A Companion to the History of the Book (32 page)

Large, well-endowed libraries containing universal learning were established in the Umayyid and Abbasid realms, notably Baghdad. Several factors underpinned the Abbasid florescence, including the substitution of paper for parchment and papyrus, and the encouragement of passing books and other property to pious foundations for the benefit of future generations. The famous translation movement of Harun al-Rashid and his son Ma’mun encouraged scholars of all faiths and nationalities, Christian, Jew, Manichean, and Zoroastrian. The fall of Baghdad to the Moguls in 1258 led to the destruction of its libraries.

The Fatimids of Cairo established significant libraries, the most well known of which is attached to al-Azhar Mosque. Founded in the tenth century, it is still in use. Another large library was founded by the Caliph al-Hakim in the early eleventh century in support of the study of secular sciences and the promotion of the dynasty’s Shiite theology and law. These libraries were subject to the same vicissitudes as those of Baghdad and Damascus. They were sacked and their contents disbursed or destroyed. In Muslim Spain (Andalusia), al-Hakam II (d. 976) founded a library in Cordova that is said to have contained 400,000 volumes. The large Ottoman libraries of the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries were generally established for the study of Sunni orthodox theology and were housed in large mosques such as the Aya Sophia.

Chroniclers make much of the vast size of medieval libraries. Almeria in al-Andalusia boasted a collection of 400,000 volumes. Saladin’s book booty from his Levantine campaigns is recorded at almost a million and a half volumes. One Fatimid library is said to have had collections of, variously, 120,000, 600,000, 1,000,000, and 2,600,000 volumes, depending on the account. The largest of all, a library in Lebanon, is reported to have contained three million books. These fantastical numbers are not trustworthy in themselves, but they may reflect the relative size of the collections and the passion for copying, collecting, and study.

Paper was the substrate of the Golden Age of Islamic civilization. According to Bloom (1999: 1), “papermaking between the eighth and fourteenth centuries wrought enormous change in such diverse realms as literature, mathematics, commerce and the arts, just as printing with movable type spurred the conceptual revolution whose effects are still being felt today.” Accounts of the path of paper from China to the Middle East differ, but there is consensus that at some point Samarqand played a role in its transfer to the Muslim world. Central Asian paper factories exported to the central Islamic capitals. By the mid-eighth century, Baghdad had its own mills. Yemen followed, as did Egypt, which turned out paper of high quality for copyists. This new trade helped Egypt overcome the loss of its monopoly of papyrus that it had enjoyed for thousands of years.

Paper was cheaper to manufacture than rival materials, and thus made books available in unprecedented numbers. Religious authorities eventually approved it for the copying of the Qur’ān. Demand increased for scientific, literary, and theological works. Muslim jurists, compilers, and commentators used paper in works of
hadith,
Quran interpretation, and legal rulings that helped spread and entrench the faith. Historians connect Fez in Morocco with the transfer of papermaking to southern Europe, whence it spread northward. Increasingly, European paper was imported into the Ottoman empire and Iran, a development attributed to production efficiencies adopted by European (primarily Italian) paper manufacturers, the high quality of the product, and disincentives to innovation and commerce imposed in Islamic realms. A contributing factor was the sensitivity of Italian merchants to the Islamic cultural milieu to which they were marketing. For instance, sizing and burnishing were accomplished to conform to local preferences, and watermarking displayed familiar Islamic devices, such as the crescent and stars.

As we move from consideration of manuscripts to printing, we shift from Baghdad and Cairo as political and cultural centers to Turkey, Iran, and India. The former two capitals were marginalized in the face of domination by the Ottomans or ambitious European powers: the central players were now in Istanbul, Iran, and Delhi. Printing with movable type was introduced into the Middle East by Jews, indigenous Christians, and Western missionaries. Jews working in Istanbul and Salonika issued the first printed books in the Ottoman empire in the 1490s. When Muslims eventually established presses of their own, they did so only in fitful bursts of production; manuscripts were produced in significant numbers well into the nineteenth century. The sultans had banned printed books as early as 1485, and in 1515 reissued the ban, which did not apply to religious minorities.

