Indonesia

Unlike Malaysia, which aligns itself muṣḥaf­wise closely with Saudi Arabia, and South Africa, which is under Pakis­tani influence, Indone­sia had to chart its own course — not only because it is the most populous Muslim‑majority country, but also because it has been pursuing its own path since 1848. Before 1976 when a commitee to define standards for the pro­duction of maṣāḥif was established, there were a) local traditions, b) reprints of a 542page Bombay muṣḥaf c) reprints of a 604page muṣḥaf by Muṣṭafà Naẓīf Qadirġalī; all follow Asian ortho­graphy, but not exactly the same. So, Indo­ne­sians knew that prints to not have to be identical to be true copies of the qurʾān: they were not con­fused by small dif­ference.
From the 1930s to 1974 the Bombay muṣ­ḥaf was the norm, espe­cial­ly since the six million copies supplied in 1960 as part of the Japa­nese repara­tion.
Besides defining a Braille muṣḥaf (see below), the experts had two guide lines: Ǧalāl ad-Dīn as-Suyūṭī's Al-Itqān fī ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān esp. chapter 76 Marsūm al-ḫatt adāb al-kitāba): and bringing the Ottoman (Bah­riye) and Indian (Bom­bay) spelling closer to each other: the easies are the pause signs:
all MSI have the six ʿalāmāt al-waqf of KFE
the Baḥriye/Otto­man/MNQ does not get signs for iqlāb (small mīm before bāʾ after nūn sākin), nor for assimilation (šadda on the second ḥarf) = it stays as simple as before (trusting the teachers to teach this)
While after 1985 the 604‑page ber­kenār muṣ­ḥaf of ʿUṯmān Ṭaha became a global standard, Indonesia did not join this develop­ment, because it had already intro­duced a 604‑page muṣḥaf by reprinting Muṣṭafa Naẓīf Qadir­ġalī’s Ottoman‑ortho­graphy muṣ­ḥaf aimed at pesan­tren and/or maʿāhid tahfīz. This made a shift to UT less attrac­tive.
btw, the calligrapher was not named, the (re-)print is known by the press, the Marine press. Maṭbaʿa Baḥrīya.

Bombay reprints

Bombay Nov 1960 low resolution

Bombay 1967

all images are from Ali Akbar

MSI 1985

Verse	1985	2002	2016	2016	Dānī	ADSIN
2:2
2:5	وَاُولٰۤىِٕكَ هُمُ	وَاُولٰۤىِٕكَ هُمُ	وَاُولٰۤىِٕكَ هُمُ
2:22
2:43	الرّاكِعين			الركعين
2:65
2:69	النّاظِرِيْنَ		النّٰظِرِيْنَ
2:116
2:257	اوليـٔهُمُ	لولياؤُهُمُ		اَوْلِيَاۤؤُهُمُ
2:167
2:187
2:191
2:198
2:233
3:7
3:33
3:35
3:43
3:54
3:114	الْخَيْراتِۗ		الْخَيْرٰتِۗ
3:134
3:146
4:18
4:24
4:43
4:95
4:95
4:100
4:117
4:162
6:143	نَبِّـُٔوْنِيْ			نَبِّـُٔوْنِيْ
12:59	اُوْفِ الْكَيْلَ	اُوْفِى الْكَيْلَ		اُوْفِى الْكَيْلَ
25:49	لِّنُحْيِ َۧ بِهٖ			لِّنُحْيِ َۧ بِهٖ
26:176	لْـَٔيْكَةِ		لْـَٔيْكَةِ
32:10	بِلِقَاۤئِ		بِلِقَاۤءِ
33:51	وَتُؤْوِيْٓ		وَتُـْٔوِيْٓ
51:47	بِاَيْىدٍ		بِاَيْىدٍ
88:22	بِمُصَۜيْطِرٍۙ		بِمُصَيْطِرٍۙ

