LXXI ‒ Marijn van Putten

On the basis of some of the oldest manuscripts Marijn van Putten publishes a muṣḥaf that comes as close as possible to the ʿUṯmānic rasm ‒ not to be confused with the «ʿUṯmānic rasm», that is 300 years younger: de­viced by ad-Dānī.
I compare it with the common Maġri­bian/Anda­lusian/Egyp­tian rasm (in an edi­tion from Brunai) and the Indian one (in edition with 848 pages with 13 lines written by Ḫalīq (al-)Asadī):

Now, that you have seen what "good" edi­tions have made out of the old text, here the same from two "bad" edi­tions: Otto­man from 300 years ago (next to the old text), and Tur­kish from this cen­tury:

I prefer the "Indian" editions, but even Turkish (and Persian) editions are fine.

"the Cairo Edition"

Ik bedoel jou, de beste Curanoloog, als wat er met Gotthelf, Otto, Theo en Pim is gebeurd, niet met jou gebeurt.
Als het op transcriberen aankomt, ben je erg precies. Als het gaat om edities, drukken, versies, recensies, ben je slordig.
editie betekent = "bepaalde druk van een ... boek"
uitgave, exemplaren die in één keer gedrukt worden, druk van een boek
1) Aantal gedrukte exemplaren 2) Aantal te drukken exemplaren 3) Aflevering 4) Boek­uitgave 5) Deel van een krantenoplage 6) Druk 7) Druk van een boek 8) Oplaag 9) Oplaag van een boek 10) Oplage 11) Oplage van boeken
Is verschillend van "teksteditie/ tekstuitgave".
edition = The entire number of copies of a publication issued at one time or from a single set of type. / The entire number of like or identical items issued or pro­duced as a set
Édition (Nom commun)
[e.di.sjɔ̃] / Féminin
Impression, publication et diffusion d’une œuvre artistique (livre, musique, objet d’art, etc). soit qu’elle paraisse pour la première fois, soit qu’elle ait déjà été imprimé ; ou les séries successives des exemplaires qu’on imprime pour cette publication.
Totalité des exemplaires de tel ou tel ouvrage publié et mis en vente.
Par extension, l’industrie qui a pour objet la publication d’ouvrage.
Tirage spécifique de la même édition d’un ouvrage.
Exemplaire faisant partie d’un tirage dans une édition.
(Journalisme) Tirage strictement identique de l’édition du jour d’un quotidien.

In het Frans is het bijzonder duidelijk: « maison d'édition » betekent een uitgeverij.
"editie" is niet wat an editor/een redacteur doet, maar wat an publisher/een uitgever doet.
Als je naar klassieke Arabische werken kijkt, waren er tot voor kort mees­tal twee of drie edities: één uit Leiden en één uit Cairo, één uit Göttingen en één uit Oxford. Hier, "the Cairo edition" maakt geen probleem.
Maar met de Koran is het anders: er zijn tegen­woordig duizenden edities. Alleen al uit Cairo zijn er tien belangrijke uitgaven van de Warš lezing.

Here two images from a 1929 Cairo Warš Edition ‒ without a title page, as was common at the time:

And here from two of the oldest al-Qahira pub­lishers, i.e. not from Bab al-Khalq, al-Faggala, from Bulaq or even Giza but from "behind" al-Azhar:

Apart from these 100% Cairo Editions, there are editions con­ceaved in Morocco resp. Algeria, but pro­duced in Cairo ‒ the Moroccan ones without pro­duction place, the Algerian ones with an Algerian publisher's name. (Only the third edition of the third sherifian muṣ­ḥaf was produced in Morocco.)
Er is niet meer "de editie van Caïro" dan er "de Ayatollah" of "de roman van Parijs" is.
Alleen drukwerkspecialisten zijn geïnteresseerd in drukwerk (hoeveel regels per pagina, hoeveel pagina's per ǧuz, aanduiding van chronologie, saǧadat, sakatāt, typografie, kalli­grafie...). Curana­loogen zijn geïnteres­seerd in de rasmen, de verzendingen, de orthografie.
Zelfs als we alleen kijken naar de belangrijk­ste Ḥafṣ uit­gaven, zijn er enkele uit 1881, 1890, 1924, 1952, 1975, 1976. Zelfs de uitgaven van de Amīriyya uit 1926 en 1929 ver­schillen van de Gizeh-prent uit 1924.
Ik weet niet welke editie bedoeld wordt ‒ zou kunnen bedoeld worden ‒ met "cairo edition".
Ik heb de indruk dat u de Uthman rasm bedoelt, het gebruike­lijke schrift zonder extra alifen, dat gebruike­lijk werd in het Otto­maanse Rijk en Iran.
De prent van Gizeh uit 1924 is bijna nergens in de islami­tische wereld te vinden, maar vaak wel in Duitse, Neder­landse en Zwit­serse biblio­theken.
80% van de Moslims gebruiken totaal ver­schillende uit­gaven, zij het ver­schillende lezingen, zij het ver­schillende spellingen. Tot in de jaren tachtig gebruikten de Arabers van Mašriq ook overwegend Otto­aanse edities.
Tegenwoordig gebruiken veel Arabieren, Maleisi­ërs en Sala­fisten edities in de spelling van de 1952 editie van de Koran, maar alleen Oriënta­listen hebben ooit de Amīriyya editie gebruikt.
Een derde van de moslims is af­komstig van het Indiase sub­continent, zodat Indiase kwesties wereldwijd het meest voorkomen.
Bijna een zesde van de moslims gebruikt Indo­ne­sische edities.
Turkije heeft zijn eigen standaard, Iran heeft er meerdere.

