Kein Standard Two (How did they make Gizeh 1924?)

Angelika Neuwirth, an expert on the genesis of the Qur’an before 623,
knows nothing about the history of printed maṣāḥif,
but she writes about it:

the mushaf, i.e. the text put onto sheets, bound between two covers, was trans­mitted through the centuries, genera­tion by generation ... to end up in the last century, in 1925, in the form of a printed text
A. Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, Berlin: Suhrkamp 2010. p. 190

I fail to understand, what Neuwirth wants to say.
Does she ignore that the Qur’an was printed in 1537, in 1694, in 1698, in 1787 for the first time by Muslims in St. Peters­burg, in 1834 in Leipzig, in the 1830s ten diffe­rent prints in Persia and India?
Does she ignore that from 1875 each year thousands were printed in Istan­bul and India?
What does she mean by "end up in the form of a printed text"?
What does she want to say by "trans­mitted genera­tion by genera­tion"?
Okay, before sound could be recorded, the oral text had to be taught from teacher to pupil:
it was indeed transmitted through the ages.
But was that necessary for the muṣḥaf?
Was it not possible to read (and copy) a muṣḥaf written by a person dead at the time of reading the manu­script?
It was not common to give an isnād of scribes who each have learned the art of writing a muṣḥaf from an older scribe/ ḫaṭṭāṭ.
When we believe the main editor of the King Fuʾād Edition it was a re­con­struction,
based on the oral text and Andalusian books from the 11th and 14th century on the ortho­graphy of the qurʾān.
I believe it was an adaptation of a printed copy of the trans­mission Warš to the normal Egyp­tian reading of Ḥafṣ.
For sure, it was not the last in a chain of trans­mitted maṣāḥif, from Egyp­tian scribe to pupil (through the gene­rations).

Neuwirth has never seen the King Fuad Edition.
Consistently she cites it wrongly.
The book has no title on the cover, no title page; the first page is empty,
the first page with something on it, has the Fatiḥa.
In the afterword, it refers to itself as "al-muṣḥaf aš-šarīf,"
in the dedication to King Fuʾād it calls itself "al-muṣḥaf al-karīm".
Because it has no title, according to the German library rules,
the given/ assumed/ generic title is in brackets: "[qurʾān]",
but Neuwirth gives two different one in the notes:
„Al-Qur‘ân al-Karîm, Kairo 1925“ (Der Koran als Text der Spät­antike, p. 30)
and „Qur‘ân karîm 1344/1925“ (Der Koran als Text der Spät­antike,. p. 273).
Neuwirth has never read the information/ تعريف at the back of the King Fuʾād Edition,
nor read and understood the article Gott­helf Berg­sträßer wrote about it.
Otherwise, she would know that the editors claim to have re­con­struc­ted the muṣḥaf from scratch.
The chief editor is not a scribe, but the chief reader/ qāri of Egypt: he knows the qurʾān by heart ‒ in seven to twenty trans­missions.
In the تعريف he states that he has tran­scribed the oral text according to a didactic poem based on two medieval books on the basic letters for writing the qurʾān,
on a Maghrebian book on vowelling but with Eastern vowel signs and other books ...
I interrupt, because I do not believe, what is written in the تعريف
I am convinced that the editor took a Warš muṣḥaf and adopted it to Ḥafṣ.
For the vowelling, he did not have to replace Maghre­bian signs by Eastern signs because the system developed by Al-Ḫālil ibn Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī was current in the West because printing colour dots was too complicated/ expensive at the time.
The "information" further informs us that verse numbering and litur­gical divisions are according to a recent Egyptian scholar, Abū ʿĪd Riḍwān ibn Muḥammad ibn Sulaimān al-Muḫalla­lātī, again not informing us that they adopted the Moroccan system in which a ḥizb is half a ǧuz ‒ not a quarter as before, as in Turkey, Persia, India, Nusantara.
There are many more things, in which Egyptian maṣāḥif used to be like Ottoman, Persian, Indian and Indone­sian maṣāḥif,
in which from now on they are like Moroccan ones ‒ with­out giving an authority to whom the King Fuʾād Edition is said to adhere.
—> The KFE just follows Maghrebian maṣā­ḥif, a switch of tra­dition, the opposite of what Neu­wirth wrote, the opposite of what Berg­strä­ßer believed.
The KFE has three different forms of tanwīn, and three dif­ferent forms of sukūn ‒ to be precise: the Moroccan sukūn for "un­pro­nounced" (circle or oval) and the Indian sign for "un­vowelled" (clearly the first letter of ǧazm without the dot not "ḫa with­out the dot" as they write).
Egyptian prints used to have signs for long vowels, now they have the Maghre­bian system, in which a vowel sign AND a vowel letter (ḥarf al-madd) is needed (hence a small letter is added when­ever neces­sary).
When a word starts with /ʾā/ they used to write the letter hamza (i.e. an alif) + a turned fatḥa,
now they copy the Maghrebian practice:
seatless hamza-sign+fatḥa followed by a lengthe­ning alif.
This does not change the rasm, it is not mentioned in the scholarly litera­ture cited.
Vowelless nūn not followed by h,ḥ,ḫ,ʾ,ʿ,ġ used to have a sukūn (as in Osm, Soltani, IPak), now they have nothing because they are not pro­nounced (clearly as them­selves - not iẓhār) because they are (partly) assimilated or reduced.
compare the beginning of al-Baqara from Bombay vs. Medina (aka IPak vs. Q52):

There used to be two (or three) different madd signs, now there is just one.

