The Moroccan Qurʾān / Le Coran maroccain (Anouk Cohen)

For the last fifteen years, Anouk Cohen writes the same article again and again.
There is nothing wrong, with having found one's field.
Everything is wrong when one finds the same mistakes from the first article to the last.
In my view, the last one (Seeing and Hearing the Book: A Moroccan Edition of the Qurʾan) is just a string of errors, not worth listing them.
In it she compares "the Saudi edition" with "the Moroccan Qur'an" aka "the muṣḥaf muḥam­madī" although there are more than a hundred Saudi editions, more than hundred Moroccan Qur'an editions and three very dif­ferent "Muṣḥaf Muḥam­madī" (about ten with minor dif­ferences).
The "differences between THE Saudi and THE Morroccan" do not exist:
Moroccan editions are the trans­mission of Warš following Nafīʿ, with saǧadā signs accord­ing to the Malikī maḏhab, Madinī verse counting, Maġribī hand­writ­ing/font.
What Cohen shows as THE Saudi edition is the trans­mission of Ḥafṣ following ʿĀṣim, with saġadā signs according to the Hambalī maḏhab, Kūfī counting, nasḫī handwriting/font by ʿUṯmān Ṭaha, printed by KFC.
But there are Moroccan reprints of Saudi editions ...

... and the Suʿudī "King Fahd Glorious Quran Printing Complex" (KFC) publishes the Warš transmission in Maġribī hand­writing.

Suʿudī is not always the same. The KFC publishes editions for North-West Africa and for India (but not for Turkey, Iran, nor Indo­nesia).
Here images that show that there is no clear cit between muṣḥaf muḥam­madī"-Malikī and the rest-non-Maliki

According to Cohen this is THE muṣḥaf muḥam­madī fatiḥa:

But this is a muṣḥaf muḥammadī fatiḥa as well:

According to Cohen this is THE Saudi one

But these are two more (out of many) from Madina

To put it bluntly. What Cohen writes is based on 90% ignorance resp. blindness.
p.142: "According to the protocol defined in the 1920s in Cairo by al-Azhar each stage of pro­uction should be sub­ject to control."
    ‒ no source given, de­finetly wrong
p.144: "the Egyptian copy [of the Qurʾān] developed at al-Azhar in 1924
    ‒ just wrong
p.144: "Contrary to the muṣḥaf ḥassanī, which was to be offered to dis­tin­guished guests, the muṣ­ḥaf muḥam­madī was placed under serial and industri­al pro­duction."
    ‒ wrong, both maṣā­ḥif have expen­si­ve (big, colour, glossy paper) versions and cheaper ones, and none is gift only: one could buy them.

Before I move on to the Warš muṣḥaf of 1929: A.Cohen writes three pp. 145-148 on the calli­graphy of the "Mo­roc­can muṣ­ḥaf" incl. strange things like "'The line should not be so long, even if it does not change the meaning. There should be no ex­cessive read­ing.'” quoting a "cleric".
‒ first, the cleric says: "There should be no ex­ten­ded line because that could lead to pro­longa­tion in recit­ing."
‒ second, "of course" there are extended lines in Maġ­ri­bī maṣāḥif to justify lines. The first word /ḏālika/ is from Cohen's text, showing what is forbidden. All others are from Muṣḥaf al-Ḥasanī.

Three pages, but she does not mention THE most important fact:

Muṣḥaf Muḥammadī is not handwritten by PC set!






Let's move to what she calls "the 'Qurʾan of Zwiten,'26 26 ... Until recent­ly, the rights to it be­longed to Dar al-muṣḥaf al-sharīf, in Cairo. See Abdul­razak Fawzi, The King­dom of the Book: The History of Printing as an Agency of Change in Morocco bet­ween 1865 and 1912 (PhD diss., Uni­ver­sity of Boston, 1990)."
Of course A. Fawzi says no­thing of the kind. Why else do we not get a page number, where he would say so? A.Cohen is making it up as in most of her publi­cations: Hot air or lies!
Of course we do not get any infor­ma­tion about this print of re­ference, not even a picture of the cover, nor of any of the pages! ‒ just as in her ear­lier articles she wrote that it was very often re­printed without giving years, nor pub­lishers!
As often, Bergsträßer tells us a lot

He quotes the "Maghribian book sellers" (two members of the al-Ḥabbābī familiy) that Egyptian printers and Šaiḫs could improve the edition, written by Aḥmad bn Ḥasan Zwīten, checked by Moroccan šaiḫs, and again in Egypt, where it was printed ‒ dedicated to Sulṭan Muḥmmad [V.] bn Yūsuf

This Cairo Warš Edition, Cairo 1929 Edition, al-Ḥabbābī edition, Zwīten edition is the first Moroccan edition with numbers after each verse, and ‒ a revolution of sorts ‒ Kufī numbers;
so ʿAlī Muḥammad aḍ-Ḍabbāʿ (1304/1886-1380/1960) writes four pages on the differences between (second) Madani and Kufi mumbering (pages 8-11):

the cover of the first edition

the first three pages:

instead of a title page:

(this is from the copy of the Academy of Sciences in Lissa­bon that is not paginated in quarters, but in halves; its index and the duʿāʾ are set in normal Arabic letters, while hand­written in the original.)
the ʿanwān of the first edition

So are no pagination.
As often, THE Zwīten does not exist, the original one is divided into four parts, and has before the quranic text faḍl al-qurʾān and ādāb at-tilāwa; all is hand­written, the last four pages in eastern nasḫ pointed like in the east (no dots on final nūn, fā' and qāf, fā'-dot below, single qāf-dot above), all other parts in maġribi masbūṭ, while the Lissa­bon copy (in halves) lacks most additions.
Maybe these two strange pages are due to merging quarters into halves (??) Or to have the ḥizb start on a new page?

