100 years ago

The King Fuʾād Edition of the Ḥafṣ transmission of the Qurʾān is soon cele­brating its 100^th anniversary ‒ that's what the Domini­can Insti­tute in Cairo (IDEO) says.
Actually Orientalists are doing it, the edition has nothing to do with the cele­bration.
It is not even there. The two Cairo insti­tutions with func­tioning online catalogs ‒ IDEO and AUC ‒ do not have a copy. And the two insti­tutions that might have one ‒ al-Azhar and the National Library (Dar al-Kutub) ‒ have no online catalogue for the time being.
Fortuately, both the Prussian and the Bavarian Staats­biblothek have a copy of the original print of 1342/1924 (the Bavarian Academy of Sciences has another copy).
The French Biblo­thèque National (BnF) claimed to have five copies printed in 1919.
When I wrote them that this was im­possible, they dis­covered that three of their catalog entries refered to the same physi­cal object and stream­lined it to this:

Originaly they wrote that it was printed in Al-Qāhiraẗ : al-Maṭbaʿaẗ al-Amīriyyaẗ, 1919 القاهرة : المطبعة الأميريّة, 1919 But in their copy one can read

المطبعة العربية ١١ شارع اللبودية درب الجماميز Šārʿ Darb al-Ǧamāmīz con­nect­ing Bab al-Ḫalq (in the north-east) and es-Sayeda Zainab (in the south-west) ‒ in the 1930s and '40s its southern part was named separetly as Šārʿ al-Labūdīya ‒
definetly not in Būlāq, were the Govern­ment Press was located for 150 years before it was trans­fered to Imbaba in 1972.
I don't know why the 1961 edition of the KFE was not printed in Būlāq, but it seems to the case. My first idea, that the edition was not made by a government subsiduary, but a private enterprise, is unlikely because the 1961 has not a continuous pagination (1-855), but three deparat one (2-827, ا ب غ د ه و , (1) ...(4)) When one reads IN the FRIST (and post '52) print(s)

that the print was ac­complished by 7. Ḏul­ḥigga 1342 (= 10.7.1924), this can not be the date of the pub­lication. It can only be the day when printing of the qurʾānic text was finished. After that this note had to be set, the plates had to be made, the gathe­ring(s) with this note and the infor­ma­tion that follow it in the book had to be printed, all had to be made into a book block and had to be bound (con­nected with the case).
By the time the book was published it was 1343/1925. The cover of the first edition was stamped ṭabʿat al-ḥukūma al-Miṣrīya sanat 1343 hiǧriyya.

Bibligraphicaly speaking, the date given on page [ص] can be used, but in real life, the book was pub­lished only in the following year.
The Hounds of God and their handmaid did not know a thing about the King Fuʾād Edition, they even used a picture from the 1952 edition to illustrate the 1924 one.
Okay, not everybody knows the 1924 Gizeh print has never been reprinted, that the next edition was made in Būlāq on newly aquired machines with newly made plates in a different formate and with changes in the back matter, that the third edition had a word spelled differently,
but almost every­body not ignorant of all things qur'anic knows, that the 1952 edition is a new edition ‒ dif­ferent at 900 places.
Normally it is best to con­centrate on the editions itselfs, to scan them for dif­feren­ces, to read their back­matter carefuly, but there are two texts on the 1924 edition worth studying:
Gotthelf Bergsträßer's "Koran­lesung in Kairo" in Der Islam 20,1, (1932) pp. 1-42
and Abd al-Fattāḥ (ibn ʿAbd al-Ġanī) al-Qāḍī's Tārīḫ al-Muṣ­ḥaf aš-Šarīf (esp. pp. 59-66 in the 1952 edition by Maktabat al-Jundī).
Abd al-Fattāḥ al-Qāḍī writes of three editions:
al-Muḫallalātī's of 1308/1890
al-Ḥusainī al-Ḥaddād's of 1342/1924
aḍ-Ḍabbāġ's of 1371/1952 on which he participated as one of the editors.

Back to the copies at our disposale: IDEO has one from 1354/1935
the first edition can be found in Berlin, Munich (BsB and in the Academy of Sciences), Bonn, Kiel, Basel, Zürich (UZH), Nijme­gen, Leiden
the 1344/1925 edition in Münster, Berlin (FUB), Kiel
1346/1927/8 in Leiden, Tübingen, Freiburg
1347/1928/9 in Würzburg, Munich, Erlangen-N, Bayreuth, Hamburg, Halle, Berlin (HU), Greifs­wald, Bamberg, Gießen, Kiel, Wien, Kopenhagen, Provo UT (BYU),
1936 Beirut (USJ)
many have a copy of the NEW King Fuʾād Edition of 1952
Berlin has two from 1952, one from before the revolu­tion mentioning King Fuʾād on page [alif], one with the page and its empty verso thrown out

Jena, Erfurt, Göttingen, Hamburg, Bamberg, Erlangen-N, Marburg, Eichstätt, Bonn, Mannheim, Munich (BSB & LMU) Stuttgart, Tübingen, Leiden, Freiburg, Stockholm, VicAlbert, Aix-Marseille, Madrid, Edinburgh U, Oxford, Binghamton NY, Allegheny PA, Columbus (OSU)