Scholars continue to speculate about the delayed adoption of printing in Muslim lands. One factor must have been the centrality of oral tradition and memorization of the Quran. For centuries, literacy was acquired by reading and reciting the Quran by heart. Even today, it is widely held that no other books are necessary. Secondly, illiteracy has been widespread throughout Islamic history. Only in the past half-century have literacy rates exceeded 50 percent in much of the region. Thirdly, the isolation of the Muslim world from the print-possessed culture of the West endured in many cases until the mid-nineteenth century. Ultimately, the advantages of the press were recognized by Islamic rulers, thanks to the travels of princes, educational missions sent to Europe, and the influence of colonial administrators and missionaries. Muhammad Ali in Egypt and the Ottoman sultans made printing a part of their modernization programs to gain advantages against other Muslim governors and the European powers. Finally, there is the argument from aesthetics. Early Arabic books printed in Europe and exported to the Middle East did not comport with Muslims’ preference for the beauty of the manuscript. The handwritten book, while not always a work of art, was familiar in its script, paper, and binding.

It was not until 1727 that the sultan and religious authorities relented to grant a license to print to Ibrahim Muteferrika (d. 1745), who is recognized as the first Muslim to print anywhere in the Islamic world. He was born in Eastern Europe and converted to Islam when he came to Turkey. Muteferrika argued before the sultan and his jurists that the art of printing would make knowledge more accessible and strengthen the empire in the face of Europe. He received permission to publish, but with the proviso that books on Islam must not be printed. The ban was universal within the empire, extending to most Arab countries as well as southern Europe. Muteferrika’s press issued seventeen titles in small print runs, including dictionaries and histories. He ceased printing because of ill health and the press fell into desuetude until it reopened in the 1790s when it was bought by the government. Though much honored today in Turkey, Muteferrika’s success was modest. The land never caught fire with the passion to print.

The next noteworthy development occurred in Egypt under the modernizing rule of its governor, Muhammad Ali, the European-born warrior who seized power after Napoleon evacuated the country in 1801. Napoleon’s press had printed public proclamations, a few books, and the first two periodicals to be printed in the Islamic world,
Courier d’Egypte
and
La Decade égyptienne.
The press made no discernible impact on either the general populace or the leading intellectuals of the city who were invited to watch it in operation. The machinery was destroyed during anti-French rioting in Cairo. After this brief introduction, twenty years passed before Muhammad Ali (r. 1805–49) made printing books and periodicals part of his program to modernize his army. He ordered a printing press to be set up in Bulaq, a suburb of the capital. This is the famous Bulaq Press that in the course of the next twenty years brought out approximately 250 titles in military science, popular literature such as the
One Thousand and One Nights,
and the Quran. Machinery was acquired from Milan and Paris and workmen were dispatched to Europe to learn the printing trade, including type design and cutting. Books were published in Turkish (the official language), Arabic, and occasionally in Persian. During Muhammad Ali’s rule, traditional objections to printing disappeared. Government employees were obliged to subscribe to the new official gazette,
al-Waqa’i’ al-Misriyah.
Type designs were improved to suit local tastes. At the same time, a press had reopened in the Ottoman capital, and printing was being introduced into Iran and Muslim India.

Early nineteenth-century rulers and their religious confidants saw the advantages printing offered to
propagation fide.
Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–39) ordered the printing of Islamic titles to encourage strictness in religious practice throughout his empire. Strengthening of orthodoxy stimulated private initiatives in Egypt, where printer–publishers issued pious works on spec for the government and for wealthy individuals who subsidized the printings as an act of devotion. But private secular publishing was slow to develop in the Muslim world. In Egypt, Turkey, and Iran, the main impetus for publishing came from the state printing houses, which issued periodicals that were sometimes recognizable as newspapers. These promulgated new regulations, keeping bureaucrats informed of the ruler’s desires and sometimes printing news from abroad. Such “official gazettes” continue to be published today.

The Christian minority in Syria and Lebanon had been printing books for use by their sizable congregations from the first decade of the eighteenth century. The crucial figure in early Christian printing was Arab Catholic Abdallah al-Zahir (d. 1748). He established a printing operation in Aleppo for the Orthodox community, moving on to the mountain monastery at al-Shuayr in Lebanon after differences with the Orthodox authorities in Aleppo. The press did not print more than eight titles under al-Zahir. Another twenty-five titles were added in the second half of the eighteenth century. Al-Zahir’s importance lay in his pioneering role in organizing the workshops, designing type, and training staff.

