Amīriyya 1924 /1342

The first offset‑printed muṣḥaf appeared in 1342/1924.
It had been initiated after Egypt’s independence from the Sublime Porte by Muḥammad Ḥifnī Bey Nāṣif (1271/1855–1337/1919), director of the Arabic Department in the Ministry of Education نظارة المعارف .
The typesetting was carried out at the Amīriyya Press المطبعة الأميرية in Būlāq,
and the printing took place at the Survey of Egypt مصلحة المساحة in Giza, which pos­sessed large offset presses for map production.
We have no reliable data on the size of the original print run. What can be said is that, a century later, fewer than a hun­dred copies can be traced in public cata­lo­gues and li­brary hold­ings — the online catalo­gues currently show no surviv­ing copy in Egypt. Since a second print­ing was pro­duced in Giza the fol­low­ing year, the initial edition was pro­bably well under one thousand. Here images from the copies held by Columbia and by Kiel Uni­ver­si­ty from the second run.

It is no accident that the IDEO, when held a conference on the 1924 print, had not a single copy by the Amīrīya, just a book made by Muḥammad ʿAbdarRaḥmān called muṣḥaf al-muʿalim with 15 lines per page (instead of the original 12)

(if you do not have an image of a KFE in your head, click here

Unlike the Muḫallalātī, the King Fuʾād Edition was not intended for scholars but for students.
It contained no tafsīr,
did not mention any verse‑counting systems other than the Kūfān,
and did not mark any readings other than that of Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim — which would have required colour printing or a refined system of marginal notes using established abbreviations.
In contrast to the traditional madrasa setting, where students memorized the text with a šaiḫ and did not actually read from the page, the new state schools expected pupils to read in the printed muṣḥaf; to make reading as easy as possible, fewer than 300 of the 406 sorts designed for unvowelled Arabic by Muḥammad Ǧaʿfar Bey in 1906 were used: since lām‑mīm ligatures or lām‑ḥāʾ‑hāʾ ligatures, for example, were never employed, all vowel signs could be placed exactly above (or below) the letter. That the text was strictly linear, with no stacked ligatures — a layout familiar from novels and newspapers — and that each page contained only twelve lines, was intended to make it accessible to a “secular” reading public.
Here why it is the King Fuʾād Edition: page alif – i.e. the first page after an empty page 1 and 826 pages of qurʾānic text, and an other empty page – from 1924:

page alif, although no number is shown, but it is alif because three pages later is "dal" (د).

The KFE is not "The Cairo Edition" or "CE", because there are more than hundred different Cairo editions,
more than five Warš editions are really Cairo editions, some without Cairo being mentioned (many edition for Morocco), or even Algers given as publishing Place, others like Muḥammad Alī Ṣubaiḥ proudly mention Cairo

reproduced by N. Suit, and those by al-Ḥalabi
Cairo Warš edition In the period between the "World Wars" several publishers published Warš maṣāḥif. Here some by Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī.

Some prints are difficult to read. Princeton digitalisated their copy, assuming it was artistically valuable they made it available to the public:

BTW, there are 32 empty lines above sūra title boxes and ten on the bottom of pages:

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facts about the KFE

the KFA was written by Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḫalaf al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād alone
it was a sign of the independance from Istanbul (Nov 1914) (not from the UK Feb 1922)
it was the first offset printed muṣḥaf
it was set with less than 300 sorts out of the 470 designed by Muḥammad Ǧaʿfar Bey in 1906
(out which 406 were Arabic sorts, the rest: Persian, numbers, punctuation)
Muḥ Ḥifnī Bey Nāsif had advoated a muṣḥaf for people educated in state scholar, reading novels and news papers: baseline orientated without stacked ligatures

before it was printed, all kasras were lifted on the galley proofs

here you see the Amīrīya set text and the same text set in Hyderabad: mostly the same with the kasras just lifted, in the last example a different form of end-mīm was used (in the first line with the deep mīm kasratan are move slightly to the left)
the KFE(resp. al-Ḥaddād) did not reconstruct the spelling according to Ibn Naǧāh, he just follwed a Faz print
I base this assertion on two groups of facts: the adding of ġāli­ban in the information. first the original words 1342 to 1414:

the 1420 version

again in 2019

and in the grand edition:

and ‒ stated its sources (although ... see below),
‒ adopted ‒ except for the Kufic counting,
    and the pause signs, which were based on Eastern sources.
    ‒ the Maghrebi rasm (largely after Abū Dāʾūd Ibn Naġāḥ)
    ‒ the Maghrebi small substitute vowels for elongation
    ‒ the Maghrebian baseline hamzae before Alif at the begin­ning of the word (ءادم instead of اٰدم).
    ‒ the Maghrebic distinction into three kinds of tanwin (above each other, one after the other, with mīm)
    ‒ the Maghrebic spelling at the end of the sura, which assumes that the next sura is spoken imme­diate­ly after­wards (and with­out basmala): tanwin is modified accordingly.
    ‒ the Maghrebic absence of nūn quṭni.
    ‒ the Maghrebic non-spelling of the vowel shortening.
    ‒ the Maghrebic (wrong) spelling of ʾallāh.
    ‒ the Maghrebī (and Indian) attraction of the hamza sign by kasra

in G24 hamza with kasra is below the baseline ‒ in the Ottoman Empire (include Egypt) and Iran the hamza stays above the line

