a miracle

From around 1900 until the end of WWI David Bryce from Glasgow did not only print miniature New Testaments, but miniature Qurʾāns as well.
But what is special: he pre-printed the 1924 Gizeh print, as you can see in this article in the Guardian.

Could it be, that someone replaced a Mini-Muṣḥaf in bad shape
with a new one? Could it be, that the box is old,

but not the book?
The original looks like this:

and it has a nice red+gold cover.

I found the miniature reprint of the 827+XXII Bulāq print in two university libraries: UvA: Allard Pierson Depot ; OTM: Mini 271 IN BEWERKING. Format [ca. 850 p] 4 cm, and Amherst College: Accession Number: acf.oai.edge.fivecolleges.folio.ebsco.com.fs00001006.b04362a3.f5de.5fc5.b277.97fbb1e2f507; they give J[ohann] Steinbrener Verlag & Buchbinderei as printer. It should be the binder as well, possibly -- if before 1945 -- from Winterberg/Bohemia or -- if after 1947 -- from Schärding/Austria.
Of course, there could be another pirated print.

Printing of the Qurʾān (EQ) by Michael W. Albin

In his 1990 article Early Arabic printing Michael W. Albin writes one should not compete with The Guiness Book of Records: the first Qurʾān print in the Empire, the largest one, the smallest one. Ironically his "Printing of the Qurʾān" in the Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an Vol. IV: P‒Sh (2004) devotes more space to the "first printed Qur'an in the Ottoman Empire" than to any other topic, and it qualifies as "the worst Encyclopedia article ever published."

The chapter on the First states:
"None of the earliest Qurʾāns printed in Egypt have survived."
not considering the possibility that there were no earlier ones printed in Egypt before the ones that did survive.
"the first printing of portions of the Qurʾān (ajzāʾ) [in] April 1833"
"Certain aspects of the edition, however, are clear. It was printed in tablet or sheet form"
Nothing is clear about the supposed print, not even that it took place, and what is "tablet form", what "sheet form"? Clay tablets, paper sheets?
"and is often referred to as ajzāʾ al-Qurʾān, in distinction to a complete muṣḥaf."
"We do not know whether the text was typeset or litho­graphed."
"Before printing the 1833 edition, Muḥammad ʿAlī asked Shaykh al-Tamīmī, Muftī of Egypt, to put his seal on the printed copy, so that it could be sold or other­wise dis­tributed. The shaykh agreed to this"
"Ignoring opposition, Muḥammad ʿAlī authorized the first Egyptian printing of the Qurʾān." ‒ definite article and no "portions of" anymore: THE whole thing!
"It is doubtful, whether this edi­tion re­ceived the tra­di­tio­nal attention of scholars and cor­rec­tors before printing."
Remember, we know no­thing about the sup­posed edition, so it goes without saying: every­thing about it is doubt­ful.
"sixty sheets (alwāḥ; sing. lūḥ) were printed for dis­tri­bu­tion to students, pre­sumab­ly students in the govern­ment’s schools."
Nobody knows whether this really happened, and in what form were the sheets pre­sumab­ly dis­tri­buted?
"The Qurʾān portions printed in 1833 were no doubt sold to the popu­lace."
I doubt it.
"It appears that sometime late in 1857 a project to correct the impounded maṣā­ḥif (see muṣḥaf) was begun."
So now, they are the complete thing, not por­tions, parts, selections, but maṣā­ḥif!
And he goes on: "Distribution of the 1833 muṣ­ḥaf no doubt suffered from ..."
So Albin is devoting page after page on an imagined muṣ­ḥāf, that never existed, he oscilliats between some sheets, tablets, ajzāʾ and a com­plete muṣ­ḥaf.

