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.

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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:

links: Bairut 1983, Mitte: Kairo 1391/1971, rechts: Jordanischer Nachdruck eines Damaszener Nachdrcks von Kairo 1952
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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What makes a certain muṣḥaf?

A muṣḥaf is not just the words of the qurʾān.
It's not just the words in a certain spelling (rasm + diacritical points + ḍabṭ)
not just these words plus pronounciation signs plus pause signs.
In this post (and this blog generally) I ignore the qiraʾāt.
In this post I further ignore the features of a printed mushaf
(lines per pages, number of pages, catch words, marginal notes).
But there is an element that some orientalists ignore:
the titel box or rather the information therein.

The makers of Coran 12-21 claim to give "The Cairo Edition (1924)"
but their list of suras and the suras themselves have no number,
no information about the number of ayas,
no information on the order of revelation,
informations the KFE (1924) had:

Here the titel­box of 1952 (without information about the order of revelation:

Here the titelbox of UT0 (i.e. the original ʿUṯmān Ṭaha copy as printed in Damas­cus:

And here what the Suʿudis (KFC) made out of it (I call it UT1):

unchanged in UT2 (the text written in Madina):

Although claiming to show "The Cairo Edition (1924)",
what Coran 12-21 really shows is the Suʿudī version: without numbers (1-114), without information on the number of ayas,
without information about the order of revelation.

On top of this, Coran 12-21 has the wrong number of ayas (counting the basmala as verse 1),
and has no small letters to indicate pronounciation,
21:89 فَاسْتَجَبْنَا لَهُ وَنَجَّيْنَاهُ مِنَ الْغَمِّ وَكَذَلِكَ نُنجِي الْمُؤْمِنِينَ
21:88 نُجِۨی
In the two lines above ‒ as in the examples below ‒
always first the wrong Coran 12-21 text
and in the next line the correct Giza 1924 text (from Corpus Coranicum)

2:246 وَاللَّهُ يَقْبِضُ وَيَبْسُطُ وَإِلَيْهِ تُرْجَعُونَ
2:245 وَيَبۡصُۜطُ
7:70 فِي الْخَلْقِ بَسْطَةً فَاذْكُرُوا آلَاءَ اللَّهِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ
7:69 بَصۜۡطَة
88:23 لَّسْتَ عَلَيْهِم بِمُصَيْطِرٍ
88:22 بِمُصَۣيۡطِرٍ
77:21 عَلِمَ أَن لَّن
77:20 عَلِمَ أَلَّن
nor pause signs:
2:6 أُولَئِكَ عَلَى هُدًى مِّن رَّبِّهِمْ وَأُولَئِكَ هُمُ الْمُفْلِحُونَ
2:5 أُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ عَلَىٰ هُدًۭى مِّن رَّبِّهِمۡۖ
وَأُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلۡمُفۡلِحُونَ And while "the Cairo Edition (1924)" has three different tanwīn for each of the three vowels,
Coran 12-21 has just one, e.g.
105:6 فَجَعَلَهُمْ كَعَصْفٍ مَّأْكُولٍ whereas Giza 1924 has a sequential kastatain

2:6 أُولَئِكَ عَلَى هُدًى مِّن رَّبِّهِمْ

It took me three days to understand:
The makers of the web site have no idea what "Cairo 1924" is,
they take a random Arab Qurʾānic text (from tanzil.net) and call it "Cairo Edition, 1924" although it is not called that in their source.
They are only interested in trans­lations.
Fine. But:
please don't call a text which does not even have waṣl-sign "Cairo 1924" -- please!