‒ noted assimi­lation like in the Magh­reb (an in India, Indo­nesia):

In both examples the first three lines are Ottoman
    (Rušdī, Ḥasan Riḍā in ʿIrāqī state editions, Muṣṭafā Naẓīf Qairġalī Cairo 1911),
in the middle Giza 1924
bellow Maġribī Warš editions ‒ note that in the older edition the second stem (vertical stroke) of لا is lam+šadda, while in the modern Algerian one, it is the first stroke

A new feature was the differentiation of the Maghrebic sukūn into three signs:
    ‒ the ǧazm in the form of an ǧīms without a tail and without a dot for vowel-lessness,
    ‒ the circle for never to be pronounced,
    ‒ the (oval) zero for "only pronounced if paused".
(while before ‒ as in IPak‒ the absence of any sign signifies "not to be pro­nounced").
Further, word spacing,
baseline orientation and
exact placement of dots and dashes.

the KFA was written by Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḫalaf al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥad­dād alone
it was a sign of the indepen­dance from Istanbul (Nov 1914) (not from the UK Feb 1922, because it did not compete with the Royal British muṣ­ḥaf)
it was the first offset printed muṣḥaf
it was set with less than 300 sorts out of the 470 designed by Muḥammad Ǧaʿfar Bey in 1906
(out of which 406 were Arabic sorts, the rest: Persian, numbers, punctuation)
Muḥ Ḥifnī Bey Nāsif had advoated a muṣḥaf for people educated in state schools, reading novels and news­papers: base­line orien­ted with­out stacked liga­tures

before it was printed, all kasras were lifted on the galley proofs

here you see the Amīrīya set text and the same text set in Hyder­abad: mostly the same just with the kasras lifted, in the last example a different form of end-mīm was used (in the first line with the deep mīm kasra­tan are move slightly to the left)
the KFE(resp. al-Ḥaddād) did not recon­struct the spelling ac­cord­ing to Ibn Naǧāh, he just followed a Faz print
I base this assertion on two groups of facts: the adding of ġāli­ban in the information. first the original words 1342 to 1414:

the 1420 version

again in 2019

and in the grand edition:

and ‒ on the fact that al-Ḥaddād stated its sources (although ... see below),
‒ adopted ‒ except for the Kufic counting,
    and the pause signs, which were based on Eastern sources.
    ‒ the Maġribi rasm (largely after Abū Dāʾūd Ibn Naġāḥ)
    ‒ the Maġribī small substitute vowels for elon­ga­tion (needed because
        long vowel signs do not exist in the West)

    ‒ the Maġribī baseline hamzae before Alif at the begin­ning of the word (ءادم instead of اٰدم).
    ‒ the Maġribī distinction into three kinds of tan­win
        (above each other, one after the other, with mīm)
    ‒ the Maġribī absence of nūn quṭni = nūn ṣīla.

    ‒ the Maġribī spelling at the end of the sura, which assumes that the next sura is spoken imme­diate­ly after­wards (and with­out basmala): tanwin is modified accordingly.
    ‒ the Maġribī absence of rukūʿāt.
    ‒ the Maġribī non-spelling of the vowel shortening.
    ‒ the Maġribī (wrong) spelling of /ʾallāh/.
    ‒ the Maġribī (and Indian) attraction of the hamza sign by kasra

in G24 hamza with kasra is below the base­line ‒ in the Otto­man Empire + Iran hamza stays above the line

‒ noted as­si­mi­la­tion like in the Magh­reb (and in India):

the first three lines are Otto­man (Rušdī, Ḥasan Riḍā in ʿIrāqī state edi­tions, Muṣ­ṭafā Naẓīf Qadir­ġalī Cairo 1911),
in the middle Giza 1924
then Maġribī Warš edi­tions ‒ note that in the older edi­tion the second stem (vertical stroke) of لا is lam+šad­da, while in the modern Algerian one, it is the first stroke.
the Maġribī writers, al-Muḫalla­lātī, and G24 have no sign above the assi­mi­lated latter and a šadda above the assimi­la­ting one.



A new feature was the diffe­ren­tia­tion of the Maġ­ribī sukūn into three signs:
‒ the ǧazm in the form of a ǧīm with­out a tail and without a dot for vowel-less­ness,
‒ the circle for never to be pro­nounced,
‒ the (oval) zero: only pro­nounced after a pause.
(while before ‒ as in IPak ‒ the absence of any sign signified "not to be pro­nounced").
Further, word spacing, base­line orien­tation and exact placement of dots and dashes.
In 7:103 und 3:144+21:34 11:97+ 10:75+23:46+28:32+ 43:46 have the same rasm and are pro­nounced the same way, but written diffe­rently:
wa-malaʾihī
IPak: وَمَلَا۠ئِهٖ
Q52: وَمَلَإِي۠هِۦ
Both scripts use a mater lectio­nis in the rasm for /a/ and /i/ ‒ not for 7ā/ and /ī/,
since alif, yāʾ and wāw were the only letters available to signal the pre­sence of a vowel. in India alif is mute (= does not lengthens the fatḥa), yāʾ carries hamza
in the West alif carries the hamza, yāʾ is mute.