In all these things the King Fuʾād Edition clearly copies Maġribi Warṣ muṣāḥif ‒ unlike pauses, numbering, rasm, dotting they are not described in books ON the matter, al-Ḥaddad could only copy them from maṣā­ḥif. Strangely neither Berg­sträßer, nor anyone else noticed that.
And there is more: no more sign for Baṣrī numbers, no more small nūns, when tan­wīn before alif is spoken as a/u/i-ni (called "ṣila nūn" or on the sub­continent "quṭnī nūn"/tiny nūn).
To summarize:
Except for the transmission of Ḥafṣ, the Kufī numbering, and a new pause system (based on Saǧāwandī), and the letter font of the Amiriyya (by Muḥammad Ǧʿafar Bey)
this is Maghribian.
That the rasm was not ad-Dānī, not al-Ḫarrāz was clear. When people found out that it was only 95% Ibn Naǧāḥ, the editors in Medina and in Tunis added "mostly" (ġāliban / fĭ l-ġālib) to the informa­tion at the end of the book. Since it is 99% Maghribian, I guess al-Ḥaddād just adopted an existing muṣḥaf ‒ the "reconstruction" is a myth.

The other great German qurʾān expert, Hartmut Bob­zin, gives the right year, he writes:

the publication of the so-called "Azhar Koran" on 10 July 1924 (7.Dhū l-hiǧǧa 1342 in the Islamic calendar)
FROM VENICE TO CAIRO: ON THE HISTORY OF ARABIC EDI­TIONS OF THE KORAN (16th ‒ early 20th century), in Middle Eastern Languages and the Print Revolution A cross-cultural encounter. West­hofen: WVA-Verlag Skulima 2002. p.171

which is not correct either: on that day the printing was finished,
before the book could be published it had to be bound.
One can be a good translator of the qurʾān, without knowing a thing about publishing,
but maybe it is not a good idea to write about publish­ing without knowing a thing about it.
And the King Fuʾād Edition is not the Azhar-Koran, nor known as such.
It was produced by the Govern­ment Press under the direction of the Chief Qārī of Egypt, assisted by men from the Education Ministry and the Pedago­gical College on Qaṣr al-ʿAinī.
In the end, the chief of al-Azhar and the chief copy editor of the Govern­ment Press vouched for correct­ness.
Only 1977 to 1987, an "Azhar Koran" was printed ‒ in five different sizes, different bindings and get-ups (with two reprints in Qaṭar, the last one in 1988)



Everything Bobzin writes is completly wrong

Der "Azhar-Koran" löste eine wahre Flut gedruck­ter Koran­ausgaben in allen isla­mi­schen Ländern aus, da man sich nun für den Koran­text auf eine aner­kannte Auto­rität stützen konnte.
The "Azhar Koran" prompted a veritable flood of printed editions of the Koran through­out the Islamic world, as there was now a recognized authority on which the Koran text could be based. ibidem

 

If there was a wave of prints after 1924 ‒ unsubstantiated by Bobzin ‒ it was to due to offset printing, has nothing to do with the KFE. The only print caused by it, the Kabul print of 1934, is "unknown" by the experts.

Die Entscheidung der Kairiner Gelehrten für den Text nach der Les­art "Hafs 'an 'Asim" ver­schaffte ihr nunmehr gegen­über allen anderen Les­arten einen ent­schei­denden Vor­teil.
there was a pronounced tendency to understand the "Azhar Koran" as virt­ually a "textus recep­tus", in other words as the only binding Koran text. The decision by the scholars in Cairo in favour of the text in the "Hafs 'an 'Asim" version secured it a decisive advan­tage over all other versions. ibidem

That Ḥafṣ experienced an upsurge due to the KFE is nonsense. Only in the Sudan it gained a bit ‒ but only because it is closer to the Arabic taught in state schools (which had more pupils now).

Allen "modernen" Koranaus­gaben bleibt eine Gemein­sam­keit ..., daß für die Her­stellung des Satzes keine be­weg­lichen Lettern ver­wendet werden, son­dern stets ein kalli­graphisch ge­stalteter Text zu­grunde liegt, der ent­weder litho­gra­phisch oder photo­mecha­nisch ver­viel­fältigt wird.
all the "modern" editions of the Koran still have one thing in common ... above all in the fact that no movable type is used to set the pages, which are, instead, always based on a
calli­graphi­cally designed text which is reproduced either by litho­graphy or by photo­mecha­nical pro­cesses.

Untrue: KFE'24, Kabul'34, Hyderabad'38 and the Muṣḥaf Azhar aš-Šarīf are type set.

Im Hinblick auf den Text folgte [Flügel] nicht einer einzigen Les­art, son­dern bot einen Misch­text (wie das übri­gens in den meisten Hand­schriften der Fall ist).
As regards the text itself he did not adhere to a single reading, but instead provided a mixed text (as was the case in most manu­scripts). p.169

Again, Bobzin states a fact ("most manu­script editions are a mix of readings") without proving it. It would be inter­esting to get informa­tion about one or two, not to mention "most" manuscripts mixing readings!

In the meantime, young brilliant scholars have surpassed Neuwirth and Bobzin in writing nonsense. Although there are more than a thousand editions printed in Cairo, they call the first (and for over fifty years: the only) Gizeh print "the Cairo Edition (CE)". It is as calling Notre-Dame de Paris "the Paris Novel (PN)."





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Kein Standard

In 1914 a few English- and Scotsmen controlled more than half of the globe (most of the seas and chunks of land too, includ­ing millions of Indians).
Kaiser Wilhelm found that unfair. He started a war.
Five years later Germany had shrunk.
Adolf Hitler found that unfair. He started a war.
As one of the results, German is not understood (less written) by most scholars and scien­tists anymore.
So today, there are people reading books and blogs that do not under­stand German.
Therefore, I will repeat in the Lingua Franca of the age, what I have written in German.
In 1834, years after an adequate copy of the Qur'ān was set and printed in St. Peters­burg (later in Kazan)
and when lithograph copies began to be produced in India and Persia,
the German orientalist Gustav Flügel came up with a new typeset copy,
with a text of his own ‒ not very different from rasm, ḍabṭ and ḥarakat recognized by Muslims, but different from the can­on­ized variants never­theless,
and with a numbering system of his Hamburg col­league Abraham Hinckel­mann (which diverges from all Muslim systems and places the numbers BEFORE the verse).


