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 ʿAl
ī 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.