In 3:144 + 21:34 ʾa-faʾin
IPak: افَا۠ئِنْ
Q52: اَفإي۠ن
Inder und Türken machen das alif stumm
(früher setzten die Inder NICHTS auf das alif, heute den Stumm-Kreis,
die Türken das Wort qaṣr darunter)
die Araber sehen das alif als Hamza-Träger, das yāʾ als stumm.
Muṣṭafā Naẓīf lässt das stumme yāʾ in seinem (in Deutsch­land und Indo­nesia nach­ge­drucktem) 604er berkenar muṣḥaf in 21:34 weg: اَفَإنْ
Sonst hat er ‒ wie üblich ‒ alif und yā, aber in dem 604er fehlt das yāʾ und die meisten Heraus­geber der Re­prints stört(e) das nicht.

In 21:34 ʾa-faʾin
IPak: افَا۠ئِنْ
Q52: اَفإي۠ن
India and osm/Tur make the alif silent
(Indians used to leave the alif without any sign, now they put the silent making circle,
Turks write qaṣr underneath)
for Arabs alif carries hamza, yāʾ is silent.
Muṣṭafā Naẓīf in one of his manu­scripts (the 604 pages berkenar one) just drops the otiose letter. اَفَإنْ
It does not help to observe that in his other maṣāḥif he has the super­fluous letter. The 604 page muṣḥaf is often re­printed (not as often as the 522 page one, but in different countries) without "correc­tion".
Similar 6:24 min-nabaʾi

al-Ḥaddād switched from وَمَلَا۠ئِهٖ to وَمَلَإِي۠هِۦ , and from افَا۠ئِنْ to اَفإي۠ن , should be proof enough, that he uncrtical­ly copied Morocco.
I do not claim that al‑Ḥaddād is wrong; I merely note that he offers no argu­ment for his choice.
Now alif hosts the hamza while the yāʾ is silent, whereas pre­viously the alif was silent and the yāʾ served as the seat for both the hamza and the /i/ vowel.
















Incidentally, MNQ once forgets to write the otiose letter:

The Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim King Fuʾād 1924 edition

The field of study of printed editions of the Qur'an needs to be cleaned up.
Many German Orienta­lists refer to the offi­cial Egyp­tian edi­tion of 1924/5 as "the stan­dard Qur'an", others call it "Azhar Qur'an". Some call it "THE Cairo Edi­tion/CE" ‒ non­sensi­cal de­signa­tions. Many false ideas cir­culate about the King Fuʾād edition, the Giza Qur'an, the Egyp­tian Survey Autho­rity print (المصحف الشريف لطبعة مصلحة المساحة المصرية), the 12-liner (مصحف 12 سطر).
Some believe they are look­ing at a manu­script.^♦

♦ like Abdel Theo­dore Khoury, ʾAsmāʾ Ḥilālī, sogar A.A. Brocket (Two Trans­missions p. 9) ↩

Andreas Ismail Mohr calls it "type print­ing". Yet the epi­logue ‒ from the 1925 small (Būlāq) edi­tion even more clearly than the first, large one (Giza 1924) ‒ makes every­thing clear: The fair copy writ­ten by Egypt's šaiḫ al-maqāriʾ Muḥam­mad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḫalaf al-Ḥu­sainī al-Mālikī aṣ-Ṣaʿīdī al‑Ǧir­ǧāwī al-Ḥaddād (1282/1865-1357/ 22.1. 1939) ‒ not to be con­fused with the calli­grapher Muḥammad ibn Saʿd ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ḥad­dād (1919-2011) ‒ was set in Būlāq with five tiers per line (pause signs; fatḥa, damma, sukūn; letters [for base­line hamza includ­ing the vowel sign]; kasra; spac­ing).
A look at the Hyder­abad 1938 print shows what was done; when you type print with­out adjust­ing the rough proofs before making the plates for print­ing. (On the image: red lifted kasras for the Giza print.)
On the images below I compare the Muṣḥaf Taw­fīq of 1299/1881 with Muṣ­ḥaf Malik Fuʾād 1342: again kasras are much nearer to the letters.
In Giza corrected rough proofs were made into printing plates. The print­ing itself was done in Giza.
Type printing is a letter­press pro­cess. Types/sorts leave small inden­ta­tions on the paper: they press the print­ing ink into the paper. Offset is plano­graphic: the paper ab­sorbs the ink; you can't find inden­ta­tions. With his eyes, Mohr saw that it was not hand­written. But he does not know that type print can only be re­cog­nised with the sense of touch.
"That's nonsense, instead of ela­bora­tely type­sett­ing and print­ing that ONCE, why not have a calli­gra­pher write it?" (Mohr) This fails to appre­ci­ate the tech­no­id sense of accuracy of the editors of 1924. The accuracy established by type­setting and now achieved through Open­Type tech­no­logy is matched by no one but ʿUṯmān Ṭaha: per­fect align­ment with every vowel sign sitting exactly above or below its letter.
Traditional letterpress struggles with this layout. While charac­ters on top of the line stay close enough to the eye, the des­cen­ders force the kasras too far below the base­line. This breaks the visual con­nec­tion, mak­ing the page harder to read.
A look at the Hyderabad 1938 print shows exactly what hap­pens when you use movable-type print­ing with­out adjust­ing the rough proofs. Because the Hy­der­aba­di printers did not modify the lines before mak­ing the plates, kasras sit beneath the des­cender of end-mīm, -lām, -ʿain, and -ḥāʾ, în Giza these were lifted up next to a stroke, or into a counter. (On the image, I made the Giza kasras red.)
When ʿUṯmān Ṭaha (UT) copied the Q52 text into the ber­Kenar lay­out he kept the linear form and the space between words of the 1924/52 print the 1938 kasras sit too low, making the page look dis­jointed and harder to read. (In the image below, I marked the kas­ras in red that had been "lifted" on the galley proofs for the Giza print).
Two examples to illu­strate.