The second edition (1344) was reprinted by Maṭbaʿa al-ʿarabiyya in the 1930s, by the Chinese Muslim Society in Bakīn 1955 (without the page mention­ing the king and with chinized graphics and probably by Mak­ta­bat al-Šarq al-Islā­miyya wa-Maṭbaʻa­tuhā in 1357/1938 ‒ I say "probably" because it could be a repro­duction of the third or even later edition.
In 1938 the Nizam of Hyderabad had the text set with sorts he had bought from Būlāq, it was printed in two volumes along Pickthall's English translation in two volumes and reprinted by Gaddafi's Islamic Call Society ‒ plus a French version alongside D.Masson's translation.

The 1952 edition, aḍ-Ḍabbāġ's edition, was reprinted a lot:
1379/1960 in Taš­kent/Ṭaš­qend
in Bairut/Damas­cus often mostly with an added ن in 73:20 (one of these was reprinted in ʿAmmān and made it into the web archive There were reproduction on less than 827 pages: the 1952 edition was photo­graphed 1:1, the film was cut and re­arranged on a light table. Instead of 12 lines per page, we get 14 or 15 longer lines,

1983 in Qaṭar and in Germany. The German edition was made to­gether with the Islamic Text Society (ITS), Cambridge.
Since its ISBN is a German one, I guess, the pub­lishing place is Stutt­gart, not Cam­bridge or London.

There were three editions: big and medium size leather bound, and a big one in cloth. The qurʾānic text is a reprint of the 1952 al-Amīriyya edition, the back matter was fresh­ly set (not as neat as the original ‒ a pity!
As a rule, 827 page editions without title page are by the Govern­ment Press,
those with a title page are by private or non-Egyptian pub­lishers ‒
the From­mann-Holz­boog/ITS is the only non-Amīriy­ya one with­out title page, no titel on the cover, nor the spine.

The text of 1952 was published by the Government Press after 1976 for about ten years freshly set on 525 pages in several formats: with plastic cover, cartboard, leather, small, medium and large ‒ quite a success for a decade ‒ the last reprint was 1988 in Qaṭar.
And then came ʿUṯmān Ṭaha on 604 pages ‒ first with 100% the same text, later with different spelling at 2:72 and 73:20 and (most ? all ?) lāʾ pauses gone.

Asmāʾ Ḥilālī

Asmāʾ Ḥilālī:

Despite the proliferation of scholarly editions of old Qurʾānic manu­scripts
over the last twenty years,
the popularity of the Cairo edition of the Qurʾān has never been challenged.

What can this mean?
What is the connection between scholarly editions of qurʾānic fragments and
the ‒ supposed! ‒ popularity of the King Fuʾād Edition of the qurʾān,
called by her "the Cairo edition,"
which on its own shows that she is weak on logic.
Since there are more than a thousand Cairo editions of the qurʾān,
to call a particular one "THE Cairo edition" (TCE)
betrays madness ‒ unless one assumes that she ignores
the function of the definite article.

It's like:

Despite the proliferation of sub­urban gardens
the popula­rity of the Amazonas forest has not declined.

or

Despite the popularity of Mara­dona and Rinaldo
the greatness of Maria Callas is unchallenged.

The use of TCE instead of the many good (or less good) names for
the Gizeh print,
the 1924 Amīriyya edition,
the 1924 King Fuʾād edition,
the Amīri edition = here s.o. did not see that Amīriy­ya is short for al-maṭbaʿa
  al-amīriyya, thought that it refered to King Fuʾād ‒>
  corrected it to amīrī, because the King is not a Queen
the 1924 muṣḥaf al-mesāḥa
the Government print, der amtliche ägyptische ...
the 12 liner (مصحف ١٢ سطر) of 1924
shows that Asma Hilali did not know a thing about the Egyptian Govern­ment
Edition of 1924/5 at the time of writing the "Call for proposals".
TCE is a recent coinage by non-English speakers.
The Gizeh print is the ONLY muṣḥaf ever printed in Gizeh proper.
Only the 827plus page editions ‒ without titel page, but more than twenty pages AFTER the qurʾānic text ‒ by the Amīriyya (1924-1975) have 12 lines,
but they are not all the same: the 1952 edition is quite different from the 1924 one:
(and the second and third edition have a few changes NOT included in the 1952 edition)
about 900 differences between 1924/5 and 1952!

During the conference Asma Hilali was the only one who spoke of "muṣḥaf al-Qāhira" (Omar Hamdan spoke of al-Qāhira-print, most spoke of "muṣḥaf al-malik Fuʾād") ignoring that the Amīriyya never refers to al-Qāhira, but to Miṣr, Būlāq, and Gizā.
Before 1920 all private publishers were situated south-west of al-Azhar, late comers were situated in al-Faggāla St.

(partial) Assimilation

Two words from 2:8 according to five orthographic standards, all Ḥafṣ, all pronounced the same.

