al-Wāqiʿa 2 / kāḏība

In Baqara 72 I showed that "Medina" makes undocumented changes to Būlāq52.

Here I show that Qaṭar made another change to Būlāq52 ‒ again without explanations.

The Iranian Center for Printing and Distributing the Qurʾān (Ṭabʿo Našr) developed a new rasm, a new orthography and new vowelled waṣl signs. After studying the literature on writing the muṣḥaf and 26 important maṣāḥif from different regions and different riwāyāt, they publish their results and their reasons.
In Indonesian there was a commitee of ʿulema from all over the country that deliberates 1974 to 1983 and fixed a standard, a second comittee revisted the standard in 2002, and a third from 2015 to 2018.

Morocco ... Muṣḥaf al-Muḥammadī

To commemorate Hassan II's silver jubilee and later Muhammads VI's accession to the throne the Kingdom published editions in magh­re­bian style ‒ both in colour and back&white. I looked in vain for information about the printing place.
This could be the reason the reserve::

The press wasn't in the Sherifian Kingdom, but in Cairo. Al-Muǧallad al-ʿArabi (often printers make up names for special occasions) was in charge.
But the third edition was home made ‒ in a press founded in Faḍāla (named Muham­media since 1959) after WWII and bought in the 1960ies by the Minstery for Reli­gious Affairs and Pious Foundations al-Maṭbaʿ al-Faḍāla.



While under Hassan II there was only one Royal Muṣḥaf (in cheap and in expen­sive editions) ‒ written by seven Moroccan calligraphers

there are new four different ones:
‒ one hand written, similar to his father's

‒ one computer set ‒ "andalusian", i.e. with green dots for hamzat,

‒ one computer set ‒ "moroccan"

and the same in an expensive edition:

and with reduced colours:

‒ one with images of wooden tablets from madrasas‒ printed 2007 in Graz, Austria.

Taj Compagny Ltd editions

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

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

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

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

these days:

­

al-Baqara 72

Many think that all King Fuʾād Editions are the same.
Idiots say: The Cairo Edition is The Cairo Edition.
Many think that the King Fahd Complex ("Madina") has only one Ḥafṣ edition by ʿUṯmān Ṭaha.
On the top right Gizeh24, left Būlāq52:
four different (new) pause signs, only two that stayed the same.
And look at the zai in ʿazīz (3:5 last line): the alternative (swash) form.
On the left, beneath Būlāq52 an early Damaszene ʿUṯmān Ṭaha (UT0):
all pause signs ‒ and the swash zai ‒ the same as 1952.
On the right below Gizeh24 UT1: changed by the King Fahd Complex.
Alternative/swash form is gone, pauses are different (all لا are gone).
In the third line UT2, the form ʿUṯmān Ṭaha wrote in this (Gregorian) century in Madina.

Nowhere the KFC has explained why and how they differ from Būlāq52.
For more changes between Madina editions of ʿUṯmān Ṭaha

the al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād rasm

The Gizeh 1924 print did not follow Abū Dāʾūd Sulaimān ibn Naǧāḥ's at-Tabyīn li-Hiǧā’ at-Tanzīl,
nor Abū ʿAmr ʿUṯmān Ibn Saʿīd ad-Dānī's al-Muqni‘ fī ma‘ri­fat marsūm Maṣā­ḥif ahl al-amṣār
or the choice/mix of the two by Muḥammad ibn Muḥam­mad al-Kharrāz.

After scrutinizing parts of the text, I guess that it mostly followed the common Maġribian rasm, i.e. only in about 150 words al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād al-Mālikī choose to write them differently.
Here is an example of a word, for which he choose the Eastern rasm, ad-Dānī's, Indian (& Indonesian), Persian.

The top line is from Hafiz ʿUṯmān the Elder (Büyük Hâfız
Osman Efendi): he has a dot­less yāʾ for /ā/.
His 200 years younger namesake HO Qayišzāde
(Kayışzade) has no letter for it,
nor has Muṣṭafā Naẓīf Qadir­ġalī (Mustafa Nazif Kadır­galı).
Modern Turkish editions strangely have a "normal" yāʾ.
computer set for the State Religious Office
hand written by Hüsyin Kutlu.
al-Muḫallalātī,
and Libyia (Qālūn) follow ad-Dānī.

