all features are independent of each other

One of the ten most im­por­tant dis­cove­ries in this blog:
When producing a muṣḥaf all features are inde­pendent of each other.
true, most maṣāḥif written in Maġ­ribī style have the text accord­ing to Warš,
but in Tunis e.g. there were Ḥafs copies written in Maġ­ribī style.
True, the first ber­Kenar co­pies with 15 lines on 604 pages were in (Ottoman) naskh,
but today there are copies with that page layout in other styles.
The Iranian Center for Printing and Dis­tribut­ing the Qurʾān has deviced a new system of voyelling without sukūn in which vowel letters with­out ḥarkāt stand for long vowels; they are not leng­thening the cor­res­ponding vowel sign (hence in that system the con­sonant before a vowel letter has no vowel sign ‒ vowel signs standing only for short vowels) ‒ and a new rasm.
In this post I show that this "neo-Iranian" (or Ṭab-o Našr-)rasm can occur with any writing style.
The Center has pub­lished a list of 17 words that they write as they see fit (of course respecting the sound) not following old manu­scripts or estab­lished maṣāḥif.
While in the first two colums from the left the words are both in the new Iranian vowelling and in the new Iranian rasm, the third column is written in the "Lahorī" style just as the next two columns.
The last column is from the first Iranian print (type set Tehran 1827), and the one with light yellow back­ground is Uṭmān Taha/Q52.

The other discoveries are:
there is no single standard
there is not THE Cairo edition, but hundreds
there are Eastern vs. Western ways of writ­ing of long vowels, of lead­ing alif, of pro­nounced nūn sākin   being among the dif­ferences
the main features of the KFE were
‒ adoption of the Moroc­con rasm
‒ adoption of many Moroccon features (like marking mute letters, noting assimi­lation, having three kinds of tanwīn)
‒ droping of Eastern features (like nun quṭnī, having three kinds of madd sign, making for shortened vowels)
‒ easy readabiliy (clear base line, clear right-to-left), vowel sign exactely above/below base letter
that the KFE did not FIX the text: both within Amiriyya prints, reprints and the great child in Medina there are changes
If anything is not clear, leave a comment!
The Centre for the Printing and Distribution of the Qur'an, which reports to the leader/rahbar, has intro­duced three improvements:
First, three lower­case vowel signs at the places where there used to be red vowel signs (VS) in manuscripts: for words that begin with alif-waṣl, but before which the reader pauses, i.e. which are to be read with Hamza, the initial alif is given a small VS.
Then a completely new spelling of long vowels: While in Africa it is VS + ḥarf al-madd (stretching letter),
according to neoIran, the vowel letter is read as such, there is no VS (because there is no /a/, /i/, /u/ to ne read, only /ā/, /ī/, /ū/.
If there is no sign and no vowel letter follows, the con­sonant is vowel­less = there is no sukūn sign. Letters that are not read at all   are in a different colour:
(In the centre of the excerpt: /fĭl-ardi/ with a short i the kasra is to be read, not the yāʾ)

This simplified vocalisa­tion is based on the con­vent­ions of Persian writing.