Normal pages have 15 lines

last page of first half

With a book seller I found a last quarter printed in 1990.

She does not know that most Western readers need the number of suras.
"al-Naml (the Ants)" should be "XXVII" or "an-Naml (27)".
ḫaṭṭ is handwriting, script, not calligraphy which is fann al-ḫaṭṭ.
taḏhīb is gilding, not illuminations.
taškīl is vocalization, not "vocalization signs"; vowel signs are harakāt.
the commander of the believers, not commanders of believers:
Why does she call his function "myth"?
She translates her French "encore" (in Voir et entendre le Livre. Une édition maro­caine du Coran. 2017) (which means here « en outre »/"fur­ther­more, more­over") as "still"/ « tou­jours » « quand même » .

The article feels like written by a large language model artifi­cial intel­ligence.
Some sentences sound reasonable, others like halu­cina­tions

Sometimes the connection is missing: first [he writes] "on paper plates",
which are then "calligraphic tablets".
lawḥ, a wooden tablet, is defined as "a Qurʾanic tablet that com­bines writ­ing and recita­tion"
‒ it has no loud speakers.
First she writes ‒ correctly ‒ of "the seven canonical readings (qirāʾa)",
then ‒ in­correct­ly ‒ of "the seven Moroccan reci­tations";
the seven qirāʾāt (proper plural form) neither being Moroccan, nor reci­tations.
similarly: "the dominant recitation in Morocco (Warsh)" ‒ the ways of recitation (taḥzzabt, muǧawwd, murattal) have nothing special to do with Warš ‒ no more than "high way" with Chrys­ler and Tesla.
her note 2: muṣḥaf = volume, Qurʾān = revelation, while the first is "codex", the second "reading, reci­tation"
In note 20 she cites Gérard Trou­peau with: "To indicate the three short vowels, [Arabic] borrowed three Syriac signs" although Trou­peau has not written this, and it is cer­tainly wrong.


‒ ­

الن vs. ان لن

There are many false assertions about the King Fuʾād Edition:
that it is type printed ‒ it is type set, but offset printed
that it established Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim as the most wide­spread read­ing
  ‒ the three gun powder empires ‒ Mame­luke, Timurid, Safa­vid ‒ did that,
    because for their non-Arabic elites that reading is the easiest,
    because closed to Standard Arbic
that it fixed the text once and for all ‒ in reality the oral text was fixed centuries ago,
the written text had minor variations, AS HAS the KFE.
Here I will not write about the more than 900 changes that the 1952 edition brought in the qurʾānic text (including the sura title boxes), but just about one word in 73:20: /allan/.
This is not about /allan/ in general.
At most places it has a fixed spelling,
e.g. 18:48 لن

at 72:12 ان لن

just about 73:20 where we find a back and forth. In 1924 (in the Giza print) we have لن in the first line

unchanged in the first small Būlāq print

changed in 1347/1928/9

back in 1952

the same in the small edition of 1955

and in the small edition of 1962

But in 1959: ان لن
(Havards holds all these editions ‒ Muḥammad Hozien took the pictures)

So far for real KFEs, which means
‒ published by the Government Press/Amiriyya
‒ no title page = [p.1] is completly empty
‒ an-nās on p. 827
‒ 12 lines per page
‒ catch word on each right page
‒ ǧuz, ḥizb, saǧada, sakta in medallions on the margin
‒ text after an-nās with abǧad pagination
‒ big format (27 x 19 cm) printed by the Survey of Egypt)
    small format (20 x 15 cm) printed by the Amiriyya itself in Būlāq
    (when a library has a 24 cm codex it is a cut and rebound big edition)
‒ no duʿāʾ ‒ a secular edition, by and for the state, not al-Azhar, as often claimed
‒ no eulogies after ʿUṯmān bn ʿAffān, ʿAlī bn Abī Ṭālib etc. in the information after the qurʾānic text
‒ no bookmark

Let's move on to "reprints" by private printers or foreign states.
China Bekin 1955 (1924 text ‒ without dedication to Fuʾād)

Sowjet Uzbekistan, Taškend 1960 (1952 ‒ without dedication to Fuʾād)

Cairo Šarikat al-Iʿalānāt aš-šarqiya 1961

Jordan, first (1977, 4th edition)

Jordan, second (1993, reprint of Bairut/Damaskus 1975, with yellow floral frame that disappeared due to high contrast)