Braille

Pakistan and Jordan were amomg the first. Indonesia, Tunesia, Lybia, Saʿūdīa each produced a Braille muṣḥaf of their own.
Arabic Braille ist written from the left. And today all countries write/punch one line: letter, sign, letter, sign...
In the 1950s Egypt adopted an other system: signs in an extra line above the letters. But that is history (What Natalia Suit wrote in Quranic Matters Material Mediations and Religious Practice in Egypt, Bloomsbury,2020 was the opposite of the reality at the time of publishing.
1985 the Indonesian commitee (Muker ʿUlemaʾ) decided that Braille would render imlāʾī rather than ʿUṯmānī. Many blind Indonesian Muslims did not like this.
So in 2010 a revison was made. /ṣalāh/ and /zakāh/ stayed as they were (no waw), different madd-sign were not deviced (because madd wāǧib is within a word, madd ǧaʾiz at the end of a word, so the following word-space "makes" it ǧaʾiz. The greates simplification styed as before: mute letters are not rendered in braille (except after fatḥatan), so no mute-sign is needed.
saktah is "(س)" in Braille
išmām "( إش )"
imala "( إم )"
tashīl is not marked in Braille
extra signs for /ʾā/اٰ , /lā/ لا
ي ,ى ,ئ are three different signs
šadda stands BEFORE the letter it doubles!

But for some other things: braille follows ʿuṯmāni after 2010; now, the muṣḥaf for the visually impaired is not much different from those for normal Muslims.





 –­

early Malay world, Singapore II

In Cairo + Surabya I refer to Ali Akbars blog on the first printed muṣḥaf in Nusan­tara. Among his pictures are the opening pages

In recent posts he shows Singapore prints from 1868 and 1969 with hand colored opening pages.

He shows and quotes the Kolo­phones

Qad tammat hāḏihi [sic] al-Qur’ān al-‘azīm fī 1 min šahri Šawwāl hiǧūrat an-Nabī salla Allāhu ‘alaihi wa sallam sanat 1284 ‘alā yadi al-faqīr ad-da‘īf ilā maulāhu al-ġaniyy Haǧǧ Muḥammad bin al-mar­hūm Sulaimān Sumbāwī ma‘a sāhib al-Qur’ān aš-Šaiḫ Muhammad ‘Alī bin Muṣṭafā ... Ǧawa Pur­ba­lingga qaryat makan c-h-y-a-n ṭubi‘a fī Bandar Singapura qudum Masǧid Sulṭān ‘Alī bin Maulānā as-Sul­ṭān Ḥusain Iskandar ġafara Allāhu lahum al-ḫatā’ wa-an-nišān wa li-wālidaihim wa-li-ǧamī‘i al-muslimīn. Āmīn yā Rabb al-‘ālamīn, la‘alla ... al-Qur’ān fa-yazīdukum man qara’ahā, tammat, wallāhu a‘lam bi's-sawāb.

Qad hasala al-firāġ min tahrīri hāḏā al-Qur’ān al-Maǧīd bi-fadlillāhi al-Qādir bi-yadi aqalli al-kuttāb Muḥammad Ḥanafi bin as-Sulaimān as-Sumbāwī fī awā’il aš-wahr min Ša‘bān fī yaum al-Iṯnain al-mubārak fī hilāl s-l-s sanat 1286 sitt wa-samānīn wa-mi’atain ba‘da 'l-alif min hiǧrat al-mu­qaddasa an-nabawiyya liš-Šaiḫ Muḥammad ‘Alī bin al-Marhūm al-Muṣṭafā min bilād Purba­linqa (f-r-b-l-n-q-a) fī qaryat as-Sirr an-Nūr wa natba‘ [?] fī maṭba‘at al-Amān fī bilād as-Sinqāpūr fī'z-zamān ad-daulat as-Sulṭān ‘Alī bin al-Marhūm as-Sultān Husain Iskandar Šāh ġafarallāhu lī wa lakum wa li-sāhibi at-tab‘i al-iḫwān al-maṯāni' min al-mus­limīn wal-mu’minīn aǧma’īn. Āmīn.
And here is another Ali Akbar, discovered in the State Library of Victoria

As the first and last leaves are missing, we can not be sure, when it was printed. A.A. thinks it was Muḥammad Saliḥ bin Surdin ar-Rambanī (from Central Java), in 1970-71.

Cairo + Surabaya

Islamology does not have a methodology of its own.
Gotthelf Bergsträßer was a philologist, a linguist,
but during his three months in Cairo 1929/30 he listened (and recorded)
recitation lessons by the best of Egypt's qurrāʾ ‒ he observed
listened, interviewed in the way of (musical) anthropo­logists.

And he interviewed the chief editor of the 1924 King Fuʾād Edition
and the chief editor of the (future) 1952 Edition.