seven written shapes or just two?

Some say: there are only two spellings of the qurʾān:
one on the tablet in heaven, in the ʿUṯmānic maṣāḥif and in the Medina al-Munaw­wara Edition (or similar to it)
and the other ‒ false ‒ ones.
They say: Both the oral and the graphic form are revealed.
      Muhammad instructed his scribes how to write each word.
Polemically phrased: God vouches for the Saʿūdī muṣḥaf calli­graphed by ʿUṯmān Ṭaha.

Other think: the qurʾān was revealed orally,
that God vouches only for its spoken shape,
that the written form was fixed by agreement, that it is a convention,
that there are seven ways of writing the qurʾān.
To avoid misunderstandings: Here I do not talk about the dif­ferent readings,
the different sound shapes, but about ways of writing the same reading,
the rasm and the small signs around it.

First, there is اللوح المحفوظ in heaven.
We do not know how it looks like.
(2) Then, there are the copies written at ʿUṯmān's time and sent to Baṣra, Kāfā, aš-Šām ...
Again, we do not know how they were spelt, but very old manu­scripts give us an impression what they must have looked like.   see
(3) Later Arabic orthography underwent change.
We have reports from the third century about the proper writing of the qurʾān.
Although the spelling reported definite­ly is not the same as (2), it is called "ar-rasm al-ʿUṯmānī";
the Maġrib, India (for some time) and the Arab Countries (since the 1980s) write their maṣāḥif based on it (with small variants of the rasm, dif­ferent ways of writing long vowels, different additional sign for assimila­tion and other fine points).
(4) In countries between the Maġrib and India (Iran, Irāq, Egypt, at some time the Otto­man and Safa­vid empires) the spelling came closer to the standard spel­ling of Arabic ‒ never approa­ching it, always being different from the "normal", everyday spelling.
This writing is called plene or imlāʾi إملاء .
Turkey has fixed a standard based on the Ottoman practice, Iran is experimenting.
(5) The spelling in different colours, be it to dif­feren­tiate between the "Uthmanic rasm" and the additions,

be it to show unpronounced letter, lengthened, nasalised, assimi­lated ones (and so on).

(6) Braille for the blind.
(7) The full (imlāʾī) spelling. In the 1980s, when many of the signs of the 1924 muṣḥaf or the Indian ones were not encoded yet

some signs necessary for Maġribī maṣāḥif are still awaiting inclusion in the fonts ‒
I downloaded such a text called muṣḥaf al-ḥuffāẓ to be used for pro­nouncing the text,
not to be trans­ferred into a bound volume.
I marked words spelled not according to "ar-rasm al-ʿUṯmānī" in grey.

In Egypt and in Saʿudia rulings have been published forbidden the writing of the qurʿān like any Arabic text.
They based their view on Mālik ibn ʿAnas, Aḥmad ibn Ham­bal, and the Šafiʿī al-Baihaqī.
Prominent among their critics is Grand Ayatollah Nāṣr Makārem Širāzī ناصر مکارم شیرازی‎, born 25 February 1927:
‒ the qurʾān was revealed orally,
‒ the prophet did not fix its written form,
‒ manuscript evidence shows clearly that the "ʿuṭmānic rasm" is not the ʿuṭmānic rasm.
‒ As long as we do not know the ʿuṭmānic rasm, we are free to write, as seems appropriate to us.
‒ Even if we know it one day, we are not bound by it: it is sanctioned "only" by iǧmāʾ ṣaḥāba.
‒ The ʿUṯmān Taha way of writing is not forbidden, BUT is it the best?
‒ There are otiose letters in it, missing letters, con­nected words, that are normally not connected, words written differently at different places within the muṣḥaf,
      it is dif­ficult to read = there are better ways to write it.
On the one hand, Ayatollah Makārem Širāzī points to many differences
between maṣāḥif that claim to follow the ʿuthmanic rasm,
which invalidates their claim,
on the other hand, he does not ask for a radical modern (normal) spelling,
   seems to be content with a mix of modern (simpler to read) and archaic spelling,
   aiming at proper pronunciation and at correct under­standing,
   at ease of reading and respect of tradition
   (bismillāh, raḥmān ... should be written tra­ditionally,
   although their spelling is wrong).

