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.


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India 1876

إنه لقرآن كريم في كتاب مكنون Innahu la-Qurʾān Karīm fī kitāb maknūn Bareilly, 2nd Edition 1876

India 1850

وعلى الله فليتوكل المتوكلون إنه لقرآن كريم في كتب مكنون Wa-ʿalá Allāh fal-yatawakkal al-mutawakkilūn innahu la-Qurʾān Karīm fī kitāb maknūn [Lucknow 1850?] Pages 624

India 1875

Bumbai بمبئي 1875 Innahu la-Qurʾān Karīm fī kitāb maknūn إنه لقرآن كريم في كتاب مكنون 491 pages

Tehran 1827 (+ 1831)

Here images from the first Persian type set mushaf.

... and an illustration from a book by Borna Izad­panah:

... and three from a 1831 print set with the same types from Borna Izad­panah's twitter account (the Royal Asiatic Society holds it). First a page with the beginning of sura XV ‒ note that there is empty space for a colour title box.

here 2:138 and the next verse

last a fake: in the first line I have moved a turned kasra /ī/ from under yāʾ for­ward under its letter. In the second line 2:15 is interest­ing because /ʾallāh/ HERE gets a fatha (which includes a hamza) because of the pause before it:

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e.Conidi II

Emanuela Conidi just informed me that Geoffrey Roper was her source.
Maybe I am too strict, but this book should be burned as a act of faith.
THE BOOK. A GLOBAL HIS­TORY is less than useless <-- it has no notes, no proper (i.e. checkable) sources
The two pages on "printing the Qurʾān" (548-50) shine with inac­curan­cies:

in the 1830s ... the distri­bution of copies was suc­cess­fully blocked [in Egypt] by the reli­gious authori­ties

maybe, but without sources: useless

in the 1850s, some were distri­buted, but only after each indivi­dual copy had been read by a Qur’anic scholar and checked for errors, at great expense.

Does Roper really think that Muslims (because they are Muslims?) are so stupid that they do not under­stand, that they do not have to check "each individual copy" because they are identical????

the Ottoman calligrapher and court chamberlain Osman Zeki Bey (d. 1888) started printing Qur’āns reproduc­ing the hand­writing of the famous 17th-century calli­gra­pher Hafız Osman

According to my sources Osman Zeki Bey died 1890, and he did print maṣāḥif by the 19th century Hafiz Osman, not by the earlier namesake. And more important: the first re­produc­tion of a muṣḥaf was one penned by Şeker­zade Mehmed Efendi (d. 1166/1753) not by any of the Osmans, whose maṣāḥif were often repro­duced later.

(i.e. the form of the text as it appears in the early MSS without voca­liza­tion and dia­critics)

wrong again:
there is not a single very early MSS without voacalization and diacritics

The lead was taken by scholars at Al-Azhar mosque-univer­sity ... After seventeen years of preparatory work, their edition was published in 1924, under the auspices of King Fu’ād of Egypt. It was printed ortho­graphi­cally

the lead was taken by directors in the Ministry of Education,
they and people from the Govern­ment Press decided on the form,
the text given to the type setters had been written by the chief recitor of Egypt;
that the text was not just a copy of the most popular muṣḥaf of the time, the 522-page-muṣḥaf written by Muṣṭafā Naẓīf,
was due to the work done by Šaiḫ Muḫallalātī and the decision of al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād to largely follow the Magh­rebian model.
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gullible or sceptical

Although the title is "Reciting the Qurʾān in Cairo" ("Koran­lesung in Kairo") the first part of G. Berg­sträßer's article in Der Islam XX (1932) is largely on the "official" Egyptian edition of the Qurʾān, der "amtliche", the Govern­ment edition, the King Fuʾād Edition called the "12 liner (muṣḥaf 12 saṭr") by the book sellers or Muṣḥaf al-Amiriyya after the Govern­ment Press ((never The Cairo Edition, nor the Azhar Qurʾān, and please not Mushaf Amiri/Royal Edition)) and about the chief recitor of the time and the one who followed him in that function (which Bergsträßer did not know of course). The article is rich in informa­tion, both what the two men have told him and what is written in the explana­tions (taʿrīf), the afterword of the book.
First Bergsträßer informs the reader on the 22 pages that follow the 827 pages of the qurʾānic text. Then he tells us what is written in an advertising brochure/ leaflet (Pro­spekt); he uses the sub­junc­tive mode of indirect speech leaving it to the reader to believe what is written ‒ or not.
I do not believe one of the type­written words.