Missionary publishers made a significant contribution to the spread of education and culture among their communicants and, to a significant degree, to the larger public through training of personnel who went on to become not only printers but modern publishers, journalists, and intellectuals. Rome had been exporting books to its Arabic-speaking flock in the Middle East for centuries. Protestants, on the other hand, had no Arab brethren in the region and had to build their evangelical activities from the ground up. They chose Malta as the place to establish their press, and in 1825 the first products of the Church Missionary Society Mediterranean Mission were issued. These were spellers, primers, Bible extracts, and translations of English tracts badly translated into Arabic by William Jowett (d. 1855). Over time, the Arabic became more polished with the addition of Faris al-Shidiaq (d. 1887) and a staff of better-trained European missionaries. The type founts were also improved. The books, especially the primers in print runs of 8,000, were widely used in Middle Eastern schools.

American missionary efforts began at much the same time. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, a Congregationalist enterprise from Boston, established presses in Izmir (Turkey) for printing in Armenian and Greek and in Beirut for Arabic, after first struggling to find roots in Malta. The American Press was at first hampered by lack of Arabic knowledge and poor-quality type. A breakthrough occurred in 1842 when Eli Smith (d. 1857) designed a new and attractive “American Arabic” fount that found acceptance throughout the region: it was even employed by French Catholic missionaries operating in Beirut. The willingness of the press to publish secular books attracted several writers and thinkers who would go on to become major figures in the “Arab Renaissance.”

The 1990s were a particularly productive decade for research into the deeper implications of the Muslim print revolution in the second half of the nineteenth century. This research is well summarized and glossed by Juan Cole (2002), who gives full weight to the role of the press in the birth of Islamic modernity. Printed books gradually replaced manuscripts for the public display of ideas and ideologies, secular but also religious. He also credits the periodical press for promoting pan-Islamism, anti-colonial nationalism, women’s emancipation, secular education, and increased political participation, if not mass mobilization among the illiterate and barely literate. Perhaps most important of all, print media broke forever the hold of the professional religious class on education, literacy, piety, and law, bringing the entire Islamic world into a discussion of its current condition and future.

In this period, Beirut became home to the first true, native, privately owned publishing industry. Leaders in the field were Butrus al-Bustani and Khalil Sarkis of the firms Matba’at al-Ma’arif and Matba’ah al-’Arabiyah. These men and their confrères were Christian, and largely interested in spreading modern secular knowledge. They included the Taqla brothers who, as refugees from Lebanon to Egypt, founded the famous
al-Ahram
newspaper. A Muslim effort was begun by ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Qabbani (d. 1935) who published a newspaper,
Thamarat al-Funun,
as well as Arabic primers emphasizing Islamic themes. In Istanbul, al-Jawa’ib Press was founded in 1861, with the sultan’s approval, by Faris al-Shidiaq, formerly of the Church Missionary Society. Al-Jawa’ib released many carefully redacted editions of the Arabic classics, which contributed to the Arabic literary revival. Its books look distinctively modern, with proper title pages, clear layout, and crisp founts: gone are the marginalia and cramped script.

Although a study has yet to be made of these private presses, a few generalizations are possible. In Lebanon, Egypt, and Iran, translation of European fiction, largely from the French, occurred at a rapid rate from the late nineteenth century until the end of the empire. In Istanbul, Cairo, Tabriz, and Teheran, works of natural science, European history, national histories, and politics were published. Among the most influential and controversial works was
Tahrir al-Mar’ah
by Egyptian journalist Ahmad Amin, a devout but free-thinking Muslim who advocated women’s equality. Nationalism and different sorts of pan-Islamism were in the air in the late nineteenth century, exemplified best perhaps by the peripatetic Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. His charisma as a preacher and writer energized Muslims everywhere and caused much difficulty for the European occupiers and established monarchs. Al-Afghani’s
Urwah al-Wuthqah
was printed in Cairo and reprinted throughout the region.