While UT clearly reads yanhā, the beau­ti­ful Ottoman hand­writ­ing reads naihā; while the three vowel signs (fatḥa, sukūn, long-ā) are clear­ly in the right order (there is no other way, they are all on top), nūn (per­haps) comes before yāʾ (or does the nūn dot come before the yāʾ dots). Inci­den­tally, the two "tooth" letters have a tooth or spine in UT, but none in court Otto­man! While there is clearly no­thing bet­ween heh (I use the Uni­code name to clearly dis­tin­guish it from ḥāʾ) and alif maq­ṣūra in UT, there could well be a tooth in Otto­man: You only needed to put two dots over it and it would be hetā or some­thing like that.

2^nd example: wa-ma­lā­ʾi­ka­tihī Whereas the 1924 print (below) and UT (middle) use the small letter alif‑madda hover­ing in front of the yāʾ‑tooth ‒ an added long‑vo­wel that leaves the tooth free to carry a ham­za di­rect­ly beneath it, yield­ing a hamza‑yāʾ (/ʾ/, not /ī/ or /ā/) ‒ the Qa­ṭar muṣ­ḥaf (top) puts a mu­tat­ing alif‑madda direct­ly above the tooth, there­by turn­ing that tooth into a long‑vowel alif, and lets the hamza hover below after it. Sound and rasm re­main the same, but the ortho­gra­phy is dif­ferent ‒ not ad­missi­ble for those who do not to­lerate any ap­proxi­mation in the Qurʾān.
Now the whole of page 3 in com­pari­son. Giza print and UT: the Amīrī­ya is more calli­graphic than UT, which can be seen in the examples in the right margin.
All in all, UT follows the default. Base­line and clear from right to left. Only in the spac­ing bet­ween words is it less modern than the Amīriy­ya (which is why Dar al-Maʿrifa in­creased the spac­ing). While the Amīrīya has bāʾ/tā/ṯāʾ, sīn/šīn, mīm and fā above mim, UT writes it in front (right) of it. Simila­ri­ly: KFE: lām above heh, UT before heh.

if you don't want to read the whole page, but just some words, in which KFA is more calli­graphic can UT:^◉

◉ ↩

Also from page 3 Com­parison of Muṣḥaf Qaṭar and UT. In the first and last examples, Abū ʿUmar ʿUbaidah Mu­ḥam­mad Ṣāliḥ al-Banki / عبيدة محمد صالح البنكي does not place the yāʾ-dots EXACTLY under the tooth (in the first case because of the close nūn, in the second case with­out need). Three cases show tooth let­ters without a tooth. And a cuddle-mīm, which makes its vowel sign sit wrong (for modern readers): the mīm is to the right of the lām, but the mīm vowel sign is to the left, because the mīm is to be pro­noun­ced after the lām. So it is rightly "wrong".

letters from the KFE and from UT1 (below):
In the upper part you see that KFA (white back­ground) is more calli­graphic, UT (yellowish) more type­writer style.
The lower part shows Būlāq sorts not used for the qurʾānic text, i.e. used for the appen­dices or not at all in the KFA.

legends about the King Fuʾād Edition aka the CE

the KFA is the first printed qurʾān by and for Muslims
the KFA fixed an ill-defined text
the KFA made Ḥafs ʿan ʿĀṣim predominant

the KFA was an immediate success all ober the Muslim world
... was the first printed muṣḥaf following the rasm al-ʿuṯmānī
... was the child of an Azhar committee
The committee worked 17 years on its text
... was the necessary reaction to tons of mistakes in importandt maṣāḥif (which had to be sunk in the Nile)
the source for rasm are not manuscripts, but the literature about it; it is therefore a reconstruction, the result of a rewriting of the usual text (Bergsträßer)
it follows Abū Daʾūd Sulaimān Ibn Naǧāḥ

the taʿrīf says: ad-Dānī and Ibn Naǧāḥ, and when they disagree: Ibn Naǧāḥ (hence Ibn N.)