Bairut 1977

Bairut Dār al-Qurʾān (Muḥammad Baṣṣām al-Istwānī) 1398/1978
(the bookmark on the bottom of the images shows that it not an KFE)

Paris Dār al-Fikr 1981 (with french on opposite page)

Kuwait Mogahwi Press 1981

Qaṭar 1985 ‒ with added nūn

Bairut Dār al-lubnānī 1985, with "all right" by Maḥmūd al-Ḥuṣarī

With tafsīr

And as last group: private editions with the KFE set text, but rearranged
Muṣḥaf al-Malik, Cairo 1935

Cairo ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān Muḥammad/Dār al-Muṣḥaf 1971

Bairut 1983

Damascus 1983 Marwān Sawār

Neither a reprint, nor a rearrangement of KFE set lines, but a reSet is the Hyderabad edition of 1938. It has been photomechanical reproduced in London (i.a. for Sharja), Islamabad, and Bairut (for the Libyan World Islamic Call Society). See what the Indians did, what was made for the Libyans;

In 1976 die Amiriyya switched from the KFE to Muṣḥaf al-Azhar aš-Šarīf:

In 1979 the first (?) ʿUṯmān Taha muṣḥaf was published by Dār aš-Šāmiya on 603 pages in Damascus

Three years later the World Association of Muslim Youth, Riaḍ published it unchanged

On Xmas 1983 in Tehran it was published WITH a change

Since than from Çağrı Yayınları in Istanbul

and from Madina (with a nūn !)

‒ ­

numbers after each verse

I tend to think: marking the end of verses is important,
not putting a number each time,
because the end-of-verse-sign imply the numbers.

I admit: there are two things that make is complicated
In Muṣḥaf al-Muḫallalātī the end-of-verse of all seven canonical systems are indicated, so the numbers are not that easily countable, but they are there.
In some maṣāḥif the same sign is use of end-of-verse and for an ob­ligat­ory stop within a verse,
the "fake" ends not being counted in the number-of-verses given in the sura-title-box ‒ some­thing clear only to the experts.

Muhammad Hozien has (for the time being) established the first printed muṣ­ḥaf with numbers after each verse: Istanbul 1298/1881

But the early print of the 11-lines muṣḥaf by Hafiz Osman, the Elder hat numbers before the verses, not as common today: after the verses:

I still do not see the big difference to the same Hafez Osman, the Elder putt­ing an ع at the end of each tenth verse and an عشر at the margin:

or Muḥammad Amīn Rušdī using the abjad ten: ے

above the last word of the tenth, twentieth, thirdith ... verse there is a ے
In the manuscript there were no numbers; they were added 1370/1951 for the ʿIrāqī State print.

Attention
Sometimes the same (or similar) sign can stand for different things.
While small ʿain with /ʿašara/ at the margin says: 10 or 20 or 30 ..., it can stand for rukūʿ;
above, in the last line, at the end of verse 29, one just has to know ...
... on the next image, i.e. in India there is a big ʿain on the margin with num­bers in it:

To another example that one and the same sign can stand for different things.
The sign is called the short one/ quṣair or the dagger/ ḫanǧar
In the now common Western, Andalusian, African system

it stands for a "missing" vowel letter, an alif needed to lengthen a fatḥa not in the rasm;
four times in the first line, twice in the second ‒ twice, because the third quṣair is not a fill-in alif, but a con­ver­ter/changer of the alif in the shape of yāʾ into a "noraml" alif;
in the last word the vowel letter is not missing, it is just ambiguous.
In the East (India, Indonesia, Persia, Ottoman Empire ...) the same sign is neither a replacement vowel nor a vowel con­verter but a vowel sign, a long fatḥa (or turned fatḥa). While in the West there is the vowel sign fatḥa plus a leng­thening letter sign, in the East, there is just a long vowel sign.
In the West there are only three vowel signs (plus sukūn) hence a lengthening vowel is necessary.
In the East there are three short, three long vowel signs (plus sukūn) ‒ or five or seven.

looks the same, but is not the same, letter in the West, vowel sign in the East:

And there is more diversity:
While in the now standard IndoPak system this /ā/ stands only when no alif follows, there are spell­ing that have it, even if an alif follows:

This is Hūd 22-25 from an Indian manu­script from around 1800: you find the long vowel marks ir­respec­tive of what follows:
BTW, the red dots are end-of-verse-markers, and after /taḏakirūn/ there is a rukūʿ, cf. the ʿain on the margin.
The same text according to the new Iranian system, in which vowel letters with­out ḥaraka ‒ with which they would be con­sonants ‒ are long vowels; the letter before the vowel does not carry a vowel sign:

On the right of the image below there are inscrip­tions on buildings in Aleppo,
on the left from a muṣḥaf written by an-Nairizī;
both use the quṣair irrespective of an alif follo­wing or not:

Below from the ʿIrāqi State muṣḥaf of 1951:
again the dagger even when followed by an alif
and they make mistakes: four times they both put a normal fatḥa and this long fatḥa; the co-existence of different systems confused them:

‒ ­