Printing · a Light

The Qur'an most people read was typeset over seventeen years

In 1907 the Egyptian government set a committee of scholars from al-Azhar to work on a reliable printed Qur'an for state schools, where the copies in use were full of errors. The senior reciter Muhammad ibn Ali al-Husayni al-Haddad was among the leading figures. The edition appeared in July 1924 from the government press in Cairo. It follows the reading of Hafs from Asim, uses the Kufan way of dividing and numbering the verses, and fixes the pause marks and the spelling. It was not a new text. It was a decision about which inherited conventions to print, and almost every Qur'an published since, by Sunni and Shia publishers alike, follows it.

Cairo · begun 1907, published July 1924