Furthermore, the مكز طبع و نشر has established a new rasm. Ṭab-o Našr is con­cerned with legibili­ty and uniformi­ty, i.e. fewer missing, super­fluous or unusual letters, fewer expressions that are some­times written one way and some­times another.
They prefer to rely on recognis­ed editions (including Warš and Qālūn editions) or a rasm authority.
If necessary, however, they also simplify with­out good support. They state that they write 17 words in 36 places ‘simply’ with­out a model.
The 17 words are quite different:
easier to understand (6:41,16:95) اِنّ ما instead of إِنَّمَا ,
the opposite (2:240,5:58): فيما instead of فِى مَا – because of parallel passages;
for the same reason (30:28, 63:10): مِمّا instead of مِن مَّا ;
Avoiding a silent Alifs اَبناۤءُ instead of أَبۡنَٰٓؤُا۟۟ (5:18),
اَنباۤءُ instead of أَنۢبَٰٓؤُا۟ (26:6),
يُنَبَّاُ instead of يُنَبَّؤُا (75:13),
Avoiding a silent yāʾ for /ā/ تَراني instead of تَرَىٰنِى (7:143),
اَرانيۤ instead of اَرَىٰنِىۤ (12:36),
اؚجتَباهُ instead of ٱجۡتَبَىٰهُ (16:121, 22:78);
statt ءَاَتَىٰنِى (19:30) ءاتانِي – like Solṭānī/Hirīsī, Nairizī und Arsan­ǧā­nī, but not Faḍāʾilī;
اَرانيۤ instead of اَرَىٰنِىۤ (12:36);
Avoiding some "dagger alifs" خَطايٰكم instead of خَطَٰيَٰكُمۡ (2:58, 20:73),
لَساحِرٌ instead of لَسَٰحِرٌ (7:109, 26:34),
قُرءانًا instead of قُرۡءَٰنًا (12:2),
نادانا instead of نَادَىٰنَا (37:75),
اِحسانًا instead of إِحۡسَٰنًا (46:15),
جِمالَتٌ instead of جِمَٰلَتٌۭ (77:33).
كِذّابًا instead of كِذَّٰنًۭا (78:35).
Of the 17 words, eight follow nOsm/CT.
In a random sample of 10% of the Qur'anic text, I dis­covered four more plene spellings 15:22 biḫāzinīna, 40:16 bāri­zūna, 40:18 kāẓimīna, 40:29 ẓāhirī­na, which occur in old Persian or Ottoman maṣā­hif, but not in the editions or authori­ties cited by the Centre (al-Ārkātī, ad-Dānī, Ibn Naǧāḥ). In other words, they write as they like it. I suspect that ‘mis­takes’, archa­isms in Arabic re­inforce the ‘sacred char­acter’ of the script. But since Arabic is ‘the sacred language’ for Persians any­way, they don't need the mis­takes to per­ceive it as un­pro­fane = out of the ordinary.
In the first twenty verses of al-Baqara they write against Q24 al-kitābu (2: 2), razaqnāhum (3), tujādiʿūn (9), aḍ-ḍalālaha (16), ẓulumātin (17), ẓulumātun, ʾaṣābiʿahum (19) and bil-kāfirīna (20) like Q52, ʾabṣārihim, ġišāwatub (7), ṭuġyānihim (15), tiǧāratuhum (16), aṣ-ṣwāʿiqi (19), ʾabṣāra­hum and wa-abṣāri­him (20) such as iPak and Lib in Solṭānī and Osm also šayāṭīni­him (2:14) with alif.
Secondly, they usually omit every­thing that is omitted when writ­ing Persian, i.e. hamza signs on or under the initial alif (fatḥa, ḍamma, kasra include hamza), - but when writ­ing /ʾā/, nIran Q24 follows: isolated hamza+alif not alif+long-fatḥa - fatḥa before alif, kasra before yāʾ, ḍamma before wau (long vowel letters do not denote the elongation of the vowel as in Arabic, but the long vowel itself); how­ever, if a short vowel sign precedes the vowel letter, this applies: the vowel letter is silent; further­more, sukūn signs are miss­ing (if there is no vowel sign, the con­sonant is vowel­less), as well as indi­ca­tions of as­simi­la­tion that go beyond that in Standard Arabic.
Turks and Persians are the only ones who do not note assimi­lation – in the word and across word boundaries. (for example, from vowel­less nūn to rāʾ: mir rabbihi in 2:5 On the other hand, in 75:27 there is the non-assimilation sign: مَنۜ راقٍ). or in the word 77:20 /naḫluqkum/ instead of /naḫlukkum/), also the different tanwīn forms - nIran follows Solṭānī and Osm against IPak, Mag and Q24.