Already the cover shows Flügel incompetence: the little hā' above hā' signals "not a tā' marbuṭa", but in this position (above hā' in hudā), hāʾ can not be tāʾ, so it can not carry an ihmal sign:

The alif (before lām mīm) has no madda. raḥmān and ḏālika should have a dagger alif, Flügel's font doesn't have one. How could any scholar use such a print?

Although it came 50 years too late, it became the standard edition of European orientalists ‒ for about a century.
Later the Egyptian King Fuʾād Edition became the standard ‒ not as I see it ‒ because it was really better than most others, but because it was much better than the orienta­list sorry effort, and because most (Central European) orien­talists ignored the Magh­rebian and Indian prints (Ottoman and Persian prints had a few hundred more alifs as matres lectionis which does not make them inferior, but serves as an argument against them, besides them not indi­cating as­simila­tion of nūn sākin. ‒ Although most Muslims in Germany use Turkish prints, these are avoided by the scholars.)


This was typeset in 1299/1881/2 in the Egyptian Government Press and printed both in one volume (Prince­ton library 2273) and in ten and/or thirty leather bound volumes (on the market and "Exhibi­tion Islam," London).
13 years later printed in Bulaq as well:

In 1914 ‒ when the United Kingdom was at war with the Ottoman Empire ‒ Egypt declared its indepen­dence, the ruler changed from Wālī/Governor to Sulṭān ‒ Khedive had been the personal title, not a function or an office.
Now it was urgent that Egypt printed its own maṣāḥif. The statement that the "foreign ones" (Istan­bul was the capital, not foreign before 1915) had mistakes ‒ without given further informa­tion what and where ‒ is propaganda, no real informa­tion. Repetition does not turn it into fact.

The Shape of the Qur'ān ‒ Guide for Publishers

When I started to write "Kein Standard", I wanted to show that the King Fuʾād Edition of 1924 is not the standard,
that the maṣāḥif printed by the Tāj Company Ltd. are 100 times more often printed, reprinted in other countries and copied in Pakistan and elsewhere.
The 1924 copy was only reprinted once: 1955 by the Communist govern­ment of China ‒
to be precise its text was reproduced, but put into a new frame, with new page headers, with new sura title boxes, new signs on the margin for divi­sions, saǧadāt and sakatāt.
A title page was added ‒ the original didn't have one.
And two pages were thrown out, because King Fuʾād was men­tioned ‒ not republican enough.
In Cairo, it was never reproduced, but some­what improved ‒ its margin reduced.
1952 the Egyptian Govern­ment Press (Amiriyya) pro­duced a "second print,"
different from the 1924 edition at about 900 places.
"That Tāj was more success­ful commer­cially is ir­rele­vant.
The King Fuʾād Edition is superior," one might say.
The opposite is true.
Even if we take the ʿUṯmān Ṭāhā edition printed in Medina, which com­bines 99,8% of the orthography of the 1952 (!) Cairo print with the dis­tri­bution of the text on 604 pages popular in Istanbul around 1900, with a clear and easy to read calligraphy, it is NOT superior to the Tāj Company Ltd edi­tions, it is just as good ‒ see here.

By the time I had finished the book, something else had caught my eye.
First I discovered, that in Cairo more than ten printers (as well as others in Bairut and Tehran) repro­duced the 522-page-muṣḥaf written by Muṣṭafā Naẓīf Qādir­ġalī
‒ as it was written (in the Ottoman ortho­graphy) still in the 1950s,
‒ in the new orthography (with I have called Q24).
So I learned that publishers just change the masora (little signs around the rasm), verse num­bers, sura title, divisions (juz, ḥizb ...) ‒ and even the rasm (elimi­nating a ḥarf al-madd from time to time) without much ado, with­out informing the public.
Then I noticed that a printer (Aḥmad Šamarlī) had a calligrapher (Muḥ Saʿd al-Haddād) copy the 522-muṣḥaf line by line calli­graphi­cally very similar but in the new (African) orthography.

At first, I had believed what the chief editor of the 1924 edition had told G.Berg­sträßer, that he had recon­structed the spelling by tran­scrib­ing the text that he knew by heart according to the Andalu­sian manuals on the writing of the qurʾān by Abū ʿAmr ʿUṯmān ibn Saʿīd ad-Dānī and his pupil Abū Daʾūd Sulaiman Ibn Naǧāḥ, following Ibn Naǧāḥ, when he disagreed with his teacher.
Later I discovered that the editors of the Medina muṣḥaf written by ʿUṯmān Ṭāhā, wrote that they followed "mostly" Ibn Naǧāḥ, which means ‒ if the 10% of the text that I com­pared are re­presen­ta­tive ‒ in 95% of cases.
And that they (i.e. al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddad al-Mālikī) some­times follow neither Abū ʿAmr nor Abū Daʾūd (maybe Abu'l Hasan ʿAlī bin Muḥammad al-Murādi al-Andalusī al-Balansī [d. 546 h] in al-Munṣif or Abū'l Qāsim ibn Firruh ibn Ḫalaf ibn Aḥmad al-Ruʿaynī aš-Šāṭibī (أبو القاسم بن فره بن خلف بن أحمد الرعيني الشاطبي ) [d. 590 h] in al-ʿAqīlat Atrāf al-Qaṣāʾid or in ar-Rāʾiyya الرائية
or as-Suyūtī's [d.849 h] Itqān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān 1999
2019