The Tunisian Republic (Qālūn),
the late 19th century editions
    from Fās (Warš),

the 1931 Warš Alger edition,
the KFC ʿUT Warš edition,
all have an extra alif.
Since the KFE doesn't have it,
the ʿUṯmān Ṭaha editions do not have it either.
Nor do Indian edi­tions ‒ here the South African
print from the Waterval Islamic Institute.

Nor Indonesian.
But the Persian calli­grapher Nairizī (here from
the splendid 1965 Arya­Mehr print) has a dotless yāʾ.

For good measure,
five examples from
the Islamic Republik Iran.

As you can see in the middle of my examples, the transmission (Ḥafṣ, Warš, Qālūn) is independent of the spelling. In my German blog there is an other example (it gets bigger when you click it once -- as always in the Blogger).

IDEO's call for papers

The Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies in Cairo calls for papers for two conferences, one in October, the second in three years.

Strangely the Arabic call is first for a conference on the King Fuʾād Edition (1924) of the qurʾān, then for one of the "al-Qāhira print,"
the French conference is on « le Coran du Caire »/ « l'édition du Caire »,
the English one on "The Cairo Edition".
As there are about a thousand editions of the qurʾān published in Cairo, it just does not make sense to call a particular edition "l'édition du Caire".
Of course, once the edition is intro­duced correc­te­ly ‒ as the King Fuʾād Edition (KFE), the Egyptian Govern­ment Edition of 1924, the Educa­tion Ministry Edition (because there later was a Minsitry of the Interior Edition), the Amīriyya Edition (of 1924), (or wongly) the Amīrī Edition (taking Fuʾād as the Amīr, instead of refering to the Govern­ment Press/ مطبعة), the Gizeh print, the Survey of Egypt Gizeh 1924 print [at the time its name was مصلة المسحة , now it is الهيئة المصرية العامة للمساحة , hence it is named simply مصحف المسحة ], the 12-line-edition of the Qurʾān / المصحف ١٢ سظر, the official Egyptian edition of 1924, the edition pre­pared by Egypt's šaiḫ al-maqāriʾ Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḫalaf al-Ḥusainī al-Mālikī aṣ-Ṣaʿīdī al-Ḥaddād (1282/1865‒1357/ 22.1.1939) ‒ one can refer to it as "Cairo edition", or "the 1924 edition", but not to "The Cairo Edition," nor "al-Qāhira print," nor "Azhar Edition".
The Azhar had almost nothing to do with it.
It was prepared by one man alone; of the four men that signed three are not called "šaiḫ", are not ʿulamāʾ, are not expert qurʾāno­logists, have never written anything on religious sub­jects.
Abū Mālik Ḥifnī Bey ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismaʿīl ibn Ḫalīl Nāṣif (16.12.1855‒25.2.1919) had been chief inspector of the Arabic depart­ment in the min­istery of edu­ca­tion. In his youth he had learned the qurʾān by heart, later he became a lawyer, was part of the modern intel­li­gen­tzia of the capital.
Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿUmar al-Iskandarī (1292‒1357/1875‒1938) and Muṣṭafā (al-)ʿInānī (d. 1362/ 1943) were teachers at the Peda­go­cial Seminary next to the Ministery of Educa­tion and have jointe­ly written books on educa­tional matters.

