How did the Hafs text become the standard text for the whole world?

The need for a Cairene standard text

• In 1924 the department of education needed to standardize high school Qur’ans in order to unify the Qur’ans used for their exams.

• They approached Muhammad b. ‘Ali al-Husayni al-Haddad, from Al Azhar University for this task.

• He, along with a committee, chose the 796 AD ‘Hafs’ Qur’an as the official Qur’an to be used in high schools throughout the city of Cairo.

• There were around 36 other compilations (with around 60,000 differences between them) which they could have chosen, but they chose Hafs, though we do not know why.

• They then took all the other variant Qur’ans and sank them into the Nile

• (Taken from: Reynolds, Gabriel Said (Ed.), The Qur’an in its historical context, (London & New York: Routledge, 2008) pgs. Introduction, 2-3; Neuwirth, Angelika, & Sinai, Nicholas (Eds.), The Qur’an in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2010, p. 1)

The need for a World-wide standard text

• In 1936 the government of Egypt realized how efficient the Cairene model was, and so decided to make the Hafs standard for all Qur’ans in Egyptian schools.

• This was known as the ‘Faruq Edition’, named after King Faruq who came to power in that year.

• The Egyptian model was so successful that the Saudi Arabian government in 1985 decided to make the Hafs Qur’an the official Qur’an for the entire Muslim world.

• This was known as the ‘Fahd Edition’ in honor of the King of Saudi Arabia.

• So, our present Hafs Qur’an is not just 94 years old, but a mere 33 years old, which means many of us are older than the present canonical Qur’an!

• (Taken from: Reynolds, Gabriel Said (Ed.), The Qur’an in its historical context, (London & New York: Routledge, 2008) pgs. Introduction, 2-3; Neuwirth, Angelika, & Sinai, Nicholas (Eds.), The Qur’an in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2010, p. 1)