Makārem Širāzī is not alone in attacking "ʿUṯmān Ṭaha's way of writing the qur'ān", by which they mean to say "the Saʿūdī muṣḥaf and its copies", what Marijn van Putten calls "the Cairo edition" (if I understand him correctely, which is not certain). Ayatollahs Ǧaʿfar Sobḥānī, Javādī Amol and Ṣāfī have published similar opinions.

An edition is "one of a series of printings," "the entire number of copies of a pub­li­cation issued at one time or from a single set of type." Novels normally have a hard­cover and a soft­cover edition. Scholarly books mostly a first, a second and third revised edition, because at the same time and from the same set of type both hard­cover and (same or reduced size) softcover are printed.
van Putten writes again and again of "the Cairo edition" and claims that that is a common term for something. But he never defines what he thinks it is.
Is it the 1924 Gizeh edition, the King Fuʾād Edition, the official Egyptian edition of 1924, the 12 liner مصحف 12 سطر, the Survey Authority edition?
Or that he means all editions that roughly have the same text?
He seems not to know, that Gizeh1924 had not a single reimpression (German: Nach­druck, which is dif­ferent from "reprint");
in Egypt itself, there were only improved editions, already in 1925 there were changes (in the afterword), a completely new set of plates were used, the margins were just about a third of the 1924 edition.
The only edition that had almost the same text   is the 1955 Peking edition, but it has one leaf less and all ornamental elements (frame, signs on the margin, title boxes) are different, the headers are different, and it has a title page, which is lacking in Gizeh and Cairo.
The 30st edition or so, named "second print" differs from the 1924 edition at about 900 places.
I fear that van Putten means by "the Cairo edition" all Ḥafṣ editions written by ʿUṯmān Ṭaha, although the King Fahd Complex has further changed the 1952 Amiriyya Edition (2:72, 73:20 and لا pause signs).
What he means by "edition" is not properly called "edition."
but the rasm, the dots and the set of masora of the 1952 edition ‒ ignoring small variants, and ignoring many characteristics of maṣāḥif: lines per page, pages per ǧuz, header, sura title box, margin signs, notes, catchwords and so on.
Although reading, style of writing (can be different for sura name, the basmala, the marginal notes and the text proper), rasm (& dotting), the masora often go together, they are independent of each other: the reading transmission Qālūn can have al-Ḫarrāz, Ibn Naǧāh or ad-Dānī rasm or a mix of them, can be written in Eastern Nasḫi, in Maġribī or a mix thereof, can be on 604 or 60 pages or something in between, can have the Eastern lām-alif or the Western alif-lām!
‒

van Putten's QCT again

"QCT" is a bad name for a bad concept.

bad name ...
because many of its letters are not consonants.
Aḥmad al-Jallad was kind enough to inform me that
these letters ARE con­sonants USED as some­thing else:
con­sonants "re­purposed", cons­onants func­tioning as vowels.

In my philosophy (and that of Wittgenstein II) this makes no sense:
words ARE what they are USED for = they have no essence apart from the way we use them.

But this is not very important.
Important is whether the text
we are dealing with
is purely con­sonant­al.
And unlike all Safaitic, Hismaic, and Thamudic texts
the Early Quranic Text is clearly not purely con­sonantal.
van Putten's term QCT for the Common Early QT is wrong
because many of its letters stand for long vowels,
because many of its letters stand for diphtongs,
because one letter stand for end of word (alif after waw),
because many of its letters stand for short vowels,
‒ not only those that are marked in Giza24 by a circle (in IndoPak with no sign),
    but those seen now as seat/carrier of hamza.

bad concept
Marijn van Putten:

The QCT is defined as the text reflected in the consonantal skeleton of the Quran, the form in which it was first written down, without the countless … vocalisation marks.
The … QCT is roughly equivalent to … the rasm, the … undotted consonantal skeleton of the Quranic text,
but there is an important distinction. The concept of QCT ultimately assumes that not only the letter shapes, but also the con­sonantal values are identical to the Quranic text as we find it today.
As such, when ambiguities arise, for example in medial ـثـ ،ـتـ ،ـبـ ،ـنـ ،ـيـ , the original value is taken to be identical to the form as it is found in the Quranic reading traditions today.

