gs = ra es 3 2 g 5 Z & Z 3 a 5 is = tw# 1399656 ill Borrower: AUM Journal Title: Culture & history. Volume: 16 Issue Month/Year: 1997 Pages: Article Author: Schuize, Reinhard Article Title: The Birth of Tradition and Modernity in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Islamic Culture-the Case of Printing Imprint: Copenhagen, Denmark : Museum Tusculanum Press, 1987-c1997. Patron: Call #: Location: ‘Transaction Date: PM Odyssey Enabled Cuarge Maxcost: 60.00 112019 12:43:53 Shipping Address: Interlibrary Loan, W.E.B. Du Bois Library University of Massachusetts Amherst 154 Hicks Way ‘Amherst, Massachusetts 01003-9275 United States Odyssey: 128.119.168.111 Fax: (413) 577-3114 Ariel: ariel ibrary.umass.edu Email: ILL@LIBRARY.UMASS.EDUThe Birth of Tradition and Modernity in 18th and 19th Century Islamic Culture — The Case of Printing REINHARD SCHULZE Summary This paper investigates the integration of Islamic knowledge into Muslim society made possible by the introduction of printing. Special attention is given to the publication policies of the Istanbul and Cairene printing press- es from 1802 to 1848. In addition, the semantics of printing, which deeply influenced the emergence of the antonymical concepts of “tradition” and “modernity”, are discussed. Printing demanded a substantial ethical and cultural change within the Islamic culture of knowledge. It also created a social discourse in which the new reading public came to distinguish between what was regarded as “tra- dition” (manuscripts without a use value in the market), and what was con- sidered “modern” (printed books). This change was rendered even more dramatic by the fact that printing was not introduced gradually in Islamic society, but emerged — like virtually all imported technologies — within a very short span of time. Once a printing press had been established, its own- ers, who had at their disposal the technical skills and sophisticated tech- niques developed in Europe since the 15th century, could print any text ina relatively short time. In the context of Islamic culture, printing clearly marked the distinction between “tradition” and “modernity”. Printing was “new”, and printed Islamic texts carried the character of newness; it allowed the separation of those textual traditions that had no market value from those that attracted attention because of their material worth. 29Introduction Scholars have long recognized that terms like “tradition” require a concep- tual antipode in order to convey an image of perceived reality. Hence, it can be argued that “tradition” cannot be perceived in isolation; it must be under- stood in reference to modernity, for it is nowadays used to delimit moder- nity from earlier periods of time, which survive as history. Tradition sym- bolizes a term of reference that is only perceptible vis-a-vis its logical anti- pode, namely in a synchronic modemity. By the same token, “modernity” only makes sense if it refers to a surviving historical tradition. The interde- pendence of tradition and modernity is, thus, an essential requisite for the weltanschauung of social groups seeking to develop a new cultural identifi- cation, Originally, tradition and modemity do not refer to a world of objective ref- erences. Both terms constitute a single conceptual entity describing a per- ceived reality with regard to ‘what it is’ (modem) and ‘what it is not’ (tradi- tional). Needless to say, a predication like ‘modern’ can only be applied in the environs of its logical antipode. Like other analogical terms, e.g. ‘great/- small’ and ‘bad/good’, the predication ‘modern /traditional’ refers to the subject, as it describes his attitude towards a perceived object, although he really wants to predicate an object of his outer world.! In contrast to predicates like “great /small’ or ‘bad/good’, the antinomy ‘taditional/modem’ has a historical dimension that is important for two reasons: first, this antinomy is based on a diachronic interpretation of the world in the sense that the original conceptual base of ‘what it is/what it is not’ is transformed to ‘what it is now/what it was formerly’. The time aspect leads to a second transformation: the predication ‘what it is/what it was’ is changed to a concept of ‘what is/what was’. Thus, the predication ‘mod- ern/traditional’ has now become an integral attribute of the subject. The originally undivided subject is split into two different states, namely into the states of tradition and modernity, or into a traditional and a modem state or society. 1 Simon Dik, Functional Grammar, Amsterdam °1979; John Lyons, Semantics, Il, Cambridge 1977, p. 242 ss: Willard Van Orman Quine, Word and Object, Cambridge/Mass. 1960. chapter 4. 