Then I learnt that some editions follow Mawrid al-Ẓamʾān by al-Kharrāz, which is based on both ad-Dānī and Ibn Naǧāḥ;
and that Gizeh 1924 just follows the most common Moroccan rasm,
the Libyan muṣḥaf al-jamāhīriya follows always ad-Dānī,
and Tāj Company mostly ad-Dānī, because the Indian rasm authority, al-Ārkātī follows ad-Dānī,
that Indonesia had copied several Ottoman and Indian (notably pre-Tāj from Bombay) maṣāḥif, that 1983/4 the government committee (Lajnah Pentashihan Mushaf al-Qurʾan established in 1957) published a standard to bring them together (e.g. introducing an "Indian" sign for /ū/ missing in Turkish and Persian manuscripts), reducing the pause signs to seven, imposing one system of verse numbering (Kūfī with 6236 verses)
that the Committee changed the standard after 19 years ‒ not secretly but in the open AND stating which authority they follow in each case.
September 2018 a list with 186 words to be written differently again was published.
In 171 cases a straight fatḥa will stand, where none was before, but there are 11 cases were it is the other way around.
Three cases concern raʾā = he saw. 1983 it was written as in Bombay and in Bahrije (the two prints reprinted in Indonesia): راٰ In 2002 the scholars changed it to رأى like in Modern Standard Arabic, in 2018 they switched to the African way of writing: رءا
In Tunis there are lots of editions following the transmission of Qālūn, some following the normal Maghrebian rasm, other al-Kharrāz, some in the writing style of ʿUṯmān Ṭāhā, others a "mild" form of Maghribī (not as difficult to read as Fāsī), none copying the Libyan (ad-Dānī) rasm, since that book is readily available.
So I discovered that one must keep the different dimensions apart:
not assuming that there are fixed/necessary links between rasm, reading/trans­mission, verse counting, names of Sura, liturgical divisions, calligraphic style, page layout (like: each Juz must start on top of a right page, or: verses may not straddle pages {or very rarely} ...)

Yes, the 1924 KFE brought several innovations:
letters are on a baseline, few ligatures, space between words, numbers after each verse (not just an end-of-verse-marker, and signs every fifth verse),
a streamlined system of pause signs;
the reading helps were largely Maghrebian, but a common sign for vowelless and for unpronounced became differen­tiated.
Strangely most orientalists still assume that the "Cairo/Azhar committee" came up with lots of innovations.
There were some improvements (streamlined Sajawandi pause signs, differentiated sukun signs for vowellessness vs. unpronouncedness), but the main revolution happened with the 1308/1890 al-Muḫallalātī muṣḥaf:
a difficient rasm,
the Maġribi way for writing long vowels:
having always two signs: a vowel sign + ḥarf al-madd
writing if necessary a small (or red) ḥarf al-madd.
Yes, the Iranian Center for Printing and Publication of Qurʾān, came up with a new (simplified) rasm
and at the same time a new (simple) system of vowel signs, pause signs and so on.
One must keep these aspects apart. There are Iranian prints with the new rasm, with the tradi­tional signs, there are prints with the calligraphy of ʿUṯmān Ṭāhā, but with a different rasm from the Medina print.
Most prints published by the Center do not differen­tiate between iẓhār vs. idġām, of nūn sākin (esp. tanwīn), but some do!
Most Iranian prints do not show assi­mila­tion that go further than in MSA, but some do.
The Damascus publisher Dar al-Maʿrifa prints Medinese transmissions (Qālūn, Azraq, Isbahani) with Kufian verse numbers ‒ to make it easier to compare.
Instead of talking of "la version du Maghreb" one should say "the trans­mission of Warsh", "the verse numbering of Medina II," "the rasm of Ibn Naǧāḥ" or "Q52 rasm aka KFC rasm" (different at two places from Q52) or "the rasm of Muṣḥaf Qaṭar" (different at one place from ʿUṬ/KFC); in other cases of "an elaborated Saǧā­wandī pause system with 15 signs" or a "simplified Saǧā­wandī pause system with five signs."
True, that is longer, but assuming that these aspects go toghether, is wrong.
Publishers are free to come up with new devices.
Almost 50 years ago the Iranian Center for Printing and Publica­tion of Quran intro­duced three new signs: small fatḥa, small ḍamma, small kasra where in old Ottoman and Safavid maṣāḥif we find red fatḥa/ḍamma/kasra (just waṣl-sign in Q24).
Ten years later the Center introduced grey for silent letters (later yet, blue or red instead of grey). When it had become cheap and simple to print a second colour they did not go back on their earlier invention: red letters were un­pronounc­ed/silent and the fatḥa at the beginning of a word normally starting with hamzatu l-waṣl after a pause, hence spoken as hamzatu l-qaṭʿ stayed small and black.
Yes, there are traditions of qurʾān writing, some aspects normally come together, but not necessarily.
Note:
The publishers do not change the (oral) text of the qurʾān, they just try to make it easier to read or to pronounce it correctly.

Quranic Calligraphic Styles

When you leaf through my German Amazon book "Kein Standard", you learn a lot about calli­graphic styles, but I hardly write about them. In my German blog I show that ʿUṯmān Ṭāhā is less calli­graphic than the 1924 Egyptian muṣ­ḥaf: his letters stay close to the base­line, there is no point-meem, the next letter is always to the left, so ḥarakāt are always near to the letters ‒ and in his first (Syrian) muṣḥaf there is some space between words, in the version he wrote in Medina often there is no extra space between words.
All in all, ʿUṯmān Ṭahā is very close to the style of the Amiriyya = a simple Ottoman style.
In "Kein Standard" I focus on ortho­graphy, giving most attention to the Maghrebian-Arab and to the Pakistani-Indian ones
and consequently on the new Arab calligraphic style and the new Pakistani-Indian one. Of course, I display examples from Morocco, from the Sudān, from Russia-Tartaristan as well ‒ and the earlier Indian style from Lucknow plus example from Punjab, from Bengal and Kerala.
I show many examples from Turkey and the Mašriq, but from Iran, I show mainly Nastaʿ­liq ones.
Here you see the normal Persian style, taken from old maṣāḥif, but recently reproduced.

although written by three different (famous) writers, they are similar.
Note in the bottom right, that (like sometimes in India) wa is separated from the word to which it "belongs", something for­bidden in Arabic.