When I look at van Putten's slide, I get what he means by "the Quranic text as we find it today":
Ḥafṣ without the "countless" marks.
The QCT can not be "identical ... to the reading traditions" ‒ because ‒ as I have shown before ‒ many skeletal words do have different dots;
skeletal words stand for different words ‒ they are identical to themselves, NOT to their brothers in another reading.
Here just some words from the first suras differently dotted for Ḥafṣ and Warš:
ءَاتَيۡتُكُم ءَاتَيۡتنَٰكُم (3:81) تَعۡمَلُونَ يَعۡمَلُونَ (2:85) تَعۡمَلُونَ يَعۡمَلُونَ (2:140) (3:188) تَحۡسَبَنَّ تَحۡسِبَنَّ (4:73) تَكُن يَكُن (2:259) نُنشِزُهَا نُنشِرُهَا (2:58) يُغۡفَرۡ نَّغۡفِرۡ (2:165) يَرَى تَرَى ترونهم يرونهم (3:13) (3:83) يَبۡغُونَ تَبۡغُونَ يُرۡجَعُونَ تُرۡجَعُونَ(3:83) (3:115)يَفۡعَلُوا تَفۡعَلُوا يُكۡفَرُوهُ تُكۡفَرُوهُ (3:115) يَجۡمَعُونَ تَجۡمَعُونَ (3:157) (2:271) يُكَفِّرُ نُكَفِّر (3:57) فَنُوَفِّيهمُ فَنُوَفِّيهمُۥۤ (4:13) يُدۡخِلۡهُ نُدۡخِلۡهُ (4:152) يُؤۡتِيهِمۡ نُوتِيهِمُۥٓ‍
Some other examples:
4:94
fa-tabayyanū
fa-taṯabbatū

2:74, 85, 144
yaʾmalūn
taʾmalūn

2:219
kabīr
kaṯīr

2:259
nanšuruhā
nunšizuhā

3:48 wa-nuʿallimuhu
wa-yuʿallimuhu

Yes, the rasm was not meant to be a naked drawing,
people did read it.
But to assume they read Ḥafṣ is just stupid.
Better a naked skeleton than a text fleshed out in ONE way.
It would be nice to have a COMMON Skeletal Text with all the dots,
on which ALL canonical readers agree
‒ which requires ihmal signs for rāʾ, dāl, ḫāʾ, final he, ṭāʾ, ṣād and sīn.
Just for those not familiar with ihmal signs:
for all letters V = two bird wings = لا can be used
for ḫāʾ, final he, ṭāʾ, ṣād and sīn a small letter (not unlike the little kāf in end kāf),
and for rāʾ and dāl a dot below tell us: not ǧīm, not ḫāʾ, not ẓāʾ, nod ḍād, not šīn, not zāʾ, not ḏāʾ!

@marijn van putten QCT

This is an open letter to Marijn.
I do not know him, I assume he reads German,
but reads Nederlands and English with even greater ease.
So here we are:

In Orientalia, Wien = academia.edu and on Twitter
you have shown that the first muṣḥaf was written in Hijāzī,
not in the Dichtersprache al-ʿArabiyya.
You introduced a new term: QCT

The QCT is defined as the text reflected in the con­sonan­tal skeleton of the Quran, the form in which it was first written down, with­out the count­less ad­ditio­nal clari­fying voca­lisa­tion marks.
The concept of the QCT is roughly equivalent to that of the rasm, the … undotted consonantal skeleton of the Quranic text, but there is an important dis­tinction.
The concept of QCT ultimately assumes that not only the letter shapes, but also the con­sonantal values are identical to the Quranic text as we find it today. As such, when ambiguities arise, for example in medial ـثـ ،ـتـ ،ـبـ ،ـنـ ،ـيـ etc., the original value is taken to be identical to the form as it is found in the Quranic reading tra­di­tions today. This assumption is not completely unfounded.

You are right: the assumption is not completely unfounded,
it is logically impossible,
‒ because there is no COMMON CONsonantal text.

