipulation—is the [seat of the] Hamza, while the preceding Alif is the extra [silent] letter; or the reverse (ʿaks) has [likewise] been established.
This is the absolute apex of the entire ortho­graphic battle between the Kairo/Medina and the rest of the world. Aš-Šāṭibī perfectly captures the two competing classical linguistic schools:
School 1 (Abū Dāʾūd): The Yāʾ is the kursī of the hamza. Consequently, the preceding written Alif is rendered "extra" (zāʾid) and silent. It gets a sifr/ circle.
School 2 (aw ʿaksun/or the reverse): Other early masters es­tab­lished the opposite theory (the basis for the KFE/ad-Dānī system). They argue that the Alif is the genuine, etymo­logical seat of the Hamza, rendering the trailing Yāʾ as the extra, silent character. This is why the KFE stamps the silent circle onto the Yāʾ.
Vers 193
وَفِي سِوَى الْأَوَّلَيْنِ الْأَلِفَ فِيهِ رَأَى
أَبُو عُبَيْدٍ وَهَذَا الْعَكْسُ قَدْ فُصِلَا
And in cases other than the first two [positions], Abū ʿUbayd regarded the Alif as the [seat of the Hamza] within it; and this reverse position has been detailed [in the reference texts].
Abū ʿUbayd refers to Abū ʿUbaid al-Qāsim ibn Sallām (d. 838 AD), one of the earliest rasm chroniclers.
"cases other than the first two" (fī siwā l-awwalayni): He is referencing specific textual positions within the chronological layout of these 7 critical malaʾih locations across the Qur'anic text.
Aš-Šāṭibī uses this verse to document that ancient, authori­tative pioneers like Abū ʿUbayd explicitly broke away from uniform execution at certain points, actively viewing the Alif as the dominant holder of the phoneme. This historical flipping back and forth (al-ʿaks) was meticu­lously recorded in the classical specialized manuals (fuṣṣilā), providing the raw, conflicting material that later allowed Lahore and Kairo to pick two completely different ways to use their silent circles.
As I see it: alif stood in for /a/, yāʾ for a glide /yi/. Only when later authorities hamzified the qurʾānic text, the problem arose.

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No Standard ‒ Main Points

there is no standard copy of the qurʾān.
There are 14 readings (seven recognized by all, three more, and four (or five) of contested status).
there are 14 canonical transmissions (riwājāt) (two of each of the Seven),
each of which has ways/paths (ṭuruq) and versions/faces (wuǧuh).

All of this is not our main interest, because
‒ except in the greater Maghrib, Sudan, Somalia and Yaman and among the Bohras ‒
rank and file Muslims read only one riwāja: Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim.

The second big dif­ference between copies of the qurʾān that does not inter­est us here, is the rasm: there are three main rasm au­tho­ri­ties to follow: ad-Dānī, Ibn Naǧāḥ, al-Ḫarrāz, al-Balansī and al-Ār­kātī

As far as I know most editions follow a mix of diverent authorities ‒ the Lybian Qālūn Edition (muṣḥaf al-jamāhīriya, 1987, second ed. 1989, Libyan after the death of the prophet 1399) fol­low­ing ad-Dānī being an ex­ception. Authorities in Iran and Indo­ne­sia publish lists where they follow whom, others just have their (secret) way.

What interests me is
the spelling and
the layout.
Other points are important, like the
pauses and
the divisions (juz, ḥizb, para, manzil, niṣf ...),
but I do not know enough to post about them.

There are two main spellings: western and eastern
IPak is THE eastern spelling;
Ottoman, Persian, Turk, Tartar, NeoIran, Indonesian are eastern sub-spellings.
G24 and Q52 are realisation of the western spelling, Mag being their "mother".

The main difference between West and East is the writing of long vowel.

While in the East the (short) signs are turned to make them long,

in the West a leng­then­ing vowel has to follow: either one that is part of the rasm or a small sub­stitute.










