Formulation of the claim
The Cairo edition of 1924 established the standard version of the Qur’an.
Explanation
Arkoun sees this edition as more than a new presentation of the text; it was a decisive moment in fixing a particular form as the recognized reference. In this way, earlier differences became less present in the public consciousness, because the text came to be circulated in a form that appeared final and settled.
In this context, Arkoun draws attention to the impact of printing in transforming the Qur’an from a field where readings, forms, and transmission traditions coexist into a field dominated by a normative version. This is what makes the question of the text, for him, tied to the history of compilation and stabilization, rather than simply to the presence of the muṣḥaf in the form in which it is circulated today.
Its place in the book’s argument
This atom falls within Arkoun’s broader thesis about the historicity of the formation of religious texts and their institutions, and how modern mechanisms of stabilization contributed to concealing layers of plurality that were more visible in earlier periods. It is linked to the questions raised by the book about the limits of the traditional approach to the text when it is treated as a closed, ahistorical given.
Limits of the claim
This atom should not be taken to impose a definitive judgment on the value of the edition itself or to reduce the entire history of the Qur’an to it; it points to a moment of consolidation and its effects, not to the denial of all earlier or later forms of difference.