In recent times the government had to destroy many imported copies because of mistakes, notably 25 years ago sinking a whole load in the Nile.

As no year is given, no information of the kind of mis­takes, no informa­tion on the printer ("Aus­land") nor the importer, nothing on whom paid an compen­sa­tion for the capital destroyed to whom (how much?), I do not believe it.
The are serveral kind of mistakes possible:
‒ those that are not mistakes at all, just different con­vention (like whether a leading unpro­nounced alif carries a head of ṣād as waṣl-sign or not, or some otiose letters ‒ see earlier posts)
‒ type errors, that can be remedied by including a "list of errors" or by correcting them by hand
‒ binding error: several copies lack a quire having another one twice, or quires in the wrong order.
Copies with binding error can not be sold. That you have to destroy hun­dreds of copies, there must be so many mis­takes that it is virtually im­possible to correct them by hand.
So far Bergstäßer just reports what was written in the brochure.
Now he tells us what the šaiḫ al-maqāriʾ Muḥammad ʿAlī Ḫalaf al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād told him, but here he does not use the sub­junctive of indirect speech, he gives obvious ("natürlich") facts.

Quelle für den Konsonaten­text sind natürlich nicht Koran­hand­schriften, sondern die Litera­tur über ihn; er ist also eine Rekon­struk­tion, das Ergebnis einer Umschrei­bung des üblichen Konsonanten­textes
Of course, the source for the consonant text are not manuscripts, but the literature about it; it is therefore a reconstruction, the result of a rewriting of the usual consonant text

The source given for the rasm is a didactic poem Maurid aẓ-ẓamʾān by al-Ḫarrāz based on Abū Dāʾūd Sulaimān ibn Naǧāḥ's ʿAqīla
but
the Indonesian Abdul Hakim ("Comparison of Rasm in Indonesian Standard Mushaf, Pakistan Mushaf and Medinan Mushaf: Analysis of word with the formulation of ḥażf al-ḥuruf" in Suhuf X,2 12.2017), the Iranian Center for Printing and Spreading the Quran and the scholars advising the Tunisian publisher Hanbal/Nous-Mêmes have checked the text (either all of it or "just" a tenth ‒ from different parts) and found out, that the text of the King Fuʾād Edition and the King Fahd Edition do not tally with the ʿAqīla.
While the Muṣḥaf al-Jamāhīriyya follows ad-Dānī's Muqniʿ all the time and the Iranian Center and the Indo­nesian Committee publish lists with words where they follow which authority (or in the case of the Iranian center even apply a different logic) al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād and the Medi­nese King Fahd Complex claimed (!) to follow Abū Dāʿūd. As this is clearly not the case "Medina" and "Tunis" inserted a word in the explanations: ġāliban or fil-ġālib (mostly) and a caveat "or other experts."
So: the KFC admitts that they do NOT follow Abū Dāʾūd all the time.
Al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād had told Bergsträßer what the orientalist wanted to hear. All professional recitors in Egypt know the differences between Ḥafs, Warš and Qālūn by heart. Being the chief recitor and a Malikite, he knew Warš even better than most. So what he really did, he copied an Warš copy into a Ḥafs script ‒ largely Abu Dāʾūd, but not 100 %.
So the KFE was not a revolution, just a switch from Asia to Africa: a "no" to the Ottomans, a "yes" to the Maġrib.
As I have already said, I recomment an old text.

Gabriel Said Reynolds writes rubbish:

The common belief that the Qur’an has a single, un­ambiguous reading ... is above all due to the terrific success of the standard Egyptian edition of the Qur’an, first pub­lished on July 10, 1924 (Dhu l-Hijja 7, 1342) in Cairo, an edition now widely seen as the official text of the Qur’an. ... Minor ad­just­ments were sub­sequently made to this text in follow­ing editions, one pub­lished later in 1924 and an­other in 1936. The text re­leased in 1936 became known as the Faruq edition in honor of the Egypt­ian king, Faruq (The Qur’an in Its Histo­rical Con­text, Lon­don New York 2008. p. 2)

All wrong. The King Fuʾād Edition was not published on July 10, 1924, but the printing of its qurʾānic text was finished on that day. It was really only published after the book was bound in the next year according to the embossed stamp on its first page ‒ or just the second run of the first edition was stamp like this (?).
طبعة الحكومية المصرّية
        -- . --
    ١٣٤٣ هجرّية
                سـنة

There were minor changes between 1343/1925 and 1347/1929 either in the quranic text or in the information that follows it, but there were no changes in 1936; there never was an Faruq (or Farūq) edition; until the revolution of 1952 all full editions of the qurʾān by the Government Press were dedicated to King Fuʾād.