Here two more examples of wrong wa- at the end of a line. I find the first example shocking because the silent alif-waṣl is separated from its vowel /a/.

In the book I show images from four Iranian ʿUṯmān Ṭāhā editions.
Here an Arab-Persian version which the original ʿUṯmān Ṭāhā writing, but in 11 lines instead of 15 ‒ and again twice the grave sin against Arab ortho­graphy: wa- at the end of line:

Here a more traditional print: 604 pages, a Persan style close to ʿUṯmān Ṭāhā, mostly with the Persian help signs:
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Qurʾānic Orthography

Most people think that there is ONE way to write the qurʾān, that if we leave the different qiraʾāt aside and ignore the style of writing, all copies of the qurʾān are the same.
And that they are written alright.

The opposite is true:
there are many different qurʾanic "ortho"graphies and none is ortho/right.

b, k, l, m, n, t ... are fine. Paleo-Linguists argue about ض ص ط ظ

But for modern readers only the vowels are proble­matic: short and long vowels.

Basically there are two systems:
an Indian system with seven vowel signs (a ā i ī u ū x)
an African System which needs for each long vowel a vowel sign plus the correspond­ing lengthening letter.

The African system is today common in the Arab world. When there is no leng­then­ing letter (waw, yāʾ, alif) after ḍamma, kasra, fatḥa in the rasm, a small letter is added. When the rules of pro­sody require an "ī" al­though no yāʾ is in the rasm, a small yāʾ barī (i.e with the tail to the front) is added.

But when the rules of prosody require a (written/long) yāʾ to be shortened,
that is not reflected in the text.
I am shocked because the lengthening of vowels required by prosody IS shown.
I had no problem with sticking to the base letters, but adding read­ing helps sometimes defies God's logic.
(Turks and Persians do never show the niceties of quranic as­simi­lation. ‒ That I can under­stand.)
(Turks note leng­thened ī, but not leng­thened ū ‒ some­thing corrected in all Indo­nesian and some Iranian reprints.)

Indians, Turks, Persians, Indo­nesi­ans are not happy with this. The Arab attitude "every­body knows that these letters do not leng­then the vowel at these places" sounds arrogant in non-Arab hears.

In XXX:10 /ʾasāʾŭ s-sūʾā/ in India (second line) and Indonesia (last, right) there is no vowell sign about the wau in /ʾasāʾŭ/, hence it is not pronounced (just as the following alif).
In Kerala (first, right) and Turkey (fourth line) that wau is silent because it is only the "seat" of hamza (there would be written "madd" under­neath if it were to be pronounced).
In the new Iranian orthography (fifth line, right) all silent letter are pink.
But in the third line (right: Madina: ʿUṯmān Ṭaha; left: Damascus: Dār al-Maʿrifa) there is no Silent-Sign above the wau.
The same in the last line, left (Tunis: Nous-mêmes) ‒ wrong as I see it.
But two of the taǧwīd-Editions based on UT do show the silence of that wau: On the top, left from Bairut (blueish for silence), on the fifth line, left from Damascus (grey triange above for silence).

When shortening doesn't follow a general rule, but applies just to parti­cular places within the text = when a vowel is short because it must rhyme with lines before and after, this IS reflected in the Arab-African text. So why not: all the time?

Here you see words from an Indian manuscript (from Surat Hūd) in which ONLY the vowel SIGNS count, the "lengthening" vowel letters are IGNORED (hence: NO sign above or below) ‒ al-farīqaini in the last line has jazm above the yāʾ because in the diph­thong yāʾ is NOT silent.
((Added later: I first had seen just one manu­script from around 1800 with the sign-only ortho­graphy, by now I have seen some more ‒ up to the time when litho­graphs became common, litho­graphs with the modern/ mixed way of writing long vowel letters)

on the margin I added doctored versions: signs were moved to a place easier to read for the modern reader

The modern Indian system (black on white background) is a mix of the old con­sistent system and the African one: when the CORRES­PONDING letter follows a vowel sign, the SHORT vowel sign is used (as in Africa), only when there is a diffe­rent letter or no "leng­thening" letter at all, the long vowel sign is used.


In 7:103, 10:75, 11:97 and 43:46 (and 10:83 with an added mīm for plural) pro­nounciation and rasm are the same; there is only disagreement on whether the alif or the yāʾ is mute:
wa-malaʾihī
IPak: وَمَلَا۠ئِهٖ
Q52: وَمَلَإِي۠هِۦ
In the rasm there are matres (ḥurūf al-madd) for both /a/ and /i/,
‒ indeed here letters (not consonants!) stand for short vowels,
  because there was no other way to notice them.
in India alif is silent (the short fatḥa is valid, not the alif), yāʾ carries hamza,
in Arabia alif "carries" hamza below, yāʾ is silent.