The 19th century brought changes to the world of Islam by material change:
lithography, telegraph and steam ship changed the avail­abi­lity of maṣāḥif and news and the ease of making the haǧǧ. Now, there was a steady community of Šafiʿi scholars from the Malay world/archipelago in Mecca, and books in the Malay language (in Jawi script) were printed in Istambul, Mecca and Cairo.
For about twenty years I was looking for the muṣḥaf mentioned by G. Berg­sträßer, that was printed in Cairo by Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī for al-Maktaba an-Nab­hāniyya al-Kubrā of Sālim & Aḥmad ibn Saʿd an-Nabhān.
It looks like that the National & University Library of the Hanse City of Ham­burg owns a copy ‒ helas without cover, title page or colophone. But they have a good copy of an enlarged edition made three years later (with a guaran­tee by the (Egyptian) Minis­tery of the Interior for its correct­ness).

For the first muṣḥaf printed in what is now Indonesia,
the one printed in Singapure for and written by Muḥammad al-Azharī,
resident of Palem­bang, South-East Sumatra, see Ali Akbars blog. Here is the colophon from the first edition

and the trans­lation by Ian Proudfoot (Litho­graphy at the Cross­roads of the East p. 129)

To begin with, this holy Quran was printed by litho­graphic press, that is to say on a stone press in the handwriting of the man of God Almighty, Haji Muhammad Azhari son of Kemas Haji Abdullah, resident of Pelam­bang, follower of the Shafi'i school, of the Ash'arite conviction [etc . ... ]. The person who executed this print is Ibrahim bin Husain, formerly of Sahab Nagur and now resident in Singa­pore, a pupil of Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munshi of Malacca. The printing was finished on Monday the twenty-first day of the month of Rama­dan ac­cording to the sight­ing of the new moon at Palembang, in the year of the Prophet's Hijra - may God's blessings and peace be upon him - twelve hundred and sixty-four, 1264. This coin­ci­des with the twenty-first day of the month of August in the Christian year eigh­teen hun­dred and forty-eight, 1848, and the sixteenth day of the month of Misra in the Coptic year fifteen hun­dred and sixty-four, 1564 [etc ... ]. The number of Qur'ans printed was one hundred and five. The time taken to pro­duce them was fifty days, or two Qurans and three sections per day. The place where the printing was done was the city of Pal em bang, in the neighbourhood of the Third Upstream Village, on the left bank, going up­stream from the settle­ment of Demang Jayal­aksana Muhammad N ajib, son of the de­ceased Demang Wiral­aksana Abdul Khalik. May God the All-Holy and All­mighty bestow forgiveness on those have copied this, who have printed this, and who will read this, and upon their forebears and upon all Muslim men and women and their forebears.

The cover of the second edition 1854 (from Proudfoot):

and the colophon (from Ali Akbar):

iẓhār nūn (& iqlāb mīm)

Marijn van Putten has discovered the iẓhār nūn
both after tanwīn:

and "normal" nūn sākin:

and even one example where the extra green nūn is misplaced ‒ suggesting that the colour signs were added in a second phase:

should have been like this

I'm a bit dis­appointed that van Putten has never seen or heard of iẓ­hār nūn, al­though I have pub­lished about it. I first dis­covered it in Bom­bay reprints from Indone­sia, but later both in Indian mss. and prints.

India 1800 Long vowels

Gabriel Said Reynolds and others say that all Qur'anic texts are identical: letter for letter.

the various editions of the Qur'an printed today (with only extra-ordinary ex­cep­tions) are identi­cal, word for word, letter for letter.
"Introduction to The Qur'an in its Historical Context, Abingdon: Routledge 2008, p.1.

