Book history, print, and the Middle East

Abstract

This article describes how the study of Middle Eastern book history arose from scholarship on the history of the book, a multifaceted line of inquiry which developed around the early modern European experience of print. I argue that these origins influenced Middle Eastern book history insofar as it took the topic of printing as its main focus. However, an unevenness characterized this focus since European printing became commonplace from the early sixteenth century onwards, whereas printing in the Middle East took off during the nineteenth century. The 400 years that separated these phenomena marked the rise of modern Europe, which print was considered to have helped advance. These years were also interpreted as representing the decline of the Islamicate world until it modernized along a Western model, including its widespread adoption of print. Focusing largely on scholarship written in English, I summarize the effects that such thinking has had in shaping Middle Eastern book history, and then conclude with my sense of the state of current research.

Meandering Through the Magazine

“…But it is only relatively neglected. Schwartz (2015;2017a;2017b) explores the political economy of printing in its transitional phase from the manuscript era, arguing in empiricallyinformed historical research against the sort of technologically determinist approaches that plagued contemporary studies of satellite television news and social media. In her view, printing in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire evolved through the contingencies of local conditions and needs rather than in response to imposed or imported technologies that 'revolutionized' communication and media.…”

“…Schwartz (2017a) summarizes assumptions (largely mirroring studies of European book history) and debates about the 'revolutionary' nature of printing in the Middle East. Downloaded from Brill.com07/18/2022 05:32:34AM via free access…”

Editing and Printing the Arabic Book: Perspectives from South Asia

“…35 In conclusion, the rich variety of themes emerging from Arabic printing in South Asia all point to the importance of engaging Arabic and Islamic book history with due attention to the specific but transregional contexts of publication and consumption, rather than "flattening the Islamicate world into one unit." 36 Indian Arabic publications cannot be considered as external or peripheral to the history of Arabic print; they are an integral element of a transregional enterprise. For even though South Asia did not boast a numerically large Arabic-reading public, it was home to significant and pioneering developments in Arabic printing by Indian, Arab, and Orientalist scholars.…”