In 21:34 ʾa-faʾin
IPak: افَا۠ئِنْ
Q52: اَفإي۠ن
India and osm/Tur make the alif silent
(Indians used to leave the alif without any sign, now they put the silent making circle,
Turks write qaṣr underneath)
for Arabs alif carries hamza, yāʾ is silent.
Muṣṭafā Naẓīf in one of his manu­scripts (the 604 pages berkenar one) just drops the otiose letter. اَفَإنْ
It does not help to observe that in his other maṣāḥif he has the super­fluous letter. The 604 page muṣḥaf is often re­printed (not as often as the 522 page one, but in different countries) without "correc­tion".
Similar 6:24 min-nabaʾi

In Q52 alif "carries" hamza and /i/, yāʾ is silent and in IPak alif is silent, yāʾ carries hamza and /i/.

forward to the Middle Ages (the Dark Age)

In the European Middle Ages (let's say after Augustin of Hippo) scholars believed what was written by authoritative authors.
So the earth was created some five thousand years ago in six days -- including plants, birds, fish, animals, and snakes -- and Adam & Eve.
And in Jerusalem, there was first The First Temple and then The Second Temple.
After the advent of Modernity, scholars made observations, experiments, and excavations.
And no traces of a central temple for the people of Israel was found in Jerusalem, and what is more: There was no United Kingdom.
IF there were David and Salomon, they were petty chieftains.
Of course, if you are looking for a map of the Garden of Eden in the Hebrew Bible, you can believe the existence of the First Temple.
Or you can read the books of Israel Finkel‎stein (and Neil Asher Silber‎man) and know what can be known.
Even if there are no traces, one can assume that there was a local temple in Jerusalem and that it was destroyed by Pharaoh Šošeq's army.
The Judean King Jehoaš had a second temple built after 835.
Destroyed around 700 BCE by the Assyrian King Sîn-aḫḫe-eriba.
The third temple was destroyed 597 by the Babylonians, and 586 annihilated.
The fourth ‒ the first of regional importance, but still not THE only temple for יהוה ‒ was built by Zerubbabel and Joshua 520 BCE
or 445 by Nehemiah and Ezra (or was that the fifth? )
500 years later Herod the Great built the Sixth Temple.
Around it, he had erected an artificial mount supported by huge stones blocks.
To call this temple the Second is like saying that Pei erected the Louvre and Forster the Reichstag.
And to speak of "Solomon's Temple" is like saying King Arthur defended the UK.
If you say: But the Jews ... I call to your attention that the national socia‎list Ben Gurion proclaimed the Third Reich (בית השלישי) after "his" army had conquered the Sinai Pen‎insula.

CC (in the "the World of the Quran" module) talks of Salomon's Temple, showing that they just reproduce what others say, re‎producing phrases used by Believers in the Hebrew Bible, showing that they live in the Middle Ages, are not "Wissenschaftler".
To say "around the turn of the eras", "in the third century before ..." is better than "in the so-called Second Temple Period", but it is okay. To calls Herod's temple "The Second Temple" is wrong -- and whoever does it is stupid.

Cairo1924 Standard Text Cairo

I am a single issue warrior. I fight against the King Fuad Edition as the Standard Qur'ān.
Corpus Coranicum, Gerd-Rüdiger Puin, and Marijn van Putten are to be con­vinced that they are wrong.
My arguments are of two kinds.
There is no Standard Edition because there are about thirty para­meters going into a muṣḥaf.
Gizeh 1924/ KFE/ Official Egyptian Print is a bad choice because of mis­takes.

Gizeh 1924—the edition Corpus Coranicum displays as the refe­rence and uses as the basis for its elec­tronic text—is bad because
‒ the use of matres lectionis is ill-defined (MOSTLY Ibn Naǧāḥ, but about 5% ad-Dānī, no reasons given, and no list published).
      the Lybian muṣḥaf follows 100% ad-Dānī,
      other Maghrebian editions follow al-Ḫarrāz, which is mostly Ibn Naǧāḥ
      Indonesia and Iran make their own mix, but at least lists are published with their choices.
      It is known that Qaṭar's and Saʿudia's rasms differ at one point each from Cairo1952.
      Nobody has given reasons for the cases, where Cairo follows ad-Dānī (not Ibn Naǧāḥ),

‒ the signalling of mute vowel letters is "too Arab", i.e. whereas missing leng­thening is always corrected by a small vowel letter, the short­en­ing (i.e. ignoring) of a vowel letter is only marked when it is "not obvious", i.e. when it is not because of a closed syllable, but for reasons of rhyme.
Many editions do not have extra signs for cor­rect­ing the length of a vowel, but Iranian, Indo­nesian, Indian editions show ALL short­ened vowels as such (or none at all).

‒ whereas Eastern editions write the end of suras as if there is a pause between suras,
    and Western editions as if the next sura follows without pause with the basmala first,
    the 1924 King Fuad Edition writes the end of the sura as if the next sura follows immediately.
This seems to be a mistake, a mistake corrected in 1952, corrected in the Sauʿdi editions and all later Editions.
   
Marijn writes of "Cairo" but he does not see,
that any muṣḥaf consists of
‒ sura (always the same)
‒ sura names (quite different)
‒ sura titel boxes (quite different)
‒ divisions like half, manzil, ǧuz, ḥizb (quite different in different editions)
‒ end of verse, numbers
‒ catch words or not, chronology or not, "amen"or not, omen or not
‒ indication of saǧadāt
‒ reading signs (assimilation, shortening, lenthening, imala ...)
‒ ḥarakāt, tašdīd, madd
‒ the basic text
Although van Putten is interested in the basic text ONLY,
he calls that "Cairo".

The left side is strange: Sura 143 doesn't exist, an-nisāʾ 143 is meant.
What we find in Cairo 46:5 is even stranger:


No trace of the word in question.
What we do find in the verse before looks very different from what van Putten calls "Cairo"

Please call it "Basic Quranic Text" "rasm plus" or anything of the sort.
"Cairo" short for "Gizeh 1924" is not a sceleton, it is a masoretic text!
a bundle of features that make a muṣḥaf!
I am sure you have no idea what "Gizeh 1924" aka "King Fu'ad" is.
You could have taken ANY muṣḥaf in the WORLD (except Turkey and Persia!)!