Nonsense! There are probably a thousand different ways of writing or typesetting Qurans.
That does not mean that the prints say different things. They don't. They are similar enough -> mean the same. The differences that the exact same text allows in inter­pretation are certainly 100 times more signi­ficant than all the differences between different prints. Many dif­ferences are purely orthographic (such as folx­heršaft and Volks­herrschaft, night and nite, le roi and le rwa), others change the sense of a word, even a sentence, but do not really change the passage.
I am not at all concerned with contra­dictions in the Qur'an, with differences in content between one and another, I am only concerned with dif­ferences in ortho­graphy (that is, the spelling rules and particular cases).
Nor am I concerned with the differences between the seven/ten ca­noni­cal readers, the four­teen/ twenty trans­mitters, the hun­dreds of tra­dents. These primarily con­cern the phone­tic struct­ure (sometimes a "min" or "wa", an alif or a con­sonant doubling more or less); the variants only say whether a vowel is lengthen­ed five­fold or threefold, whether the basmala is repeated between two suras or a takbir is spoken before a particular one. I am not concerned with all this.
I am interested in the differences between Otto­man and Moroc­can, Persian and Indian maṣāḥif ‒ and how the official Egyptian Qurʾān of 1924 differs from those before it. Because there is a lot of nonsense circu­lating about this.
Qurans differ in a hundred ways. I will not present this systema­tically. For example, reading (qi­ra­ʾa), ductus, lines per page, whether verses may be spread over two pages, whether 30th must begin on a new page, whether rukuʿat are dis­played in the text and on the mar­gin, whether each verse is followed by a num­ber, whether alter­native count­ing systems are in­dicated, and whether pages have cus­to­di­ans/catch words on the bottom of each (second) page, whether there are one, three, four, five, six ... or six­teen pause signs. All this can occur, but will not be syste­ma­ti­cally dis­cussed.
I focus attention on two points:
the spelling of words, the Quranic vocabulary, so to speak ‒ al­though (un­like Le Dictionaire de l'Academie, Meriam-Webster, Duden) the same word is not to be written the same way in all places;
the rules of how vowel length, shorten­ing and diph­tongs are notated, like assimi­lation of con­sonants, and how hamza at the start of words is written. I am par­ticular­ly inter­ested in prints.

---

There are two main spellings/set of rules: African (Maghrebi, Anda­lusian, Arabic) and Asian (Indo-Pakistani, Indo­nesi­an, Persian, Ottoman): Africans always need two signs for long vowels: a vowel sign and a match­ing elong­ating vowel letter; if the latter is not in the rasm, it is added in small (or a non-match­ing one is made suit­able by a Changing-Alif).

this two signs modell cor­responds to the view of the gram­ma­ti­ci­ans that there a haraka, lengthened by a ḥarf al-madd, while (follow­ing) Asian mo­dell may reflect the Sankrit model of matras

Asians have three short vowel signs and three long vowel signs (plus Sukūn/Ǧazm). But ac­cord­ing to today's IPak rules, for ū and ī, one uses the short vowel signs IF the match­ing vowel letter follows (which gets a ǧazm). With long ā, Per­sians and Otto­mans/Turks always used the long vowel sign; Indi­ans today use it only if no alif follows (i.e. wau, [dot­less] yāʾ or no vowel at all); if an alif follows, the con­sonant before it only gets a Fatḥa. In the case of long-ī, Persians and Otto­mans always used the Lang-ī sign (regard­less of whether it is followed by yāʾ or not); In­dians to­day pro­ceed simil­arly to ā: if it is not fol­lo­wed by a yāʾ, the long-ī sign is used: be­fore yāʾ, how­ever, there is (only) Kasra and the yāʾ gets a ǧazm. (Ac­cord­ing to IPak, sign-less letters are silent!).
For long ū, Ottomans put "madd" under a wau; for the elon­gated per­sonal pro­noun -hū the elon­ga­tion remains un­notat­ed. Indians and Indo­nesians use the long ū sign but the short u sign before waw, while before 1800, Indians al­ways used the long-ū-sign, follow­ing wau re­mained with­out any sign was thus silent (to be ignored when read­ing) ‒ if it is second part of the diph­tong au, it got and gets a Ǧazm, thus is to be spoken. Always the long ī sign. Always the long-ā-sign. In other words:

In 1800, there were two systems of noting long vowels: the Magh­re­b­ian, which always included two parts, a vowel sign (fatḥa, kasra, ḍamma, imāla-point) and a leng­then­ing vowel (belonging to the rasm or a small com­ple­ment). And an Indian system based en­tire­ly on long vowel signs, in which the vowel letters pre­sent in the rasm were com­pletely ig­nored. The Magh­rebi system is used to­day in Africa and Arabia. The Indian system is used in weakened forms in Turkey, Persia, India and Indo­ne­sia. In India and Indone­sia, IPak applies, where long ā con­tinues to be used before (dotless) yāʾ, but before alif it has been re­placed by fatḥa (like in the African system) Before ī-yāʾ / ū-waw stand kasra / ḍamma; above the vowel let­ter stands ǧazm ‒ other­wise they had no influence on pro­noun­cia­tion. The old Indian system only applies where no vowel letter follows. How widespread this clear Indian system was, I do not know. I came across several manu­scripts using it, but no print.