Arabic Printing

Ms. Dar al-kutub 193 est-il une source des impressions d'Al fasl fi usul 'ilm al raml réalisées au Caire ? Oui, elle l'est partiellement. Dans la mesure où, par une collation sur la page de titre, celles-ci disent s’appuyer sur plusieurs manuscrits anciens et où le manuscrit examiné ici semble être une copie égyptienne relativement récente, on peut raisonnablement formuler l’hypothèse de l’existence d’autres copies égyptiennes non encore signalées. Les différences entre les manuscrits soulèvent le problème de l’identification du véritable texte de Zanati et montrent la nécessité d’une édition critique de son ouvrage, qui constitue une référence majeure en géomancie dans le monde arabe, de même qu’en Afrique subsaharienne. Ce qu’assurent en tous les cas ces impressions, c’est bien la transmission d’une géomancie classique à nos contemporains.

This chapter explores developments in the practice of hadith studies among Muslims in the past two centuries. It does not focus on Muslim debates on questions of authenticity, probity in law and theology, or even as sources of history, as scholarship has taken up some of these questions (D. Brown 1999; J. Brown 2007, 300–333; J. Brown 2009, 240–268; Chapter 16 of this volume). Rather, this chapter explores developments related to what Muslim students of hadith actually do when they teach, study, or spe-cialize in hadith. What institutions, if any, are available to them? What does the course of study look like, and what are some of the key teaching texts used? Who are some of the authorities who have shaped the study of hadith today? What discursive develop-ments among Muslims have contributed to the foregrounding of hadith? And how have technological advances, in print and computers, shaped the study of hadith?This chapter will focus on three modes of hadith study that Muslims engage in that, given the constraints of space, serve somewhat as ideal types. The first of the three modes is in the dawrat al-hadith in madrasas, which trace their intellectual pedigree to the Dar al-Ulum madrasa in Deoband, India. The dawrat al-hadith (“year of hadith”) is the capstone year for madrasa students during which the Six Books of the Sunni canon are covered. The institution of the dawrat al-hadith has resulted in the production of numerous commentaries, both in Arabic and in Urdu, continuing premodern traditions of commentary while also vernacularizing hadith studies. This is arguably one of the most popular ways of systematically studying the Sunni canon, given the spread of Deobandi madrasas throughout South Asia and South Asian diaspora communities, particularly in South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The second mode is concomitant with the emergence of print in the Arab world and the concern for
the production of critical editions of Islamic textual sources from manuscripts (
tahqiq al-makhtutat). Some of the foremost editors and publishers of Islamic texts in the first half of the twentieth century were affiliated with Salafism and were concerned with the authentication of hadith references, a process known as takhrij. Takhrıj entailed the studying of the isnad  and matn of hadiths and providing a ruling on their probity. Along with the critical edition of manuscripts, takhrij became an important skill taught in modern universities in the Arab world. Finally, in the last decades of the twentieth century (and seemingly in reaction to Salafi approaches to hadith), scholars of hadith began to re‐center the interpersonal transmission of hadith and the authority that pos-sessing a license (ijaza) from a hadith master conferred. As a result, a greater emphasis was placed on direct narration from hadith masters through audition (sama) of hadith and attaining licenses.Each of these three modes of hadith study have their precedents in premodern hadith culture, but given developments in Muslim societies since the nineteenth century, the emergence of new discourses, and new technologies that democratized access to hadith, some of these practices have received greater focus today than they might have had previously. The modes of hadith study described here are not mutually exclusive and students of hadith often embark upon another mode of hadith study after completing one.

Printing in Arabic types was a major aspiration for the Christian Arabs of the Ottoman provinces, particularly from the second half of the 17th century, when several Patriarchs of the Antiochian Church set this goal for themselves, as part of their mission to support the spiritual and social advancement of their flock. Patriarch Athanasios Dabbās (1685-1694, 1720-1724), travelled to the Rumanian Principalities in 1698-1705, in search for political and financial support, after temporarily renouncing his See in favour of his competitor Cyril IV. His princely friend Constantin Brâncoveanu (1688-1714), ruler of Wallachia, appointed Antim Ivireanu (‘the Georgian’), the most gifted typographer, engraver, and member of the clergy, to help Dabbās in printing church books in Arabic types. My paper sums up the available data on this printing enterprise and its significant outcome for the Christians of the Antiochian patriarchate: eleven titles printed in Aleppo (1706-1711), the first books printed in Arabic types in Ottoman lands, which circulated all over the Middle East. This major cultural event inspired the progressive movement embodied in the Naha (the ‘Arab Renaissance’), contributing to forge the modern Levantine societies.