A small-nūn + kasra is placed when the nūn of the preceding tanwīn is read with i (e.g. 23:38). In these editions, the once red vowel signs on alif waṣl, which is to be spoken after an obligatory pause with hamza and initial sound, become small-fatḥa (e.g. 2:15), small-ḍamma (38:42) or small-kasra (58:16,19). As in the Indonesian adaptations of UT1, in the modern Iranian editions - both those in the style of ʿUṯmān Ṭāhā and those in the style of Naizīrī - the Fatḥas are straight across allāh. In addition, there are countless editions of ʿUṯmān Taha reworked to different degrees according to Soltani or nIran. If you count the spellings on TV, smartphones and the web (e.g. makarem.ir/quran), you end up with over a hundred different orthographies.
Es wird ein kleines-nūn + kasra ge­setzt, wenn das nūn des voraus­gehenden tanwīn mit i gelesen wird (z.B. 23:38). Aus den einst roten Vokal­zeichen auf alif waṣl, das nach obliga­ter Pause mit Hamza und Anlaut zu sprechen ist, wird in diesen Aus­gaben Klein-fatḥa (z.B. 2:15), Klein-ḍamma (38:42) oder Klein-kasra (58:16,19). Wie auch in den in­do­ne­si­schen Adap­ta­tionen von UT1 sind in den moder­nen ira­ni­schen Aus­gaben – sowohl jene im Duktus ʿUṯmān Ṭāhās wie die im Stile Naizī­rīs – die Fatḥas über allāh gerade. Daneben findet man zig Aus­gaben von ʿUṯ­mān Ta­ha zu unter­schied­lichen Graden nach Soltani oder nach nIran um­ge­arbeitet. Zählt man die Schrei­bungen im Fern­sehn, auf dem Smart­phone und dem Web (etwa makarem.ir/quran) mit, kommt man auf über hundert ver­schie­dene Ortho­gra­phien.
Turks, Arabs and Indians have fixed standards; Indians have had them for two hundred years, Arabs since around 1980, Turks since 1950 - or a little later.
Indonesians, Persians and Tunisians are looking for improvements. Tunisia is part of the Maghreb, and most of what is written here follows Qālūn ʿan Nāfiʿ. However, from the end of the 16th century until the end of the 19th century, the Ottomans maintained a garrison in Tunis.
Türken, Araber und Inder haben feste Standards; die Inder schon zwei­hundert Jahre, die Araber seit etwa 1980, die Türken seit 1950 – oder etwas später.
Qurans were written on site for their officers. At least two of them are facsimiles: one on sixty pages - Qurʾān Karīm, scribe: Zubair ibn ʿAbdallah al-Ḥanafī. Tunis: ad-Dār at-Tūnisīya lin-Našr n.d. - and one in which opposite pages repeatedly show the same words. Muṣḥaf Šarīf written by Zuhair Bāš Mamlūk 1305/1885, Tunis: ʿAbd al-Karīm Bin ʿAbdallah 1403/1983 (printed in Verona). Both record the reading Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim in Maghrebi scribal conventions.
Two words from 2:8 according to five different standards, all Ḥafṣ. The top (Q52) and bottom (nIran) look similar but are fundamentally different, the bottom two (nOsm and nIran) are the same although they look different. Both are due to the fact that nIran completely dispenses with sukūn characters: the nūn in the bottom one is therefore with sukūn and the qāf with ū (both as in nOsm directly above). In the uppermost, the nūn has kéin sukūn and according to the rules of Q24 this means: not to speak as nūn; the word sounds: ‘mai’. The same situation (incomplete assimilation) is expressed by IPak (third from bottom) and Standar Indonesia (2nd-4th line) with sukūn above the nūn (i.e.: not mute) and šadda above the yāʾ (i.e.: doubling mai yaqūl). nOsm and nIran never note (half and full) assimilation.