They all have the same Basic Quranic Text, and that's all that you are interested in here.
So please, stop calling "it" "Cairo"!

Madd al-Muttasil and Madd al-Munfasil

There are several types of madd sign in the Qurʾān, in South Asian masāhif:

@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.

experts say ...

Experts say,
that there are hundereds more alifs in Ottoman and Turkish prints
then in modern Arab and in Indian prints.
Although not outright wrong, I think it is stupid to say.
Why?
Because there is not one alif, but nine:

	Q52 IPak	Q52 IPak	Q52 IPak
There are	leading	middle	trailing	Alifs
hamza	ء     vsign	ء    ء	ء   ء
mater lec.	‒	X	X
silent	waṣla X	circle X	circle   X X     X	Alif wiqāya accusative marker

In IPak a v(owel) sign on/below alif includes hamza

In spite of what the experts say,
there are not more alifs signifying or carrying hamza
‒ whether leading, in the middle or trailing,
nor more otiose/silent alifs.
Here Turks (last line) have the same silent alif; they shorten it, i.e. the fatḥa is valid, the alif is not.
BTW: In one of the three maṣāḥif of Muṣṭafā Naẓīf the yāʾ is missing -> the alif carries the hamza+kasra (first line on the right side).



Here Turks (first line) actually have an otisose alif LESS (END of my snippet)


What these experts want to say:
There are more Alif Matres lectionis, i.e. alifs standing for /a/.

millions good editions possible

There is only one qur'ān.
But there are many differences in the editions.
‒ differences in the style of writing, the gra­phic form
‒ different divisions (verses, manāzil, aḥzāb, pages ...)
BTW: the suras and their order are the same in all editions,
      but their names can be different,
      the informa­tion given in the Header can be dif­ferent,
‒ differences in the words, the sound of the qurʾān, the (micro)­meaning ‒
      this is meant with the ten canoni­cal readings,
      the twenty trans­missions, the four ad­ditional
      (less canonical) readings plus all the variants that are not re­cognized.
HERE I do not talk about the recitation style, nor about the (national) accents of re­citors,
but just about
‒ differences in the letters, writing of the words = the rasm,
‒ differences in the additional signs for vowells, doubeling,
      extra length, silence, required response.
When you multiply all of these, there are thousands of pos­sibili­ties.
You might say, but when one writes in Fāsī style, it is the trans­mission of Warš, the rasm of Ḫarrāz with Maġri­bian sub­divisions and additonal signs, Medinese verse endings.
Yes, very likely, but not certain.
Here images from two printed Tunisian editions
      of the trans­mission of Ḥafṣ written in Maġribī style:
If you a sceptical and lazy, here is mālik from the Fatiḥa with /ā/ red added alif:

And here the one verse where Ḥafs allows both fatḥa (black) and ḍamma (red): /ḍaffin/, /ḍuffin/

And when you think, that for the rasm there are five, six or maybe ten pos­si­bili­ties, you are wrong.
When you write a muṣḥaf (or prepare a printing) you do not have to stick to one authority.
You are free to write one word (even a word at one particular place) with a vowel letter or without.
The King Fahd Complex has adopted the rasm of the Qahira1952 Edition (which is rather obscure) changed one word (in 2:72), Qaṭar has changed another word (in 56:2). Indo­nesia (Ministry of Reli­gious Affairs) and Iran (the Center for the Printing and Dis­tri­bution of the Holy Quran) have made wild choices ‒ at least these are docu­ment­ed (albeit not in the muṣḥaf).
BTW, I called Q52 obscure, because it does itself not stick to an authority. There­fore careful editors have added "mostly"/ġāliban or "in the most"/fil ġālib to the state­ment made in the afterword, that the rasm is according to Ibn Naǧāḥ.

So millions of different ‒ equally valid ‒ editions are possible, thousands do exist.


I am mainly interest­ed in ortho­graphy:
i.e. the list of the written words ‒ but unlike Webster or Le Dictio­naire de l'Aca­démie Fran­ҫaise a word can be written dif­ferently at different places
(سِيمَىٰهُمۡ (7:48
(2:273, 47:40, 55:41) سِيمَـٰهُمۡ
(سِيمَاهُمۡ (48:29
The German expert for Qurʾānic paleo-orthography, who has studied the old mss.
‒ Diem has "just" studied the Nabataen precursor ‒
is convinced that first the yāʾ was used for writing the /ā/,
then nothing, before the modern strategy ‒ using an alif ‒ became common.
I do not give his name because I have to critize him strongly:
Although quoting the text of the Gizeh Qurʾān (1924/Būlāq 1952), which he calls "The Standard Text", he uses a dotted yāʾ where Gizeh uses an un­dotted one,
and he uses the circle for sukûn, where Gizeh uses the Indian (by now Qurʾānic) Jazm-sign.
He does not see that graphic style, di­visions, rasm writing, and the way of voweling are inde­pendent of each each.
what I have shown above.
Or even more to the point:
the differences in sounds (the qiraʾāt) reflected in very few differences in the rasm,
in few cases by different diacritical points,
but mainly by hamza sign, šadda and vowel signs
and most rasm differences (dif­ferences in writing long vowels)
are two separate things.

Just because the only edition of the trans­mission of Qālūn according to Nāfiʿ he owns, follows the rasm described by ad-Dānī in the Muqnī,
he calls that rasm "the Qālūn rasm",
he takes the delivery boy for the pizza backer.

Okay, I went too far.