Introductory Note

Before discussing what the King Fuʾād Edition of 1924 actually is, a few basic dis­tinctions are needed. They may feel pedantic, but without them the debate becomes a tangle of category mis­takes. Three layers must be kept apart:

1. The oral form

The oral form of the Qurʾān — in this case the reading of Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim — is a system of reci­tation. It defines how the text is pro­nounced, some­times a different vowel, a doubled consonant, or easing of hamza, elon­ga­tions, as­simi­lation, where pauses are mandatory, possible, or for­bidden.
It is transmitted orally, corrected orally, and mastered orally.
It can be written differently ‒ either fixing most aspects or leav­ing them to be taught orally.

2. The written form

2a the text

The written form is the choice of ortho­graphy: the spell­ing system and graphic code used to re­present Ḥafṣ on the page (or in the data stream) ‒ a bundle of deci­sions:
‒ the rasm, the letter skeleton;
‒ the spelling of long vowels;
‒ spelling initial hamza;
‒ mute/otios letters;
‒ the writing of (partial) assimila­tion;
‒ auxiliary signs: pause marks, verse numbers, saǧa­da signs, juzʾ and ḥizb markers, saktah signs, and the like.
Some aspects follow early manu­scripts (in which alif, waw and yāʾ were not only written for /ʾ, w, y/ and /ā, ū, ī/, but for /a, u, i/, for dif­feren­tiat­ing between words that would be homo­graphs without an imposed spelling dis­tinc­tion and for marking the end of a word ending with a letter without an explicit end-of-word-form (waw, dāl, ḏāl, rāʾ, zai).
In Asia/India/Indone­sia long vowels are written by long-vowel-signs while Africa/Andalusia/the Maġrib has only three short vowel signs, needs extra length­en­ing letters: when there is no ḥarf al-madd in the rasm a small vowel letter is added.
initial hamza on alif is not marked in Asia (here an inital alif is a hamza) while in the West a small ʿain i.e. hamza-sign is needed
‒ both vowel dots/strokes and the ham­za sign did not exist when spelling was fixed.
This layer is often misunder­stood. It is a spell­ing system, chosen and applied by human editors. Different systems can re­pre­sent the same reci­ta­tion; the same system can be used for dif­ferent reci­ta­tions.

2b the graphic form

While the text is the data, the graphic form is the text rendered as an image ‒ the text is basic, the graphic forms are just variants.
First different forms of ḍamma ‒ they are the same what­ever Unicode says.

next different forms of sukūn:

in the middle you see an East Afri­can muṣ­ḥaf in which fatḥa+sukūn when the follow each other are joined (as if one sign)







below nūn ṣīla (nūn quṭnī) by the same calligapher, Hafiz ʿUṯmān the Elder: wheter the nūn is near the tanwīn or below the alif does not matter, it is the same. Whether it has an extra kasra nor not, either.

3. The book form

The book form is the physical and typo­graphic reali­za­tion: page size, mar­gins, type­face, layout, title pages, appen­dices, indices, catch words, headers .... This layer answers questions like:
‒ How many lines per page?
‒ Is there extra space bet­ween words?
‒ Is there a numbers after each verse, and are alter­native ends of verse in­di­cated?
‒ Must each juzʾ begin on a right‑hand page?
‒ Is there in the left bottom always an end of verse?
‒ Is there an index? A colo­phon? A table of aḥ­zāb? ‒ Are the suras counted or named only?
‒ Is the chronology of revelation indicated?
This layer is the most visible to readers, yet the least under­stood in scholar­ship. It is also the layer in which printers, not scholars, often have the final word.

The legends

Around the 1924 print, a cluster of per­sistent claims has grown. According to these stories, it was: ‒ the “Cairo Edition”, as if Cairo had produced only one muṣ­ḥaf;
‒ the Azhar Qurʾān, as if it had been conceived, edited, and issued by al‑Azhar;
‒ the product of a committee of four scholars working for seven­teen years;
‒ a critical restora­tion of the Qurʾān based on the rasm treatise of Ibn Naǧāḥ.
‒ the first print with the rasm ʿuṯmānī instead of being imlāʾī¹

rasm ʿuṯmānī vs. "rasm ʿuṯmānī" – "imlāʾī" vs. imlāʾī ...