How comes that some youngster call the "King Fuʾād Edition"
"The Cairo Edition" or "the Azhar Edition"?
My guess: because they are so young,
too young to have spent days in the book shops and publishers around the Azhar.
From 1976 to 1985 the most common edition was the "muṣ­ḥaf al-Azhar aš-šarīf" printed by the Amiriyya in many different format, big and small, cheap and ex­penisve ‒ all with the qurʾānic text on 525 pages with 15 lines and only three pause signs (not to be confused with the "muṣ­ḥaf al-Azhar aš-šarīf" by the Azhar, which is a reprint of the 522 page muṣḥaf written by Muṣṭafa Naẓīf.)
But these youngster do not know that there is an "Azhar edition" that came 50 years after the KFE saw the light of day.

And "muṣḥaf al-Qāhira" was the huge manuscript attributed to ʿUṯmān kept at al-Ḥusainī Mosque north of al-Azhar.
From 1880 to today there were more than a hundred editions produced in al-Qāhira, in an industial area nearby, around the main railway station and in Bulāq, no person aware of this could imagine "The Cairo edition",


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Tebriz 1870

E.Conidi on the KFE

In her thesis e.Conidi writes on the King Fuʾād Edition:

The seventeen years required by Egyptian scholars for the preparation of the Fuʾād Qurʾān, from 1907 to 1924, were necessary to ensure the correctness of the text in adherence to ‘the approved norms in terms of content and orthography’, which was an indispensable precondition for accepting the duplication of the sacred text. (Sabev, ‘Waiting for Godot’, 109.)

there is no book Waiting for Godot by O.Sabev, and in his Waiting for Müteferrika there is nothing on the KFE, not on page 109, nor anywhere else.
But in G.Bergsträßer's article Koranlesung in Kairo Part 1 he writes, that a typewritten leaflet claimed that the preparations (Vorbereitungen) started in 1907, that the text was set, checked, revised by the chief recitor ordered to do so by the Azhar (im Auftrag der Direktion der Azhar). That the plan was to have printing plates being made in Germany, but that the outbreak of war had made that impossible, therefore the book was printed in Giza.
First, I do not see what Conidi writes, that seventeen years were necessary to establish a correct text (in Egypt the text could only be the reading of Ḥafs; its oral text is fixed for centuries, and whether one uses the letters defined by ad-Dānī ((as al-Muḫallalātī did in 1890 and much later editors in Lybia)) or the ones defined by his pupil Abu Daʾûd ((as common in Morocco)) is of minor importance -- as I see it, the chief recitor choose the letters used in the Moroccan prints just changing the very few letters special to the reading of Warsh;
(BTW, Indonesian scholar work 1974-84 for there standard, but first they came from all over the country, while Egypt is rather dentralized, and they work on three standards at the time, among them a Braille standard, something completely new.)
and I do not see what scholars were involved beside the chief recitor.
Second, I do not understand what happened between 1907 and the outbreak of the war, and what happened between 1915 and 1924.
It all does not make sense.
As I see it: after November 1914 when Egypt ceased to be a province of the Ottoman empire and the (hitherto) Governor took the same title as his (erstwhile) overlord: sulṭān, Egypt wanted to have a copy of the qurʾān different from the Ottoman model.
And Abū Mālik Ḥifnī Bey ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismaʿīl ibn Ḫalīl Nāṣif (16.12.1855‒25.2.1919) , responsible for state run schools, expressed the wish for a print easier to read for "his" secular students. While the students at religous madrasas were used to the calligraphic style of qurʾān manuscripts, the modern students were used to school book, novels and news papers.
He wanted a print with a clear base line, and clear right-to-left, not top-to bottom as in elegant calligraphy.
For all of this no lengthy deliberations were necessary.