On the History of the Book in Islamic Studies

Abstract

The book is a complex object. In addition to being a copy of a text (Ar. nuskha), a manuscript is a handcrafted object (Ar. maṣnū‘), and a printed book involves more or less sophisticated technical devices. The book has a central role in Islamic civilization, especially considering the special status of the Qurʾan, the first book in the Arabic language and Arabic script, as well as the sacred book of Islam. Moreover, this special status of the (sacred) book in Islamic culture is mirrored by the category of the ahl al-kitāb (People of the Book), referring to Muslim, Christians, and Jews, with their respective scriptures. In Islamic culture, seeking knowledge is a religious duty, and manuscripts, regardless of the subject, have always been treated with great respect—not only as sources of knowledge, but also as a means of fulfilling this religious duty. Moreover, Islamic manuscript production, especially in Arabic, is so vast that it has no comparison, from a quantitative point of view, with that of any other civilization. Therefore, a history of the book in the Islamic world encompasses different domains of research, such as paleography and codicology, which study the physical characteristics of the book, its script, and its life, as told through its manuscript notes (e.g., certificates of reading and audition, notes of possession and reading). This field of study also involves art history (given the importance of illustrated and decorated manuscripts and books), the history of religion (in connection with the Qurʾan), the history of ideas, the history of libraries and bibliography, and conservation and preservation. Despite their overwhelming number, manuscripts are not the only focus of this article. The history of printing in the Islamic lands represents, in itself, a wide field that deserves attention and further lines of research. Block printing—mainly used for specific kinds of texts, such as amulets and Hajj certificates—represents an early stage (9th–14th century) of printing within the Dar al-Islam territories (from Central Asia to al-Andalus) that only recently gained scholarly attention. Printing with movable type in Arabic dates back to 15th-century Italy, and it only developed later in the Islamic lands, starting from Lebanon (Quzhaya, 1610), Syria (Aleppo, 1706), and Turkey (Istanbul, 1729), and eventually gaining momentum in the first decade of the 20th century. The reasons for this delay were, for a long time, attributed to the imperial ban on printing (linked to two firmans/edicts, supposedly dated 1485 and 1515), together with the resistance of ulama and the guild of the copyists. However, the question of the slow spread of the printing press in the Islamic lands from the 18th century on has been recently addressed from different historical perspectives. This reassessment has led to the acknowledgement that social, cultural, and aesthetic factors together—yet with different effectiveness—explain both the cold reception of the printing press in the Islamic lands and the subsequent change that led to the introduction of mass printing in the Middle East. Stressing the persistence of manuscript book production within the Islamic lands, from the first centuries of Islam until the 21st century, helps us to understand the somewhat unbalanced number of studies (and sections in this bibliography) devoted to handwritten books compared to those dealing with printed material. Last, but not least, there are a number of specialized journals and resources on the web that are devoted to the study of manuscripts and books, ranging from introductory courses to paleography, databases, open-access volumes of studies, text repositories, and digitized manuscripts.