Both terms are misleading. They suggest a meaning they do not actually carry.
“Rasm ʿUṯmānī” appears to denote the rasm of the 1st‑century codices asso­ciated with ʿUṯmān. In reality, it refers to the 10th‑cen­tury codi­fi­ca­tion by ad‑Dānī. The name evokes an origin and an autho­rity that the system, as we have it, does not possess. The mis­leading effect comes direct­ly from the term’s wording.
“Imlāʾī” functions in a similar way. It suggests the modern standard ortho­graphy of MSA. In fact, it refers to the Otto­man Qurʾān‑ortho­graphic conven­tion. This becomes immediately clear from the spelling of words such as raḥmn (for raḥmān) and ṣalū (for ṣalāt),
al-Ribā; 2:275; 2:275; 2:275; 2:276; 2:278; 3:130; 4:161; al-Ṣalāt; 70 x 2:3; 2:43; 2:45; 2:83; 2:110; 2:153; 2:177; 2:238; 2:277; 4:43; 4:77; 4:101; 4:102; 4:103; 4:103; 4:142; 4:162; 5:6; 5:12; 5:55; 5:58; 5:91; 5:106; 6:72; 6:92; 7:170; 8:3; 8:35; 9:5; 9:11; 9:18; 9:71; 10:87; 11:114; 13:22; 14:31; 14:37; 14:40; 17:78; 17:110; 19:31; 19:55; 20:14; 20:132; 21:73; 22:35; 22:41; 22:78; 24:37; 24:41; 24:56; 24:58; 24:58; 27:3; 29:45; 29:45; 30:31; 31:4; 33:33; 35:29; 42:38; 58:13; 62:9; 62:10; 73:20; 98:5; al-Ṣalāt; 70 x ṣalātī; 6:162; ṣalāti r-rasūli; 9:99; ṣalātaka; 9:103; a-ṣalātuka; 11:87; ṣalātihim; 107:5; al-Zakāt; 32x from 2:43 to 98:5; 2:43; 2:83; 2:110; 2:177; 2:277; 4:77; 4:162; 5:12; 5:55; 7:156; 9:5; 9:11; 9:18; 9:71; 19:13; 19:31; 19:55; 21:73; 22:41; 22:78; 23:4; 24:37; 24:56; 27:3; 30:39; 31:4; 33:33; 41:7; 58:13; 73:20; 98:5; al-Ḥayāt; 55x from 2:85 to 89:24; 2:85; 2:86; 2:96; 2:212; 3:14; 3:117; 4:74; 4:94; 6:32; 6:70; 6:130; 7:32; 7:51; 9:38; 9:38; 9:55; 9:85; 10:7; 10:23; 10:64; 11:15; 13:26; 13:26; 13:34; 14:3; 16:107; 17:75; 18:28; 18:45; 18:46; 20:131; 28:60; 28:61; 28:79; 29:25; 29:64; 30:7; 33:28; 35:5; 40:39; 40:51; 41:31; 42:36; 43:32; 43:35; 45:24; 45:35; 46:20; 53:29; 57:20; 67:2; 79:38; 87:16; 89:24; al-Ribā; 2:275 (3x);276;278; 3:130; 4:161; al-Ṣalāt; 70 x ṣalātī; 6:162; ṣalāti r-rasūli; 9:99; ṣalātaka; 9:103; a-ṣalātuka; 11:87; ṣalātihim; 107:5; al-Zakāt; 32x from 2:43 to 98:5; al-Ḥayāt; 55x from 2:85 to 89:24; wa-Manāta; 53:20; al-Najāt; 40:41; ka-miškātin; 24:35; bi-l-ghadāti; 6:52; 18:28;
al-Ribā;الرِّبَوٰا;2:275;2:275;2:275;2:276;2:278;3:130;4:161;al-Ṣalāt;الصَّلَوٰةُ;2:3;2:43;2:45;2:83;2:110;2:153;2:177;2:238;2:277;4:43;4:77;4:101;4:102;4:103;4:103;4:142;4:162;5:6;5:12;5:55;5:58;5:91;5:106;6:72;6:92;7:170;8:3;8:35;9:5;9:11;9:18;9:71;10:87;11:114;13:22;14:31;14:37;14:40;17:78;17:110;19:31;19:55;20:14;20:132;21:73;22:35;22:41;22:78;24:37;24:41;24:56;24:58;24:58;27:3;29:45;29:45;30:31;31:4;33:33;35:29;42:38;58:13;62:9;62:10;73:20;98:5;ṣalātī;صَلَاتِي;6:162;ṣalāti r-rasūli;صَلَوٰتِ الرَّسُولِ;9:99;ṣalātaka;صَلَوٰتَكَ;9:103;a-ṣalātuka;أَصَلَوٰتُكَ;11:87;ṣalātihim;صَلَاتِهِمْ;107:5;al-Zakāt;الزَّكَوٰةُ;2:43;2:83;2:110;2:177;2:277;4:77;4:162;5:12;5:55;7:156;9:5;9:11;9:18;9:71;19:13;19:31;19:55;21:73;22:41;22:78;23:4;24:37;24:56;27:3;30:39;31:4;33:33;41:7;58:13;73:20;98:5;al-Ḥayāt;الْحَيَوٰةُ;2:85;2:86;2:96;2:212;3:14;3:117;4:74;4:94;6:32;6:70;6:130;7:32;7:51;9:38;9:38;9:55;9:85;10:7;10:23;10:64;11:15;13:26;13:26;13:34;14:3;16:107;17:75;18:28;18:45;18:46;20:131;28:60;28:61;28:79;29:25;29:64;30:7;33:28;35:5;40:39;40:51;41:31;42:36;43:32;43:35;45:24;45:35;46:20;53:29;57:20;67:2;79:38;87:16;89:24;wa-Manāta;وَمَنَوٰةَ;53:20;al-Najāt;النَّجَاة;40:41;ka-miškātin;كَمِشْكَوٰةٍ;24:35;bi-l-ghadāti;بِالْغَدَوٰةِ;6:52;18:28; الرِّبَوٰا 