Page 29 - Ulum Al Quran An Introduction To The Sciences Of The Quran

The manuscript was afterwards returned to its former place and reached Tashkent in 1924, where it has remained since.
Apparently the Soviet authorities have made further copies, which are presented from time to time to visiting Muslim
heads of state and other important personalities. In 1980, photocopies of such a facsimile were produced in the United
States, with a two-page foreword by M. Hamidullah.

The writer of the History of the Mushaf of 'Uthmtln in Tashkent gives a number of reasons for the authenticity of the
manuscript. They are, excluding the various historical reports which suggest this, as follows:

 The fact that the mushaf is written in a script used in the first half of the first century Hijra.

 The fact that it is written on parchment from a gazelle, while later Qur'ans are written on paper-like sheets.

 The fact that it does not have any diacritical marks which were introduced around the eighth decade of the first
century; hence the manuscript must have been written before that.

 The fact that it does not have the vowelling symbols introduced by Du'ali, who died in 68 Hijra; hence it is earlier
than this.

In other words: two of the copies of the Qur'an which were originally prepared in the time of Caliph 'Uthman, are still
available to us today and their text and arrangement can be compared, by anyone who cares to, with any other copy of
the Qur'an, be it in print or handwriting, from any place or period of time. They will be found identical.

The 'Ali Manuscript

Some sources indicate that a copy of the Qur'an written by the fourth Caliph 'Ali is kept in Najaf, Iraq, in the Dar al-Kutub
al-'Alawiya. It is written in Kufi script, and on it is written: "Ali bin Abi Talib wrote it in the year 40 of the Hijra'. [Attar, D.:
Mujaz 'ulum al-qur'an, Beirut 1399/1979, p. 116]
THE QUR'AN IN PRINT

From the sixteenth century, when the printing press with movable type was first used in Europe and later in all parts of
the world, the pattern of writing and of printing the Qur'an was further standardised.

There were already printed copies of the Qur'an before this, in the so-called block-print form, and some specimens from
as early as the tenth century, both of the actual wooden blocks and the printed sheets, have come down to us.
[Grohmann, op. cit.. p.38; Exhibition in the British Library, London.]
The first extant Qur'an for which movable type was used was printed in Hamburg (Germany) in 1694. The text is fully
vocalised. [Al-Coranus, lex islamitica Muhammedis, Officina Schultzio-Schilleriania. Hamburg, 1694; Exhibition No. 22.]
Probably the first Qur'an printed by Muslims is the so-called 'Mulay Usman edition' of 1787, published in St. Petersburg,
Russia, followed by others in Kazan (1828), Persia (1833) and Istanbul (1877). [Blachere, R.: Introduction au Coran,
Paris, 1947, p. 133.]

In 1858, the German orientalist Fluegel produced together with a useful concordance the so-called 'Fluegel edition' of the
Qur'an, printed in Arabic, which has since been used by generations of orientalists. [Fluegel, Gustav: Corani texn
Arabicus. Leipzig, 1834.] The Fluegel edition has however a very basic defect: its system of verse numbering is not in
accordance with general usage in the Muslim world. [See e.g. 74: 31, where he makes four verses out of one.]
The Egyptian Edition

The Qur'anic text in printed form now used widely in the Muslim world and developing into a 'standard version', is the so-
called 'Egyptian' edition, also known as the King Fu'ad edition, since it was introduced in Egypt under King Fu'ad. This
edition is based on the reading of Hafs, as reported by 'Asim, and was first printed in Cairo in 1925/1344H. Numerous
copies have since been printed.
The Sa'd Nursi Copy

Finally, the Qur'an printed by the followers of Sa'id Nursi from Turkey should be mentioned as an example of combining a
hand-written beautifully illuminated text with modern offset printing technology. The text was hand written by the Turkish
calligrapher Hamid al-'Amidi. It was first printed in Istanbul in 1947, but since 1976 has been produced in large numbers
and various sizes at the printing press run by the followers of Sa'id Nursi in West Berlin (Germany).