‒­

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!
‒

al-rasm al-ʿUṯmānī vs. "al-rasm al-ʿUṯmānī"

Orientals have a well-established narration about the collection of the qurʾān
and its subsequent dissemination to the central cities of the empire.
Orientalists ‒ keener in scru­ti­ni­zing real old manu­scripts ‒ had the best time ever:
first came the quranic manu­scripts from the Great Mosque of San'a'
then came the realisa­tion that a couple of fragments belong together: that they had been one codex in the ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ mosque in Fustat before being dis­persed.
And after studying the famous palimpsest and the frag­ments in London, Paris, Peters­burg Orientalists came away "assuming/knowing" what Muslims had "believed/known" for a long time:
during the caliphate of ʿUṯmān the text has been stan­dar­dised.
So far, so good.
But the Orientalists made another discovery:
The early manuscripts were not written in the spelling known as "al-rasm al-ʿUṯmānī",
but in what Michael Marx calls "Hijāzī spelling" ‒ im­pli­citly calling the common "rasm al-ʿUṯmānī" "Kūfī spelling"
‒ although one finds some "Hijāzī spelling" ( علا for على
; حتا for حتى ) in Kūfī mss.
In order not to burry the ʿUṭmānic rasm Behnam Sadeghi comes up with a new concept: the mor­phe­mo-skele­tal text: never­mind the concrete rasm, as long as it is the same mor­pheme (David, thing, about, until) it is the same text.
I have no problem with that,
but I protest, when someone calls "al-rasm al-ʿUṯmānī" (fixed/dis­co­vered/in­vented about four centuries after ʿUṯmān) al-rasm al-ʿUṯmānī without quotation marks.
You can cling to ad-Dānī's rasm, but please do not call it ʿUṯmānic rasm, because it is not!
"belonging to the ʿUṯmānic text type" is fine:
Persian and Ottoman mss. have the ʿUṯmānic text, but not the "ʿUṯmānic rasm", and the ʿUṯmānic rasm is not known.

rasm ‒ consonantal skeleton?

The most common translation for rasm
"consonantal skeleton" is wrong.
Look at the 22nd word of 3:195 واودوا
six letters,
definitely not six consonants.

On the sound level
Arabic, like any language,
has sonants and con-sonants.
But on the sign level,
there are just letters.
It doesn't make sense to talk of Phoenician, Arabic, Semitic consonant letters.
Only once there are sonants/vowels, there can be con-sonants/not sounding on their own.
Since Greeks speak no ḥ, they used the letter ḥēt for ē
Jota for ī, changed ʿain into Omikron, waw into Ypsilon (ū).


When you look into early qurʾān manuscripts,
you will see the letters function as end of word maker &
as long vowels & as diphthongs (ḥurūf al-madd wa'l-līn)
& as short vowels,
not only in the common اولٮك and the less frequent أولوا۠ but in ساورىكم
(7:145, 21:37), لاوصلٮٮكم
(7:124, 20:71, 26:49) and
in rare words like وملاٮه (7:103 + 11:97 + 43:46 ) IPak: وَمَلَائِهٖ / وَمَلَا۠ئِهٖ Q52 : وَمَلَإِيْهِۦ
and اڡاىں (3:144 + 21:34)
IPak: افَائِنۡ / افَا۠ئِنْ Q52: اَفإي۠ن .
Modern readers may perceive two silent letters:
one carrying a hamza,
one otiose.
Originally they stood for ayi or a'i or aʾi --
definitely for short vowels.
Both words are written in IPak with silent alif + yāʾ-hamza
in Q52 with alif-hamza + silent yāʾ.
Add to this alif as akkusativ marker (at the end), as question marker at the beginning, hāʾ (tāʾ marbūṭa) as femining marker
(plus wau as name marker at the end outside the qurʾān عمرو)
and common words like انا.
So, to call all letters "consonants", makes no sense.
To call the rasm "consonantal" is wrong.
Call it: skeleton,
letter skeleton,
basic letters,
skeletal text,
stroke,
drawing.
Unfortunately most academics repeat what their predecessors wrote,
they can't look for them*selves, don't mention thinking for them*selves --
whether female, male, trans*gender or non*binary.