2:275,278, 3:130, 4:161 2:3, 2:43, 2:45, 2:83, 2:110, 2:153, 2:177, 2:238, 2:277Sure 4:43, 4:77, 4:101, 4:102, 4:103 (wird im Vers 103 2-mal so geschrieben), 4:142, 4:162Sure 5:6, 5:12, 5:55, 5:58, 5:91, 5:106Sure 6:72, 6:92Sure 7:170Sure 8:3, 8:35Sure 9:5, 9:11, 9:18, 9:71Sure 10:87Sure 11:114Sure 13:22Sure 14:31, 14:37, 14:40Sure 17:78, 17:110Sure 19:31, 19:55Sure 20:14, 20:132Sure 21:73Sure 22:35, 22:41, 22:78Sure 24:37, 24:41, 24:56, 24:58 (wird im Vers 58 2-mal so geschrieben)Sure 27:3 29:45 (wird im Vers 45 2-mal so geschrieben)Sure 30:31Sure 31:4Sure 33:33Sure 35:29Sure 42:38Sure 58:13Sure 62:9, 62:10Sure 73:20Sure 98:5 Im Singular ohne Artikel (als Konstruktverbindung ṣalāt- mit stummem Wāw):Sure 6:162 (ṣalātī)Sure 9:99 (ṣalāti r-rasūli)Sure 9:103 (ṣalātaka)Sure 11:87 (a-ṣalātuka)Sure 24:58 (ṣalāti l-fajri und ṣalāti l-ʿišāʾi – beide bereits oben in Vers 58 mitgezählt)Sure 62:9 (ṣalāti min yawmi l-jumuʿati – bereits oben in Vers 9 mitgezählt)Sure 107:5 (ṣalātihim) ; (الزَّكَوٰةُ)Dieses Wort taucht im Koran fast immer gekoppelt mit dem Gebet auf und behält stets sein stummes Wāw:Sure 2:43, 2:83, 2:110, 2:177, 2:277Sure 4:77, 4:162Sure 5:12, 5:55Sure 7:156Sure 9:5, 9:11, 9:18, 9:71Sure 18:81 (hier unbestimmt als zakātan, im Rasm jedoch historisch uneinheitlich überliefert; in den Standard-Maṣāḥif nach Hafs meist mit Alif geschrieben, in manchen Überlieferungen der alt-mekkanischen Schreibung mit Wāw geführt)Sure 19:13, 19:31, 19:55Sure 21:73Sure 22:41, 22:78 23:4, 24:37, 24:56, 27:3, 30:39 31:4, 33:33 41:7 58:13 73:20, 98:54. al-Ḥayāt (الْحَيَوٰةُ) 2:85, 2:86, 2:96, 2:212, 3:14 3:117 4:74 , 4:94, 6:32, 6:70, 6:130 7:32, 7:51 9:38, 9: 38 2-mal so geschrieben), 9:55, 9:85, 10:7, 10:23, 10:64, 11:15, 13:26 (wird im Vers 26 2-mal so geschrieben), 13:34 14:3 16:107Sure 17:75 Sure 17:75Sure 18:28, 18:45, 18:46Sure 20:131Sure 28:60, 28:61, 28:79Sure 29:25, 29:64Sure 30:7Sure 33:28Sure 35:5Sure 40:39, 40:51Sure 41:31Sure 42:36Sure 43:32, 43:35Sure 45:24, 45:35Sure 46:20Sure 53:29Sure 57:20Sure 67:2 Sure 79:38Sure 87:16Sure 89:245. Manāt (مَنَاة)Der Name der Gottheit hat das stumme Wāw an seiner einzigen Fundstelle:Sure 53:20 (geschrieben als wa-Manāwta, gesprochen wa-Manāta)6. al-Najāt (النَّجَاة)Das Wort für Rettung besitzt das stumme Wāw ebenfalls an seiner einzigen Stelle im Koran:Sure 40:41 (geschrieben als al-Najāwti, gesprochen al-Najāti) Miškāt (مِشْكَاة)Die Nische aus dem Licht-Vers wird mit stummem Wāw geschrieben:Sure 24:35 (geschrieben als ka-miškāwtin, gesprochen ka-miškātin)8. al-Ghadāt (الغَدَاة)Das Wort für den Morgen kommt an zwei Stellen mit dem stummen Wāw vor:Sure 6:52 (geschrieben als bi-l-ghadāwti, gesprochen bi-l-ghadāti)Sure 18:28 (geschrieben als bi-l-ghadāwti, gesprochen bi-l-ghadāti) الصَّلَوٰةُ forms that delibe­ra­tely diverge from normal.
BTW, the Ottoman spelling has just about 5150 alifs where G24 has a dagger, while G24 differs at about 32 000 words from IPak
Except for the sequence Iso­Hamza+Alif, which was adopted from the Maghreb in 1890 and 1924 (alif+madda was not possible, since madda was already taken for elongation), everything here is already as it was in 1924.
Two title pages of Lucknow prints from 1870 and 1877.

