Wednesday, 6 May 2026

"reprints", copies, adaptations

Although the KFE was almost only sold to oritentalists, in the seventies many publisher "remade" it on there light tables (lay­out tables): the cut films they had made of the 12 liner and re­arranged them: either just more lines on a page as was first done around 1933 in the "muṣḥaf al-malik" al-maṭbʿa al-miṣiriyya (Muḥammad Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Laṭīf) printed in offset I assume:
die rechte Seite bekam immer einen Kustoden. Gelegentlich wurde eine Schmuckzeile ein gefügt, damit eine Sure auf einer neuen Seite anfangen kann.
Der Verleger hat zu seinem neu umbrochenen und neu gerahmten auch einen Tafsīr veröffentlicht:
Marwān Sowār, Damascus:
Dār aš-Šurūq:
or more and longer lines:
links: Bairut 1983, Mitte: Kairo 1391/1971, rechts: Jordanischer Nachdruck eines Damaszener Nachdrucks von Kairo 1952
some editions with tafsīr keep the original pages
other rearrange the text

Only three years after the type set education ministry muṣḥaf a hand written one with 17 lines per page (with 545 pages) was published by al-ʻĀmirah al-Bahīyah
aub aco002371 Cairo: al-Maṭbaʻah al-ʻĀmirah al-Bahīyah, 1346/1927/8 545pp .
(in the last line above, in II:17 you can see a small waw to lenghten ḍamma, a Maġribian feature new to Egypt.)
On the next image you see 73:20 /allan/ without the silent alif, which was only added around 1928 in a small (Būlāq) edition.
Like any specialist I have deviced some terms. For me only a copy by the Amīrīya Press, without a title page, with­out a duʿāʾ,, with different pagination for the qurʾān and the appendixes is a King Fuʾād Edition (even those with­out the de­dication page after the revolu­tion, because nothing was changed after 1952 except names of experts stating that every­thing is correct and informa­tion about the place and date of print­ing/pub­lish­ing).
Only following the spelling and pauses deviced by al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād I call G24 (because first printed in Giza in 1332/1924).
So this is a handwriting lithography using G24.

Something in between: not a KFE by the Amīrīya, not a small kfe for students (i.e. small and with only 37 important changes to 1925), was published in 1959 by the Ministry of Auqāf: as far as I know: the original of 1952 just without the decication to the king and with less generous margins:

Here a good reprint. 1402/1981 my the Muqahwī Press in Kuwait, with a titke page:
and with a pagination of its own
But aparat from that the 1952 KFA

How to recognize a non-KFE?

a KFE has no title (i.e. an empty page 1)
no duʿāʾ
a catch word on the right hand page
pagination in the center of the footer
826 pages : an-nās on p.827 because the empty title page is counted
separate pagination for the appendixes

The easiest way is: When there is a title page and/or a duʿāʾ
















or when you see colour or page numbers higher than 827 – real KFE use separate pagination for the additions.
The frame and the medallions often give away that a print is not by the Amīrīya, but not always: both the Taškent edition and one of the Bairūt editions use the original frame, yet they are not KFEs.









–­

Amiriyya 1925 1344

In 1925/1344 the first small kinf fud edition was printed in Būlāq.
ZU
The 1924 print was a success, it showed that offset worked well, but KFE was too heavy and too expensive: only the bourgeoisie and orientalists could afford it:
The Amīrīya ordered presses of its own, smaller ones: to print books of about 20x15 cm.
1925 saw a second run of the KFE (in Giza), and the first of kfe (in Būlāq)
two pages were changed:
On the signature page (س , 842 in Bairut/Damascus/ʿAmman and Doha) there are many things remarkable:
The whole page is a fiction. Nobody could have signed on 10.4.1337/12.1.1919 that a book printed in 1342 (or 1344) was faultless. That the "signed" text changes (أصله is added in 1ء44), that it has seals or not, should make experts suspicous, but nobody has noticed.
That the seal of the sole maker of G24, al-Ḥaddād, is marked "1339" but was used by its owner in 1337 is a miracle.
The ḫātima was made up to honor the initiator of the project, Ḥifnī Bey Nāṣif, who had died in Feb. 1919.

kfeIb 1344/1926 Būlāq + second print/run stamped 1345/1927: two lines س saktah on (س)
kfeIc 1346/1928 ?????
kfeId 1347/1929 Būlāq this edition has TWO more changes: an added nūn on 775 ان لن for الن
whether 1347 brought this changes in one go or whether 1346 had one of them, I do not know since I have not seen a kfeIc (1346/1928); maybe it does not exist, maybe there was a third run of kfeIb in that year,
    and a changed dedication page mentioning the crown prince as well

A Visual Guide to Quranic Graphic Variants

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. Fir...