The top one (King Fuʾād Edition) and the bottom one (Ṭabʿo Našr, Iran) look similar, but are radically different -- because the Centre for Print and Distri­bution abolished the sukūn-sign: so in the bottom the nūn has an (unwritten) sukūn and the qāf has an unwritten long /ū/

-- just has the Turkish line just above).

In the top line the nūn has no sukūn, which means in that orthography: do not pronounce as /n/, but say /mai/.

The same phenomenon (partial assimilation) is written in Hind/Hindustan/India+Pakistan+BanglaDesh (third from below) and
Standar Indone­sia (2.-4. line)
by sukūn above the nūn (which means according to that orthography: NOT silent) plus šadda above the yāʾ (hence prounced at the end of the first AND the beginning of the second word: mai ya­qūl).





In Turkey



and Iran (complete and partial) as­si­mi­la­tion is not written.

The Pope, The Cairo Edition

Among Catholics one may speak of "the pope", among "normal" people   one SHOULD say "the Roman pope", "the pope of the Occident", "the bishop of Rome", because ‒ leaving meta­phorical use aside ‒ there are two more popes: the Coptic and the Greek "bishof of Alexan­dria and all Africa" in Cairo ((the bishops of Antiochia and All the Orient are not styled as pope)). What is common know­ledge among Egyptian Christians is un­known to many people in the States or in the UK.
Unlike popes, of which there are only three at a time, there are literaly thousand Cairo editions of the qurʾān. But some young scholars write of "The Cairo Edition". Out of ignorance or stu­pi­ti­ty? Maybe they do not know the dif­ference between "a" and "the" ... When I alerted one, s/he added "collo­quially known", an other just shrugged h*r/s shoulders, a third admitted that s/he has never looked into another muṣḥaf ‒ although as Pro­fessor of Isla­mic Stu­dies s/he should have been to a mosque and/or an islamic book­shop and opened a muṣ­ḥaf used by local Muslims (and they certainly do NOT use the KFE/King Fuʾād Edition = idiot's "CE"!)
Sometimes one sees "the St. Peters­burg edition of the Qurʾān". I do not know how many editions exist ‒ certainly not just one: First we know of edi­tions in 1787, 1789, 1790, 1793, 1796 and 1798. Copies of these six edi­tions have no year on the title page or in the back­matter ...

... so one could treat them as one: the 1787-98 Mollah Ismaʿīl ʿOsman St. Petersburg edition: Because there are more, like the 1316/1898 Muṣṭafā Naẓīf Qadirġalī St. Petersburg edition

Note the title: Kalām Qadīm
which does not refer to an antique shop, to antiquarian,
but to the pre-existence of the kalāmullāh ὁ λόγος

"THE St.Petersburg" edition is illogical. Only ignorant or stupid people use that expression. (Of course some are ignorant, stupid AND amoral.))

Giza 1924 ‒ better ‒ worse

The Egyptian Goverment Edition printed in Gizeh in 1924 was the first offset printed mushaf,
It was type set (not type printed).
It used smaller subset of the Amiriyya font not because the Amiriyya laked the techni­cal pos­sibi­lity for more elaborate ligatures,
((in 1881 when they printed a muṣḥaf for the first time,
  they used 900 different sorts, in 1906 they reduced it to about 400,
  which they used in the backmatter of the 1924 muṣḥaf,   in the qurʾānic text even less))
but to make the qurʾānic text easier to read for state school educated (wo-)men.

They did not want that the words "climb" at the end of the line for lack of space,
nor that some letter are above following letters.

It is elegant how the word con­tin­ues a­bo­ve to the right of the base­line waw, but it is against the ra­tio­nal mind of the 20th cen­tury: every­thing must be right to left!








The kind of elegance you have with "bi-ḥam­di rab­bi­ka" is not valued by modern inte­lectu­als.

Here you see on the right /fī/, on the left /fĭ/, a distinction gone in 1924:

And here you see, with which vowel the alif-waṣl has to be read ‒
something not shown in the KFE.
In Morocco they always show with which vowel one has to start (here twice fatḥa), IF one starts al­though the first letter is alif-waṣl, the linking alif, with is normaly silent.
In Persia and in Turkey one shows the vowel only after a pause, like here:

Both in the second and third line an alif waṣl comes after "laziM", a necessary pause, so there is a vowel sign between the usual waṣl and the alif ‒ a reading help missing in Gizeh 1924.

nūn quṭnī نون قطني nūn ṣila نون صلة

In Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim there are about fifty places
where alif waṣl followes tanwin
linked with kasra /ini/.
Asia writes a small(quṭnī) nūn.

Here a Persian last page (with wa- at the end of line 1 it can only be from a farsi­phone enviro­ment). After the first verse there is "la": no need to stop; if one stops, the first word of verse 2 has a hamza-fatha ‒ although the word is normally written with alif-waṣla. But WHEN/IF one joins, it becomes /ʾaḥaduni-llāh/ ‒ note the hamza-fatha on /ʾaḥadun/. Muḥammad Ṣadīq al-Minšāwī recites it both ways.

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:

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