In 1895, a Qur'an appeared in Būlāq in ʿuṯmānī rasm, which perhaps meant "unvocalised". Kitāb Tāj at-tafāsīr li-kalām al-malik al-kabīr taʼlīf Muḥammad ʿUṯmān ibn as-Saiyid Muḥammad Abī Bakr ibn as-Saiyid ʻAbd­Allāh al-Mīrġanī al-Maḥǧūb al-Makkī. Wa-bi-hāmišihi al-Qurʼān al-Maǧīd marsūman bi'r-rasm al-ʿUṯmānī. ↩︎ return

‒ it was an immediate suc­cess all over the Muslim world.
‒ it spread the reading of Ḥafṣ
These narratives are tidy, appealing ‒ and wrong.
Ḥafṣ was made dominant by non-Arab ruler (the Mamelucks, the Ottomans, Safavid, Timurids) because Ḥafṣ is closes to normal Arabic.
In reality, the text was prepared by one man. There is no trace of de­li­be­ra­tion, no evi­dence of a com­mis­sion, and no sign that the text was syste­ma­tically dis­cus­sed with others before it went to press.

What G24 actually did

The 1924 text — which I call G24, because the King-Fuʾād-Edition was printed in Giza — fixed a specific ortho­graphic system for Ḥafṣ. It is not new at all. Muḥammad (ibn) Ḫalaf (ibn) ʿAlī al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād al-Malakī just switched from the Otto­man ver­sion of the Asian spelling to the Maġ­ribī or Anadu­sian system. This orthography and pause system is possible in letter­press, litho­graphy, or manuscript form ‒ or as digital text.

What KFA/kfa actually are

The book form that carried this text existed in two stable sizes only:
‒ KFA for the 27‑cm format,
‒ kfa for the 20‑cm format.
(more about the differences later)
Both contain 826 pages of Qurʾān text plus 23 pages of dedica­tion, expla­na­tion, index, and colophon.
The smaller kfa is not a shortened version. It is the same book, reduced in size. The type area — the text block — is only about ten per­cent smaller. What dis­appears is the margin: the generous white space of the KFA is re­duced to the width of the medail­lions for ǧuz, ḥizb, sak­tah and sa­ǧada.

The KFA was the first offset muṣ­ḥaf, it was a govern­ment edition, meant for students in govern­ment schools, who should be able to read it easily without a šaiḫ reciting it for them. That is why its ini­tia­tor Ḥif­ni Bey Nāṣif wanted that only about 300 sorts were used = no stacked ligatures, no vertical ones like on the right. This base­line-aligned script was new ‒ and lives on in the ʿUṯmān Ṭaha Madina muṣḥaf.

Thus:
‒ G24 = the text (ortho­graphy, pause signs, liturgical divisions: juzʾ and ḥizb).
‒ KFA/kfa = the book (827+20‑pages, no title page, no duʿāʾ, two sizes).

  the Indian text I call IPak, its book forms IPak611 (berkenar), IPak848 (South Africa), IPak 549 etc.
  the Maġribī text And(alūs), the Ottoman text Ott, the modern Turkish standard CT
  MNQ522 and MNQ604 are by Muṣṭafā Nāẓīf Qadirġalī
  Kazan is a text standard, so are MSI 1983, MSI 2002, MSI 2019 for Indonesia
  Ṭabo-Našr has a rasm of it own, a nIran spelling convention, but prints maṣā­ḥif an other spellings too


For centuries, the peda­gogy of Qurʾānic recita­tion has been built on differen­ces. Students did not merely learn one read­ing; they learned how each reading diverged from the others. The Šāṭibīya is the classic monu­ment of this culture: a mnemonic archi­tecture in which the variants of the seven canoni­cal readings are encoded verse by verse. Tens of thousands of Muslims memorized these dif­ferences, and the great reciters carried them effort­lessly. A master like Muḥammad Ḫalaf ʿAlī al‑Ḥusainī al‑Ḥad­dād al‑Malikī could recite the diver­gences bet­ween Ḥafṣ and Warš as naturally as other people recall their own birth­days. This was the pro­fes­sional world of the Šaiḫ al‑Maqāriʾ al‑Miṣrī, the man who pre­pared the 1924 text. He was a guar­dian of the oral form of the Qurʾān — not a specia­list in early manu­scripts, not a reader of ad‑Dānī or Ibn Naǧāḥ, not a calli­grapher, and not a type­setter. His task was not to recon­struct an ancient rasm. What he actually did was straight­forward: he took a printed Moroc­can Warš muṣ­ḥaf from Fès — at that time the only widely available Warš edition in print — and mapped the oral Ḥafṣ reading onto its Maġ­ribī written form. In other words, the 1924 text is the result of apply­ing an Egyptian oral tra­di­tion to a Fès‑based Maġ­ribī textual tem­plate. That was the entire edito­rial operation. If not convinced, read this.

KFE again

Although I have posted about the King Fuʾād Edition several times, here again.
First some sorts to demonstrate that the KFE was more linear than the Ottoman maṣā­ḥif,
it was not as linear as ʿUṯmān Ṭaha (always below with yellowish background):

And here is page alif from 1924:

and 1952:

Did you notice: the 1952 has (ا), where 1924 counted ا , but did not print it.