According to Albin the 1924 muṣḥaf is "known as "royal (amīriyya) edition”. Utter nonsense. Egyptians called it , مصحف 12 سطر or مصحف المساحة or مصحف الأميرية either by the (almost unique) number of lines per page, by the printer (the Survey of Egypt in Gizeh) or by the publisher (the Royal Press, al-maṭbaʿa al-amīriyya) ‒ not by the King ‒ why else would it have the feminin form?
Albin is able to top this:
He calls the guy who headed the committee that pre­pared the 1924 edition Shaykh Muḥammad ʿAlī l-Ḥusaynī, which is so wrong that the editors of the EQ wanted to preserve it, to show to the world that this article was written by a librarian, not an Arabist. (If Alī and al-Ḥ. were joined, the ī of Alī would be short Ali'l-Ḥ., but since it is really Aliyyun the names are not joined: the man is Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḫalaf al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād al-Mālikī.)
"Many Qurʾāns printed elsewhere have been modeled on its ... printing con­ven­tions"
I know of two editions that used the same printing tech­nique as the 1924 Gizeh print: Kabul 1352/1934, an edition largely ignored, and a line identical resetting with the Bulāq sorts in Hyderabad 1938 (each side opposite Pickthall's English translation in two volumes ‒ reprinted by the Islamic Call Society in the 1970s in one volume).
The committee "adopting the recitation conventions of Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim"
It is not a recitation con­vention marked by can­ti­lation notes, but a transmission of a "reading".
And on the field of qiraʾa, the committee had nothing to decide, nothing to adopt. The riwāya in Egypt was (I guess for 400 years already) Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim.
"When the first printing (i.e. that of 1924) was sold out, the National Library of Egypt determined to bring out another edition. ... The 1924 edition remained the basis of sub­sequent editions in Egypt."
All wrong, the second printing (1925) added seals/rolls to the signi­taries names, and added one word to the text about the edition, and the National Library had nothing to do with it, the Govern­ment Press in Būlāq (al-Amīriyya) did it.
In the next year, or a year later, they changed the spelling of ʾallan in 73:20 ‒ a spelling that was not kept in the big revision in 1952.
Albin confuses the small changes (in the back matter) of 1925 with the big revision in 1952.
Whereas the committee for 1924 was only one ʿālim plus three men from the state educa­tion sphere, men who could not contribute to the project, just sym­bolizing state involvement, the committee for 1952 were four ʿulamāʾ, headed ‒ as in 1924 ‒ by the (then) chief qāriʾ ʿAlī Mu­ḥammad aḍ-Ḍab­bāʿ (not Ḍibāʿ as far as I know). In 1952 there were about 900 changes (only three in the rasm).
Contrary to what Albin writes, the 1952 edition became the basis of sub­sequent edtions in Egypt (and later in the Mašriq).
And Albin invents an edition "called" so and so:
"The government issued an edition reviewed by the iden­tical committee in 1936 called the Fārūq edition, after the Egyptian king, Fārūq (r. 1926‒52). The version was cor­rected by Shaykh Naṣr al-ʿAdlī, chief corrector at the government (amīriyya) press. In addi­tion to the signatures of the five persons involved, the work bears the seal of the Shaykh al-Azhar."
((note the change from "royal" to "govern­ment press" for amīriyya!))
If he had consulted the 1936 print, he would have seen that it was not only made by the same men as in 1924, but that nothing had changed, not even the dedication to King Fuʾād!. Albin's (and Reynold's) "King Farūq Edition" is mere invention (as so many things in his article ‒ or at best hearsay.).
BTW, the private (re-)print of 1938 is not by Maktabat al-Šams al-Islāmiyya, as Albin writes, but by Maktabat al-Šarq al-Islā­miyya wa-Maṭ­baʻa­tu­hā, un­less the librarians in Amster­dam and Jeru­salem got it wrong.
LATER ADDITION

HSU CHENG-HSiANG writes in his Ph.D. THE FIRST THIRTY YEARS OF ARABIC PRINTING IN EGYPT, 1238-1267 (1822-1851) A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL STUDY WITH A CHECKLIST BY TITLE OF ARABIC PRINTED WORKS

Although there is no complete publication of the Qur'an, some parts of it may have been produced for study, for it was an important part of the curriculum in many of Muḥammad ʿAli's new schools. (p.146)

Although it is difficult to prove that something is not the case, I think it very unlikely that the 1833 muṣḥaf existed.

who wrote it? where was it printed?

If you can guess who wrote this
and/or have an idea where the muṣḥaf was printed,
please post a comment.

These posts might help.
Unlike Modern English   Early Arabic had neither extra space between words, nor punctuation.
Therefore many sentences start with wa-, fa- (inna, lakina).
Just as many sentences end with waw+alif, many start with waw.
So not only because of the general rule "one letter particals are written as prefixes" (i.e. they are fixed to the <next> word), but because wa- often does not mean "and", but functions as a "full stop" or rather "full start" (i.e. end of sentence + start of sentence),
wa- CAN NOT stand at the end of a line.
When you see it ‒ like in the muṣḥaf shown above ‒, no Arab and no Ottoman had anything to do with it.
Only Farsi speakers (i.e. Iranian and Indians) make that mistake.
The muṣḥaf was produced in Qom.
Although written my Hafiz Osman, the lines you see, have nothing to do with him. They are the product of ignorant Iranians. ‒ Sorry to say so.
May they never again fiddle with print matter!
(in Arabic the wa- is connected to the next word, in Persian wa is a word of its own.)

Cairo + Surabaya

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and the colophon (from Ali Akbar):

Alger les débuts

In Algiers the print of maṣāḥif started only around 1900:

The most important print was made 1931 and 1937 (and probably in the years between ??):

printed and printed again ... until 1970.