This doctoral dissertation was written under the supervision of Professor Sabine Schmidtke and Professor Walid A. Saleh and defended in January 2017 at the Free University in Berlin, Germany. It is now freely available via 'Dissertation Online at the Freie Universität Berlin' as a PDF (https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/1332). For table of contents and abstract, please see the attachment.

This article offers an introduction to Persian printing and typefounding in Europe during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a subject which has largely eluded rigorous investigation by printing historians. More specifically, it focuses on the Persian typographical materials of the Medici and Propaganda Fide presses which are presented here, perhaps for the first time. Furthermore, this study questions the conventional claim by historians to date that 'Historia Christi Persice' (Leiden, 1639) was the first printed Persian book, and traces initial attempts at Persian printing that included an earlier publication, 'Alphabetum Persicum' (Rome, 1633).

En Europe de l’Est et au Proche-Orient l’histoire de l’imprimerie arabe débuta par l’activité conjointe d’Athanase III Dabbās, Patriarche d’Antioche (à ce moment-là entre les deux périodes d’exercice de son haute charge)  et d’Anthime d’Ivir, lettré et imprimeur de génie, qui allait devenir Métropolite de l’Hongrovalachie (1708-1716). Deux livres en grec et en arabe furent imprimés en 1701 et 1702 (Snagov – Bucarest) sur demande d’Athanase Dabbās – le premier pas vers l’accomplissement d’une ancienne aspiration du clergé de l’Église d’Antioche, celle de mettre à la disposition des prêtres de Syrie et du Liban actuels des livres de culte dans la langue du peuple, l’arabe, imprimés à partir des versions traduites et revues par des érudits arabes chrétiens. Le deuxième pas fut fait par Athanase Dabbās qui, ayant reçu, lors de son départ pour Alep (1704), les outils typographiques utilisés pour ces deux livres, continua là-bas, dans une nouvelle imprimerie installée à la résidence du Métropolite d’Alep , l’activité commencée en Valachie. L’épisode suivant de l’histoire des relations roumano-arabes par l’imprimerie est lié à l’activité typographique de Silvestre, Patriarche d’Antioche (1724-1766), à Iassy, lors de son voyage en Moldavie et Valachie entre 1735-1747.

La Beirut (Liban) s-a tipărit pentru prima oară în limba arabă în 1752, la Biserica greco-ortodoxă Sf. Gheorghe, unde au fost folosite litere arabe săpate la Mănăstirea Sf. Spiridon (Vechi) din București și modele de gravuri din atelierul lui Antim Ivireanul. Studiul argumentează această legătură între prima tiparniță arabă de la Beirut și tiparnițele din Țările Române pa baza unor surse arabe neexploatate până în prezent.

With the support of Philip Sadgrove, I have compiled a list of Arabic books published in the major urban centres of the Levant until 1870. It is still a work in progress but I hope it will be a useful resource.
Suggestions for additions, edits, etc. very welcome.

An outline of the help that was granted to Athanasios Dabbas, Patriarch of Antioch, by prince Constantin Brancoveanu and Antim the Iberian, his master printer (also an outstanding intellectual and hierarch of the Romanian orthodox Church) in order to print 2 books in Arabic types in Bucharest and Snagov. Upon his departure for Aleppo, Dabbas was given printing implements to help him open a new workshop there. He printed in 1706-1711, with these tools brough from Bucharest and improved, 11 titles, some with second editions. This was the first workshop that printed with Arabic types in the realm of the Ottoman Empire (before Ibrahim al-Muteferrika).

