India (chronologically)

As I have not posted about Indian maṣāḥif chronologically, here are some links (and low quality images):
1829 with Persian
1831 Calcutta, type, pleasing
1837 type
1840 lithograpgy

Agra 1264/1847

1850 Lucknow
1286/1852 Delhi, Sahāran­pūrī's Aḥmadi Press see below

Delhi 1281/1864

Bombay 1862 Tafsīr-i Ḥusaini 1866 two lithographies
1867 Lucknow
Delhi 1867 Tafsīr-i Ḥusaini 1868 cheap bestseller
1869 three (twice Bombay)
1870 three

Kanipur 1287/1870

Kanipur 1289/1872 ↑

Ludhiana 1296/1878 →

1875 Bombay

1876 Bareilly

1878 Lucknow


1879 translation by Shah ‘Abd al-Wahhāb Rafi ad-Din ad-Dihlawī
Bombay 1880 Tafsīr-i Ḥusaini Bombay 1299/1882
1883 (and 2000) Cochin

Allahbad 1887

1888 Dilhi Persian, Urdu
Delhi 1895 Tafsīr-i Ḥusaini

Agra 1895

Kanpur 1897

Lukhnau 1363/1905

Ludhiana 1364/1907

today (in German)
Taj company Ltd.
Indian spelling (in German)
Bombay spelling
izhar nūn in Bombay prints
Bombay prints for the Dutch Indies
for Central Asia
Indian pause signs (German)
tajwid ‒ many from Lahore

The title of the 1852 print was: al-kitāb allaḏī qāla allāh taʿAlA fī waṣihī laʾin iǧtamaǧat ...

While the base text is Ḥafṣ it has information in other vowels in the inner margin and different rasm on the outer margins.

Bombay 1358/1959

the edition on 848 pages with 13 lines

The Taj Company Ltd.

produced editions with nine, ten, eleven, twelve, 13, 16, 17 and 18 lines. Those on 611 pages (15 lines) and 848 pages (13 lines) are reprinted in India, Saudi-Arabia, China, South Africa, Bangla Desh ...

I admit: I do not have a Taj print with 13 lines but since Adrian Alan Brockett had copies of it and affirms that the 1398/1978 South African edition is based on it (STUDIES IN TWO TRANS­MIS­SIONS OF THE QUR'AN 1984, p22, 26, passim) I assume that he is right.
Water­val Islamic Institute (Johannisburg) made a second print in 1400/1980, a third in 1405/1985, a fourth in 1409/1989, a fifth in 1413/1993, a sixth in 1417/1996, a seventh in 1420/1999, a eighth in 1423/2003, a ninth in 1428/2007, a tenth in 1432/2011, an eleventh 1435/2014, a twelfth in 1437/2015, plus two more before they had one set in a font with the ʿUthman Ṭaha handwriting.

There is an edition cir­cula­ting in South Africa that is line identical to this Taj edition: written by (ʿAbdul-)Ḫalīq (al-)Asadī without Yāʾ Barī and the cut off tails of خ ح ج ع غ typi­cal for the Lahorī style. Unlike the Taj/Water­val Islamic Institute edition it has catch­words.
Nurul-Huda (South Africa) even uploaded a pdf of that mushaf to which it added the title page of Water­val Islamic Insti­tute.
Since 2022 there is a Water­val Islamic Institute edition that is page identi­cal but ‒ for­tunate­ly ‒ not line iden­tical: when­ever a line ended with "و/and" that letter was moved to the next line where it belongs according to the rules of Arabic ‒ once even to the next page.
This new edition is not an offset repro­duc­tion of a hand­written muṣ­ḥaf, but set on a computer ‒ and printed in India

on the left: Taj/WII. in the middle the new WII, on the right part of Ḫalīq Asadī

Nurul-Huda has made a font set muṣḥaf on 848 pages (the South African "norm") but it is not line iden­tical: when ever possible verses end in the last left cor­ner of the page. So, one of the SA publi­sher has made a print with a font that looks like ʿUṯmān Ṭaha (with moved waws) and an other pdfs in an "Paki­stani-like" font with slightly diffe­rent pages.