The "QCT" is not purely consonantal:
‒ there are letters for long vowels and diphtongs,
‒ there are letters for short vowels, the u in ulaika being the most common,
but there are others: (26:197; 35:28) اولى , العُلَمَـٰوا۠
نَبَواْ (14:9 = 64:5, 38:21, 38:67) but (9:70) نَبَا
Or ساورىكم (7:145, 21:37), لاوصلٮٮكم (7:124, 20:71, 26:49) Look at the 22nd word in 3:195 واودوا six letters, not six consonants,
‒ the alifs after final waw are no consonants but just end-of-word-markers.
often اولٮك rarely وملاٮه (7:103 الأعراف١٠٣) وملاٮه ( bei dem man heute zwei stumme Buch­staben sieht: einen hamza-Träger und einen über­flüs­si­gen; ursprüng­lich standen die für (Kurz-)Vokale (a i, aʾi, ayi). Genau so ist es bei اڡاىں (3;144 + 21:34) IPak: افَا۠ئِنْ Q52: اَفإي۠ن In the common اولٮك waw stood for /u/; today it is seen as mute/otiose, because the ḍamma above alif stands for /u/.


‒ because there is no "Quranic text as we find it today" either.
There is no rasm al-ʿUṯmānī either,
i.e. not a single rasm, there are five or more.
There are about 40 differences between the maṣāḥif written at the behest of ʿUṯmān.
There must be almost 100 lists of these floating around,
inter alia in my book Kein Standard (based on Bergsträßer GdQ3), and on this Turkish site, that is pffline now.

The QCT can not be "identical to the Quranic text as we find it today"
because there is no "identical Quranic text … found in the Quranic reading tra­di­tions today".
You seem to believe that the qirāʾāt just differ in
"the countless additional clarifying vocalisa­tion marks".
That's wrong.

There are many books showing the differences between the ten readers, twenty trans­mitters and more than 50 recognized ways
plus three multi-volume en­cyclo­pediae for the un-recog­nized readings.
As there are many more differences than in ḥarakāt and tašdīd, and I just have to give some examples, to prove my case, I take them from Adrian Alan Brocketts Ph.D.,
words differently dotted in Ḥafṣ and Warš:
ءَاتَيۡتُكُم ءَاتَيۡتنَٰكُم (3:81)
تَعۡمَلُونَ يَعۡمَلُونَ (2:85)
تَعۡمَلُونَ يَعۡمَلُونَ (2:140)
(3:188) تَحۡسَبَنَّ تَحۡسِبَنَّ
(4:73) تَكُن يَكُن
(2:259) نُنشِزُهَا نُنشِرُهَا
(2:58) يُغۡفَرۡ نَّغۡفِرۡ
(2:165) يَرَى تَرَى
ترونهم يرونهم (3:13)
(3:83) يَبۡغُونَ تَبۡغُونَ
يُرۡجَعُونَ تُرۡجَعُونَ(3:83)
(3:115)يَفۡعَلُوا تَفۡعَلُوا
يُكۡفَرُوهُ تُكۡفَرُوهُ (3:115)
يَجۡمَعُونَ تَجۡمَعُونَ (3:157)
(2:271) يُكَفِّرُ نُكَفِّر
(3:57) فَنُوَفِّيهمُ فَنُوَفِّيهمُۥۤ
(4:13) يُدۡخِلۡهُ نُدۡخِلۡهُ
(4:152) يُؤۡتِيهِمۡ نُوتِيهِمُۥٓ‍
What is true for the first four suras, is true for the rest.
And what is true for these two transmissions,
is true for all others.
Okay, more than 90% of the words are the same in all trans­missions,
but
that's not good enough to speak of a common con­so­nan­tal text.

It would be nice, when the Sultan of Oman (or someone else),
paid Thomas Milo to make one muṣḥaf that represents sixty maṣāhif:

‒ a basic Common Quranic Text CQT
with the possibility to make disappear:
the vowel letters,
and/or the end-of-word-markers,

and the possibility to add letters specific to an old muṣḥaf (Kûfā, Baṣra, ) ‒ in a special colour
to add diacritical points for transmissions ‒ in an other colour
plus ḥarakāt specific to certain trans­missions.

plus assimilation marks,
plus pause signs,
plus ihmāl signs.
Maybe even with verse numbers according to Kufa, to Ḥims, to Medina II
… and one day even following MS. O....xyz ‒ God willing.

BTW: The old grammar knows just letters/sounds/particles/ḥurūf,
          no con-sonants and sonants.
          It makes no sense to call Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic
          letters "consonants."
          Only after Greeks used some letters ONLY for sonants/vowels,
          the other letters became con-sonants.
          As long as these signs function as end-of-word-markers (silent
          alif after waw, mem sofit, khaf sofit, many Arab end-letters),
          stand for a con-sonants or for a long vowel or for a short vowel
          or for a diphtong ‒ as in the qurʾān ‒
          there ARE NO "consonants", just letters.