This article takes up a material analysis of a set of eleven nineteenth-century Arabic broadsides entitled Nafir Suriyya, published in Beirut by Syrian intellectual Butrus al-Bustani from 1860-1861. Produced in response to the civil wars of 1860 in Mount Lebanon and Damascus (in the Ottoman Syrian provinces), when intercommunal conflicts occurred between different confessional groups, these publications called for unity and cooperation amongst these communities through the framework of “patriotism” (wataniyya) and one’s “love of the homeland” (hubb al-watan). These broadsides have thus played an important role in twentieth and twenty-first century scholarship on early nationalist sentiment, particularly a Syro-Lebanese political identity, amongst Arabic-speaking Ottoman denizens. However, the format and visual conventions of these broadsides are oftentimes overlooked or misinterpreted, thus effacing an important layer to understanding Nafir Suriyya’s wider socio-political significance. Addressing these oversights, this study provides a close material reading of the Nafir Suriyya broadsides as examples of a then-new format. Comparative analysis with other contemporaneous public texts, such as Ottoman edicts and proclamations, better clarifies the social and cultural significance of these publications.

Throughout most of the seventeenth century, the printer and publisher Antoine Vitré dominated the printing of Arabic in Paris. He produced mainly religious texts, intended for use by missionaries in the Orient. One of these books was the Arabic translation of Cardinal Richelieu's famous catechism Instruction du Chrétien. This article looks at the story behind the preparation of the Arabic edition, its printing, and its use by missionaries. It explores the role written texts played in conveying a religious message to an essentially illiterate society. In addition, it uses the story of Richelieu's text in Arabic to attempt to explain why Middle Eastern societies declined to adopt mass printing before the nineteenth century, even though there were apparently no interdictions against its implementation.

Explore the diversity of printed images that became popular in illustrated Arabic journals during the late nineteenth century. These engravings, which included a range of topics from scientific diagrams to illustrations of zebras, exemplify the interconnected nature of the arts and sciences in the age of modernity. Such images also are markers of an artistic modernity that saw the convergence of painting, photography, and print culture.

The paper focuses on the printing works of Patriarch Sylvester of Antioch (1724-1766), who travelled to Moldavia and Wallachia and succeeded in obtaining liturgical and polemical books necessary to the Arab Christians of Ottoman Syria and neighbouring provinces: first, the letters of Mūsā Ṭrābulsī, the Patriarch's secretary, which enclose information on the Arabic printing activities of Iași and Bucharest; second, the description of a rare copy of a Psalter printed in Beirut in 1752, recently located in Uppsala; and third, information on an unknown Arabic Akathist, printed in a yet unidentified press, but possibly by Patriarch Sylvester's apprentices.

Taking up an analysis of the materiality of the American Mission Press (AMP) bilingual catalogs printed from 1884 to 1896 in Ottoman Beirut, in this article I identify these booklets as publications that circulated among broad networks of books, journals and newspapers during the period of the Arab nahda. By examining these catalogs in terms of the wider historical significance of their materiality, specifically their organization , layout, typography and illustrations, in this essay I show how these booklets promoted the AMP and its mission's entangled messages in an increasingly competitive publishing industry. On the one hand, the catalogs highlighted the AMP's 'western' qualifications and strove to engage local readers' interests in 'modern' culture, science and technology. On the other hand, these works marketed the mission's universal-ist evangelical views. Thus, in this study I show how such ephemeral publications, when studied for their dynamic content, make evident nineteenth-century Arabic print commerce at work and also illustrate early examples of nascent advertising practices .

This seminar introduced some of the particularities and challenges that Borna’s recently completed PhD research faced in developing the chapter that deals with the introduction of Arabic-script printing to nineteenth-century Iran. One of the significant aspects of Arabic-script metal types produced in Iran is their extremely minimal use. This is also true of the number of surviving copies of the early Persian publications in Iran which were printed with those types. For example, the first Qurʾān printed with both typography (1827) and lithography (1834) are limited to two identified copies. Additionally, the condition of extant copies of books printed in Iran during this period are often extremely poor and, in many cases, incomplete.

This presentation demonstrates Borna’s experience of investigating the early Persian publications in Iran, which shows that many of these publications have yet to be identified. The discovery of previously unknown publications in libraries or private collections – which is not an infrequent occurrence – often overturns the received history of printing in Iran.