Morocco before 1924

Bergsträßer saw the similarities bet­ween Warš editions and the Gizeh print.
Because he did not question al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād's asser­tion that "his" edition was a recon­struction based on the oral text and the litera­ture about How to Write a Muṣḥaf, he assumed an immediate influence from Gizeh/Cairo to Fèz/Alger.
For me it was clear that it was the other way around.
But I had no proof.
I did not have an early print from the Maġrib (nor a Warš edition from Cairo from before 1920).
Finally, I can proof it. I have images from Faz prints from 1879,'81,'91, '92,'93,'94, '95,'99, 1900 and 1905.
The two oldes are in big format and still have red dots for hamza:

On the left the (presumably) first print by Ḥaǧǧ aṭ-Ṭaiyib al-Azraq 1879,
on the right the same text from Alger 1350/ 1931 (Maṭbaʿa aṯ-Ṯāʿlibiyya of Rūdūsī Quddūr ben Murād at-Turkī, likely ʿAbdal Qādir from Rhodes)
one from 1881:

Later they are without colour and smaller:

Kabul 1352 /1934

Gizeh 1924 is important because,
‒ with it Egypt by and large switched to the Maġribian rasm ‒ roughly Ibn Naǧāḥ,
‒ switched to the Maġribian way of writing long vowels, signalling muteness,
     differenciating between three forms of tanwīn, but having one form of madd-sign only
‒ the afterword explained the principles of the edition
     like in the Lucknow editions since the 1870s and the Muxalallātī lithographiy of 1890
‒ there was extra space between words and there were few ligatures,
     base line oriented
‒ the text was type set, printed once; the print was adjusted before plates are made for offset printing.

The new orthography is quickly adopted by private Egyptian printers, in the mašriq only after 1980.
Šamarlī and the new ʿUṯmān Ṭāhā editions have almost no space between words,


while most newer Turkish maṣāḥif separte the words.


There is just one muṣḥaf that is type set and offset printed
‒ just like Gizeh 1924. It went largely unnoticed:
Kabul 1352/1934

Gizeh 1924 and Kabul 1934 side by side.

Shortened Vowels

On four lines from al-Baqara and eight lines from Ṭaha I show if and how the KFE and IPak write vowel letters that are spoken short:

In the first two lines (and 5 + 6) ‒ both right and left ‒ yāʾ stands for /ā/ (dark pink),

in the third and fourth line only on the left there is a difference between /fī qulūbihi/ and /fĭ l-arḍi/ for /ī/ there is a ǧazm above yāʾ, for /ĭ/ there is no sign: the yāʾ is ignored.
In line 7 on the left ط  above (4) forces a pause after the verse, so the two con­sonants at the beginning of the next verse do not shorten the /ā/ to /ă/ like the following /ʿală l-ʿarši/ as can be seen left and right: no small alif either side ((BTW left the short alif is a long vowel sign = turned fatḥa; on the right it would be con­verting sign = convert yāʾ to alif)).

In lines (7+) 8/ fī/ is shortened to /fĭ/ on the left (no ǧazm sign above yāʾ), on the right readers are supposed to know.

In line 9 (right 9 to 10) we see a difference: the KFE shortens the yāʾ/alif maq­ṣūra because two consonnant letters follow, IPak (on the left) has an obligatory pause (as shown by the hamza <no waṣl> on /allāh/), hence no shortening: a straight fatḥa just as twice in line 10 (lines 10 + 11 on the right).

The last three cases are fine on both sides. The /ī/s are long, because there are madda signs above, the /ă/ is short because there is no small alif (neither a con­verting sign on the right, nor a turned fatḥa on the left).

Cairo 1890

Most orientalist qurʾān-experts assume that the King Fuʾād Edition of 1924 was a revolution, was (almost) completly new.
First: It was more of a switch ‒ from Asian con­ven­tions to African.
Second: It came not out of the blue. The break happen­ed 34 years earlier:

 

Below is the first word that shows the African way. In India /-lahū/ is written with a "turned ḍamma" الٹة پيش ulṭa peš.

In Africa there are only short vowel signs; when a vowel is long,
a leng­thening letter (ḥarf madd) is needed ‒ always.

If there is none in the rasm, a small wau/yāʾ/alif is added
‒ as can be seen in this 1890 Cairo print.  The same is true for /ī/. In stead of a turned kasra under hāʾ as in Indian and modern Turkish maṣāḥif a small yāʾ stands after/below hāʾ

Here 2:31 with ʾādam "african" with a hamza-sign preceding alif
instead of the "asian" long-fatḥa following alif.

Below I compare page 3 (al-baqara after the ornamental page).

In the top line an Ottoman muṣḥaf,

below from  Būlāq 1313/1895,

than Warš (Alger 1931)

in the last but one line: Cairo 1308/1890 (muṣḥaf al-Muḫallalātī),

and in the last KFE  Gizeh1924.

The Cairo prints 1890 and 1895 have the same rasm as Gizeh1924 (with a normal/modern madd-sign vor /ʾā/ in the 1895 print, with does not change the rasm).

Scrutinizing the whole muṣḥaf, one finds that muṣḥaf al-Muḫallalātī is closer to IPak/ad-Dānī than to Maġrib/Abu Daʾūd; the important point here: it is a breack away from the Ottoman rasm.

1924 was not the Revolution, the change started in 1890 and ended ‒ thanks to ʿUṯmān Ṭaha ‒ a hundred years later.