G24/Q52 differentiate between /a/ and /ā/, but not between /i/ and /ī/ when there is a yāʾ in the text.
IPak always makes the difference.
(just to make clear: in the middle column, in /hāḏā/ the dagger in IPak is a vowel sign, in Mag it is a small letter leng­thening the sign before it ‒ al­though they look the same, they are dif­ferent things)

Mag, G24, Q52 have three kinds of tanwin, Bombay instead has izhar nun, IPak, Osm ... have nothing

Maybe the most remarkable difference are the initial alif: the Africa they have ḥamza-sign or a waṣl-sign. In Asia a voyell-sign includes ḥamza, absence of all sign signifies "mute" or waṣl.

Because letters without any sign the four yāʾs in the three lines standing for ī need a sukūn not to be ignored.
all in all: a large part of the letters have a different sign in Africa and Asia.

Another differences lies in as­simila­tion: both Mag and IPak do mark assimi­la­tion, Osm, Turk, Pers, NIran do not.

While IPak has three different madd signs, Mag/G24/Q52 have only one.

The main feature of page layout is the number of lines per page.
Leaving the layout with a page for a thirtieth or sixtieth on the side
there are layouts with nine to twenty lines per page,
the berkenar with 604 pages of 15 lines being the most common
  (due to Hafiz Osman and ʿUṯmān Ṭaha).

My motivation was anger about old German orientalists calling the King Fuʾād Edition "the Standard Edition";
later I came across young orientalist calling it "CE" / "the Cairo Edition",
althought there are more than a thousand maṣāḥif printed in Cairo,
more than a hundred conceived in Cairo,
so calling one of these the "CE" is madness, ignorance, carelessness.
The only new thing about the KFE: it is type set, but offset printed;
its text is not new, but a switch.
It turns out that there are different KFEs, 27 cm high ones printed 1924, 1925, 1952, 1953 in the Survey of Egypt in Giza, later in the press of Dar al-Kutub in Gamāmīz,
and 20 cm high oneS printed in Būlāq;
there is one written by Muḥam­mad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḫalaf al-Ḥusai­nī al-Mālikī aṣ-Ṣaʿīdī al-Ḥad­dād
and one revised under the guidance of ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. Ḥasan b. Ibrāhīm al-Maṣrī aḍ-Ḍabbāʿ.
The text of 1924 is history,
the text of 1952 survives in the "Shamarly" written by Muḥammad Saʿd Ibrāhīm al-Ḥaddād
and in the Ḥafṣ 604 page maṣāḥif written by ʿUṯmān Ṭaha.
The Amīriyya itself printed the text of 1952 in the large KFE printed in Gamāmīz
and the Muṣḥaf al-Azhar aš-Šarīf (with four in-between-pause-signs merged into one) printed in Būlāq;
but their small kfes have the '24 text with a few '52 changes ‒ a strange mix that stayed largely unnoticed.

Just as there are seven different KFE/kfe, there are four different UTs:
UT0 1399‒1404 with (up to) five mistakes, basically KFE II, without after­word ‒ printed in Damascus, Istanbul, Tehran
UT1 1405‒1421 without mistakes, with a dagger under hamza in 2:72, and the small sīn under ṣād elimi­nated in 8:22 ("photo­shopded") ‒ first with the 1924 after­word, later with "mostly" added ‒ printed in Madina and many places
UT2 1422‒'38 without space between words and no lead­ing bet­ween lines (written by UT in Madina) ‒ and printed in Madina
UT3 since 1438 without headers at the bottom of pages, with­out end if aya at the beginn­ing of lines, with cor­rected sequen­tial fathatan ‒ rearranged and printed in Madina

When you compare UT2 (above) with UT3 you see:
they are very similar;
but while there are small differences between the same words in UT2
the same word in UT3 is identical.

Another difference: in UT2 sometimes there is zero space between words;
that does not occur in UT3.

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