When you make a multi­lingual con­ference on "der Erste Welt‎krieg," it should be about "la Pre­mière Guerre Mondiale" (not about "La Grande Guerre"), one on the July Revolu­tion 1830 should be on la Révolu­tion de Juillet 1830 (not Les Trois Glori­euses), and one on World War II, should be on вторая мировая война (not on Великая Отече­ствен­ная Война).
But in the English call for papers 16 times "the Cairo edition" is used, a term for which no Arabic equi­valent exists. (( When you google the Arabic term that come first to your mind "muṣḥaf al-Qāhira" you get hits, but nothing near the KFE.)) Hence in the Arabic call first ten times "the King Fuʾād muṣḥaf" is used and then six times the "Qāhira print", alt­hough al-Qāhira is the Old City founded by the Fati­mides, where most private printers reside (have their siège social) and most had their work­shop too, Būlāq lying out­side, Gizeh, where the King Fuʾād Edi­tion WAS printed even on the other side of the Nile: in an other Gou­ver­ne­ment /muḥā­faẓa. Twice "the Cairo edition" has as ac­ciden­tal quali­fica­tion "of 1924", which is not good enough ‒ "the 1924 Cairo edition" with "1924" as neces­sary at­tribute, as defining pro­perty would be acceptable, but the Domini­cans never use that term, nor "the 1924 Egyptian Govern­ment edition," nor "the edition of the Min­istry of Educa­tion"(the Ministery of Interior had later maṣāḥif printed as well), nor "the edition pre­pared by the Šaiḫ al-maqāriʿ al-maṣrīya."

Strangely the Domanican Institute manipulates the image of the title box of the Fatīḥa:
Only the top and right side are okay, the bottom and left side (below in lighter yellow) are mirrored by software,
and more important: the text in the middle is NOT from the 1924 Gizeh print! The original is not self centred, but stands in rela­tion with the title box of al-baqara on the oppo‎site page.

Efim Rezvan: Orthography in EQ3

The editors of Brill's Encyclopedia of the Quran thought it wise to let Efim Rezvan write an article, unfortunately about a subject, he did not master.

I just want to point out some of the mistakes:
"Arabic writing at that time conveyed only consonants"
As I have shown, Arabic at the time had just letters, that could stand for consonants and vowels.
"..., which permitted a shift from a scriptio defectiva to a scriptio plena."
Although Rezvan does not say it explicitly ‒ nor does he state the contrary ‒, he gives the im­pression that the early manu­scripts had no diactrics, nor vowel signs. But ALL early manu­scripts has SOME dia­critics and vowel (and hamza) signs.
"al-Ḥajjāj [intro­duced] a system to designate long and short vowels"
Since we still do not have ONE system to designate ALL long and ALL short vowels, I'd like to read more about the system of the 8th century.
"In practice only two of the systems noted by Ibn Mujāhid became wide­spread: the Kūfan, Ḥafṣ (d. 246⁄860) ʿan ʿĀṣim (d. 127⁄744), and, to a lesser degree, the Medinan, Warsh (d. 197⁄812) ʿan Nafiʿ (d. 169⁄785)."
just wrong. That TODAY only four systems are widely used ‒ of which he mentioned only two ‒ does NOT mean AT ALL, that at Ibn Mujāhid (245-324/859-935)'s time or in the following centu­ries 12 of his 14 riwāyāt were hardly used. The opposite is true: more than his fourteen were used.
"It is possible that [the St.Peters­burg/Ka­zan] edition played a decisive role in the centu­ries-long process of standar­dizing qurʾānic ortho­graphy."
"The final stage of the work on the unifi­cation of the qurʾānic text is connected with the appearance in Cairo in 1342⁄ 1923-4 of a new edition of the text"
nonsense
it was "Drawn up by a special panel of Muslim scholars"
nonsense, it was ONE man, Egypt's main recitor of the qurʾān (šayḫ al-maqāriʾ al-miṣrīya)
"today accepted throughout the Muslim world"
just wrong.
"in Zaydī Yemen, traditions remain which go back to a different transmitter of the text, Warsh."
it seems that Yamanī Zaydīs read Qālūn
The last two paragraphes are gibberish.

these Persians // -wa alone at the end of a line

In Arabic wa- is a prefix, not a word of its own:

Since in Persian it is a separate word, Persian calligraphers (and Indian ones too) treat the Arabic prefix as a word that can stand at the end of a line ‒ instead of standing at the start of the next line (prefixed to the "main part" of the word:
Here pages from the bestseller from the time before the Khomeini revolution:

(pay attention to the omen above on the right and to wa- at the end of the last but fifth line)
and one from the imperial reprint of that period:

(sixth line)

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.