This paper has two objectives: the first briefly considers some of the inadequacies in the existing literature – particularly those written in European languages – that generally claim to investigate the history of printing in the Arabic script or document printing in the Middle East. This discussion sets the context for the second and primary objective of this paper which is to explore the introduction of printing and typefounding in nineteenth-century Iran. A few scholars have focused on different aspects of print history in Iran (mainly printing with lithography); however, there seems to be little serious discussion of this subject from the perspective of typefounding within the wider context of Arabic-script printing. Yet, as will be shown, the under-studied history of printing in Iran reveals significant and pioneering achievements in Arabic-script printing and typefounding that began in the nineteenth century.

The article encloses a preliminary description of an early Arabic printed book authored by the Metropolitan of Aleppo (and two times Patriarch of Antioch) Athanasios Dabbās, Risāla wağīza tūdahu kayfiyyat at-tawba wa-l-ʼiʻtirāf wa-fī-mā yalzamu l-muʻtarif wa-l-muʻarrif, i.e., "Brief epistle that explains how repentance and confession are done and what the one who confesses and the confessor have to do", preserved at Bibliothèque Orientale in Beirut. This is the last book printed in the Aleppo press by Dabbās, in 1711.

This paper is devoted to two Syrian block-printed amulets that are currently at the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum in Istanbul.
The two amulets described in this paper are precious additions to the corpus of known block-printed amulets, since both the texts and the images they carry are unica and therefore they enlarge the grammar and the lexicon of this very specific kind of object. Moreover, they witness the production of block-printed charms in Syria, thus enlarging the map of the regions in which the production of this material is attested, and they offer a possible clue to the source of the illustrations of texts such as the Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt by al-Jazūlī.

Available Here:

https://ibadistudies.com/2017/06/26/an-ibadi-bookstore-in-tunis-%D9%85%D9%83%D8%AA%D8%A8%D8%A9-%D8%A5%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B6%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%AA%D9%88%D9%86%D8%B3/

Abstract:

A research blog article on the history of an Ibadi-owned bookstore in the medina of Tunis, founded in the early-20th century by Muḥammad al-Thamīnī (d.1970).

مقال في بحث حول تاريخ مكتبة صاحبها إباضي. أسّسها محمد الثميني (ت ١٩٧٠)  ومقرّها في المدينة العتيقة في تونس

This is the most comprehensive Arabic dictionary ever produced to date. It is an Arabic-English dictionary compiled in a new and revolutionary way. This sample is a part of the work of The Reference Dictionary of the Arabic Language (RDAL) project. It is called "The Reference Dictionary of the Arabic Language (Root Words) part, The first fascicule of the work is published in December 2020 under the title of "The Reference Dictionary of the Arabic Language (Root Words), Fascicule 1 [Letter Alif])".

Printing in the Arab world, unlike its European counterparts, only became regionally prevalent during the late nineteenth century. As such, studies on Arabic printing in Middle Eastern cities emphasize the press’s late nineteenth-century modernizing role, particularly its standardization of technological production and aid in spurring fin de siècle intellectual movements. In contrast to the widespread and unequivocal shift from scribal to printing practices in the late 1800s, the Arab press’s noteworthy nascent stage (ca.1830s-1860s) may be exemplified by works published for Ottoman Syria’s multi-confessional residents at the Presbyterian Syria Mission’s “American Press” in Beirut. During this earlier period, print still existed within a larger network of local manuscripts, leading to a dynamic interface between these two technological modes, their visual conventions and sites of production at a time when local conceptions of books and their functions were being significantly altered.

This dissertation examines the transformative examples of early secular and religious books printed at the American Press between the years 1834-1860 as dynamic textual and material objects produced in response to various local and external social, political and visual impulses. I demonstrate how these books’ changing design programs throughout the Press’s early years negotiated shifts in the social concerns, intellectual attitudes, and notions of the book amongst local Arab Muslims and Christians. The religious and socio-political dimensions of these publications are assessed within a complex body of unpublished primary source material from missionary archives, historical chronicles documenting Ottoman Syria’s inter-communal history, and contemporary literary, historical, and urban studies on early concepts of modernity in the Arab world. Through an analysis of these works, which at times embodied a modernist spirit of innovation, this dissertation illustrates a highly adaptive situation when diverse local religious values, societal interests, visual conventions and notions of the book were in flux. Exploring missionary-local resident interactions during a period of social, intellectual and political transformation, my dissertation also uses the printed Arabic book to demonstrate how the evolving needs of resident urban societies served as the real impetus for widespread change.