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Printing, Publishing, and Reform in Tsarist Central Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Adeeb Khalid
Adeeb Khalid
Affiliation:
Department of History, Carleton College, Northfield, Minn. 55057, U.S.A.
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Extract

Scholars have long noted, often with disapproval, the tardiness of the introduction of printing to the Muslim world, but the consequences of that introduction on the production, reproduction, and transmission of knowledge in Muslim societies are only now beginning to be understood. For instance, the numerous movements for modernist reform that arose in the Muslim world in the 19th century were all propagated through the medium of print, yet the connection between those movements and the availability of printing seldom has been investigated. This neglect is all the more surprising in view of the fact that historians of early modern Europe have long emphasized the signal role played by printing in Europe's transition to modernity. In her influential work, Elizabeth Eisenstein has written of a “printing revolution” unleashed by the invention and rapid dissemination of the technology in 15th-century Europe. There is, for Eisenstein, something inherent in the very nature of printing that revolutionizes the intellectual outlook of individuals and cultures with which it comes in contact. In a different vein, Benedict Anderson has pointed to the importance of “print capitalism” in creating a sense of shared community in the 19th century that made possible the rise of national ism in many parts of the world.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , May 1994 , pp. 187 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

NOTES

Author's note: The first germs of this article were present in a paper given at the Fourth International Conference on Central Asia in Madison, Wisconsin, in September 1990. Since then, it has benefited greatly from comments by MichaelChamberlain, Cheryl Duncan, Uli Schamiloglu, and M. Nazif Shahrani. Any errors of fact or opinion are, of course, solely mine.

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34 The dominance of lithography was not unique to Central Asia: it was to prove popular in the Mus lim world wherever nastaсlīq was the dominant script. Typesetting in naskh became common in Iran only in the middle of this century, and Urdu is still usually printed with lithography. Walther, Karl Klaus, “Die lithographische Vervielfätigung von Texten in den Ländern des Vorderen und Mittleren Orients,” Gütenberg Jahrbuch 65 (1990): 223–36Google Scholar.

35 Sharipov, Jumaniyoz, Ŭzbekistonda tarjima tarikhidan (Tashkent, 1964), 397–402Google Scholar, provides a long list of translations (all from Arabic and Persian) that were never printed.

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61 Zulfiqar, Mulla, “Madrasalargha aid,” Taraqqi, 5 July 1906Google Scholar; cf. the report on the incident in Russkii Turkestan, a Russian socialist newspaper, quoted in Vakhidov, Kh., Prosvetitel'skaia ideologiia v Turkestane (Tashkent, 1979), 77Google Scholar.

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