Between Kufa (Ḥafṣ and five others) and Medina (Warš and Qālūn) there are 30 differences in the rasm.
When you look at the beginning of 46:15 in my pictures, there are two differences:
aḥsana(n) vs. ḥusna(n); this is a difference in sound, a difference between qiraʾāt, and
insān written with alif or without (i.e. with substitution alif = dagger alif = small alif = quṣair); this is a difference in writing only, a difference in the rasm.
The three last lines are all the trans­mission of Qālūn, the last but three with the Dānī-rasm, the two at the very bottom with Ibn Naǧāḥ's rasm,
which is common for Warš and Qālūn ‒ except for the edition pushed by Qaḏḏāfī ‒ and is used for Ḥafṣ since 1924 (common by now).
There are a few thousand difference in words/sound/local meaning ‒ rarely changing great things.
There are a few thousand difference in writing ‒ not affecting the sound/words/meaning at all.
Qālūn vs. Ḥafs belongs to the first category,
rasm writing (according to ad-Dānī or al-Arkātī or based on nine good editions) on the second.
And there is a little overlap: 30 differences in the rasm reflecting differences in the "readings".
but the Qālūn muṣḥaf the expert had in his hand is now called muṣḥaf ad-Dānī, because that's what sets it apart, not the reading.

thousand different editions

Although most copies of the qurʾān are very similar to the copy of my neighbour,
when we look at all printed copies in the world, there a thousand dif­ferent prints:
they come in thirty books, ten, seven, six, five, four, three, two and one volume.
Some have marginal notes, others good/bad/in­different omen (cf. fāl-i Qurʾān),

some indicate the chrono­logy of reve­lation, some suggest end of prayer (because a new theme is treated in the next verse).
Some are "ayat barkenar", i.e. verse do not straddle pages (BTW: in the early manu­scripts words went on into the next line ‒ in some even the next page ‒ without any ado).
There are different systems of cutting the suras into verses.
The number of suras ­‒ 114 ‒ and their order are today the same every­where (which was not the case in the first century after the hijra). Their names can differ.
These differences are in the divisions of the qurʾān (verses, half, third, seventh/manzil, juz, ḥizb, half, quarter, eighth)
One more element belongs to this group: the pauses.
There are not only different systems of pause signs from 15 (India) to one (Morocco),
even when two copies have the same signs, they can have them at different places, or a dif­fe­rent one at the same place.

In the early manuscripts "end of aya" is marked, but there can be pauses within an aya, and sometimes there is no pause between two ayas.
(In some early manuscripts recommen­dated pauses are marked by an end-of-aya-sign, but these are not counted in the mumber of ayats given in the box at the beginning of the sura.)
Perhaps the best known example for the importance of pauses is 3:7 (the seventh verse of surat Āl ʿImrān)
Here are almost twenty published English trans­lation of the same (exactly the same!) words:

SahihIntern: And no one knows its [true] inter­pretation except Allah.
But those firm in know­ledge say, "We believe in it. All [of it] is from our Lord."
Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din al-Hilal & Dr Muhammad Muhsin Khani (KFC): but none knows its hidden meanings save Allah.
And those who are firmly grounded in know­ledge say: "We believe in it; the whole of it (clear and unclear Verses) are from our Lord."
Yusuf Ali: but no one knows its hidden meanings except Allah.
And those who are firmly grounded in know­ledge say: "We believe in the Book; the whole of it is from our Lord:"
Pickthall: None knoweth its explanation save Allah. And those who are of sound instruc­tion say: We believe therein; the whole is from our Lord;
but none knows their meaning except God;
and those who are steeped in know­ledge affirm: "We believe in them as all of them are from the Lord." But only those who have wisdom under­stand.
Ali Unal: although none knows its inter­pretation save God.
And those firmly rooted in know­ledge say: "We believe in it (in the entirety of its verses, both explicit and allegorical); all is from our Lord";
Aziz Ahmed: but none know the inter­pretation of it except Allah.
And those who are well-grounded in knowledge say, "We believe in it; it is all from our Lord";
Daryabadi: the same whereas none knoweth the inter­pretation thereof a save Allah.
And the firmly grounded in knowledge Say: we believe therein, the whole is from our Lord.
Faridul Haque: and only Allah knows its proper interpretation;
and those having sound know­ledge say, “We believe in it, all of it is from our Lord”;
Muh Assad: but none save God knows its final meaning.
Hence, those who are deeply rooted in knowledge say:
Shabbir Ahmed: None encompasses their final meaning but God.
Those who are well-founded in know­ledge under­stand why the alle­gories have been used and they keep learning from them. They proclaim the belief that the entire Book is from their Lord.
Sarvar: No one knows its true inter­pretations except God
and those who have a firm grounding in know­ledge say, "We believe in it. All its verses are from our Lord."
Ali Shaker: but none knows its inter­pretation except Allah,
and those who are firmly rooted in know­ledge say: We believe in it, it is all from our Lord;

AbdulMannen: But no one knows its true inter­pretation except Allâh, and those firmly grounded in know­ledge.
They say, `We believe in it, it is all (- the basic and decisive verses as well as the alle­gorical ones) from our Lord.´
Muh. Ali: And none knows its inter­pre­tation save Allah, and those firmly rooted in know­ledge.
They say: We believe in it, it is all from our Lord.
Sher Ali: And none knows it except ALLAH and those who are firmly grounded in know­ledge;
they say, `We believe in it; the whole is from our Lord.'
Rashad Khalifa: None knows the true meaning thereof except GOD and those well founded in know­ledge.
They say, "We believe in this - all of it comes from our Lord."

But they are not different because of the English language, but because of a particular pause or absence of a pause;

When you make a pause after "Allāh" he alone knows.
When there is no pause, he and some humans know.

Better known are the different readings, their trans­missions and ways/turuq.
These can differ in words, but not in meaning:
"We created" and "He created" are not the same, but they say the same: God created!.
Sometimes the meaning of a verse/aya in one reading differs from the same aya in another,
but this never affects the meaning of a paragraph.