Unfortunaley Nurul-Huda places the long fatḥa after the upright hamza, not after it, as it does for lām: (/lā/ but /āʾ/).

Whereas South African do not understand that initial "alif" is a hamza, and that its vowel sign must sit above, below or after (never before), Indo­nesi­ans (and the King Fahd Complex) know it.

In the columns on the right (Pak Company/Dar us-Salam and King Fahd Complex) and the two on the left (from Indo­nesia) the vowel sign for /ā/, the up-right fatḥa, is always behind the hamza, the big alif. But in South Africa (the columns in the middle) often /āʾ/ is written for /ʾā/.
Here an other example of wrongly placed standing/turnded/long fatha

ʾauliyā'uhumu










not
ʾauliāy'uhumu




different, but with­out fault in the 16 liner by Dar­as-Salam, Uṯmān Ṭaja (Giza1924) and Indo­nesian:

While outside of Pakistan ‒ e.g. India and South Africa ‒ publisher just steal the Taj Ltd. muṣḥaf, in Pakistan itself other pub­lishers (like Pak Company, Qudrat­ullah, Gaba) have calli­graphers make line iden­ti­cal copies, so there are at least ten 13liners on paper and on the web, in black and white and with colours for tajwīd.

There is a luxury 848pp. edition by Tāj Kampanī Ltd. Lahore

I downloaded it from here

now the comparison between this edition without the frame with the original that was reprinted in South Africa:

Taj Compagny Ltd editions

The most important publisher of maṣāḥif world wide is the Taj Com­pagny Ltd.
It was founded 1929 in Lahore. They expanded to Bombay and Delhi. After partition the main office was in Karachi, later offices in Rawal­pindi and Dhakka were added. As you can see below Pesha­war was another pub­lishing place.
They published maṣāḥif with nine, ten, eleven, twelve, 13, 16, 17 and 18 lines. 848 pages with 13 lines of qurʾānic text plus 14 pages prayers and ex­plana­tion became the South African standard. Another muṣḥaf with 13 lines has 747+4 pages, an other one has 15 lines (611 ber­kenar pages) ...
They were reprinted from Kashgar to Johannis­burg,
the one on 611 pages with 15 lines was reprinded by many pub­lishers around the world, from Delhi to Medina (starting in 1989)
... 16 lines (both with 485 pages of q.text, and with 549 of q.text plus additional ten pages), with 17 lines per page (489+4 pages), 18 lines (486+3 pages), plus many bi­lin­gual editions.
Inside Pakistan they were copied in­directe­ly: Many publishers had calli­graphers rewrite editions with exactely the same page layout, line by line copied.
Philipp Buckmayr found in article by Mofakhkhar Hussain Khan published in Bangla Desh, stating that the maṣāḥif of Taj and of FerozSons, Lahore were calligraphed by ʿAbdur-Raḥmān Kilānī (1923-1995).

Although tremendious­ly influencial, they had no com­meri­cal success. Twice they went bankrupt. In 1980 and in 2004 "Taj Compagny Ltd" was refounded.

Besides systemic differences to the "African" way (long vowel signs, nūn quṭnī, no leading hamza sign but alif as hamza für /ʾā, ʾī, ʾū/, ḥizb = quarter juz <not half>) there are a couple of silent alifs in the "Asian" tradition (but even by one publisher not consistent, but all allowed):
For 5:29 and 7:103 I added early examples from Lucknow prints.

zwei Nachträge:
Philipp Bruckmayr verweist auf Mofakhkhar Hussain Khan (The Holy Qurʾān in South Asia: A Bio-Bibliographic Study of Translations of the Holy Qurʾān in 23 South Asian Languages, Dhaka, Bibi Akhtar Prakãšanî, 2001), dem zufolge Kilānī den 15Zeiler (und wohl auch andere) geschrieben habe. Da Khan nicht in Lahore wohnt, sondern in Ostbengalen, gebe ich das indirekt wieder. Ob es tatsächlich so ist, weuiß ich nicht.
Hier eine Schmuckausgabe:

these days:

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