30Secondly, as the antonymy, strictly speaking, refers to those who use it and not to an object the user wants to designate, the diachronic aspects leads to a concept by means of which the subject liberates himself from history and from the social entity he, the subject, initially belonged to. This allows him to believe that he is part of a modernity, of a modern history and culture which have nothing in common with former periods and states. Throughout Islamic cultural history we find different terms that reflect the relation of contemporarity towards history, be it on the basis of law (ur, Camal or ‘dda) or on the basis of behaviour (taqlid). Urban dwellers considered the code of behaviour of nomadic tribes (‘urf) as “tradition”, and contrasted it with Islamic legal system (sharia), to which they attached a timeless dimension. In general, notions associated with “tradition” were originally used to reflect the historicity of the perceived reality in light of a universal ideal type developed outside the context of Islamic revelation. In this, the notion corresponds to analogous European usages, e.g. “non sur des croyances et des traditions populaires, mais sur la révélation dune vérité.” (Charles Seignobos, 1854~1942). A very special use of the notion “tradition” lies in the word hadith, reflect- ing a recorded narrative (in German “Uberlieferung”) attributed to the prophet Muhammad. These narratives too have a timeless dimension. In it- self, a hadith-tradition has no antonym, In German usages of the 18th centu- ry, however, the term tradition (as “Uberlieferung”) was defined in opposi- tion to the revelation: “Ubergebung ist auch soviel als eine Erzihlung, die man vom Horensagen weiB, nirgends aber bei einem tauglichen Schriftsteller auf- gezeichnet findet, oder Menschen Satzung, davon in der Heil. Schrift nichts enthalten ist, noch gemeldet wird.” consti- Here, we can find the term “tradition” designating something like See Jiirgern Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne. Zwélf Vorlesungen, Frankfurt a.M. 1988, pp.9-33: Wolfgang Welsch. Unsere postmoderne Moderne. Weinheim °1988, pp. 66-77, which also deals with the history of the term “Neuzeit” and “Moderne”. Cf. Reinhart Koselleck, “‘Neuzeit’, Zur Semantik moderner Bewegungsbegriffe”, in Reinhart Koselleck (ed,), Studien zum Beginn der modernen Welt, Stuttgart 1977, p. 266. 31tution of men” (Menschen Satzung), which is contrasted with the Holy Script (Heilige Schrift). Owing to its specific concept, the term hadith nev- er tumed into a more general notion of tradition as in most European lan- guages.} The Arabic terms used are taqlid, “dda or ‘urf. which, however, may not be summarized in a single word field, even if we are used to trans- lating each term with the European one-word tradition. Up to the 18th century, we cannot trace an abstract lexical unit in Islamic culture that corresponds to the western concept ‘tradition’. All terms which could have been used in this sense were strictly limited to forms having a special context. A famous 14th century definition for instance reads as fol- lows:4 eh Sah pe eet a AS la pb Joly he ab ips Ab tnd site Jar I Joy Ld tad SLY! pel ge Tale at see PIs (“tradition is the expression of one man following another in what he says or does believing in its correctness without looking at, or reflecting on, the proof; this follower makes the other’s words or deeds a necklace around his neck.”) or simply5: Fe Ue ae glad Ct Se ay Je Bal al (“to entrust rulers with the government of the provinces, to adorn a body with something known to be in fashion”) Or, the term taglid could be used in the context of akhbdr, ‘reports’, mean- ing the established way of reporting historical information (taglid al- akhbér®). As in European cultural history, the development of an abstract and secularized term signifying “tradition” was only possible if the seman- tic kernel of the notion could predicate another term, or could be used as an attribute. Thus, the transformation from a concrete term (‘tradition’) into its abstract counterpart was only possible by using the term as a predicate, or, in a second step, as an attribute. As for the notion ‘tradition’, the following development in Arabic might have been expected: 3. In Islamic theology, tradition of course is supplemental to revelation. 4 SAID. Muhammad al-Jurjani, kitdb at-ta rifat, Kairo 1306, s.n. (first Ottoman printing Istanbul 1253) 5 Muhammad b. YaCqab al-Firiizabadi, gdmis al-muhit, ed. Beirut 1986, p. 399. 6 Obviously, this concept is an antonym of ijtihad ar-ra'y. 32a) taqlid, “dda, ‘urf ‘tradition’ (used — depending on the context ~ mostly in the sense of “what used to be is right.”) taglid? (Curfi) |“adi?| denominization b) predicating — attributing: something is faglidi, a taqlid? thing or fact (in contrast with something that is not taglid?) ¢) taglid ‘tradition’ (abstract) taqlidiya ‘traditionalism’ taqalid (and derived forms like tagdlidiva) ‘old traditions’, ‘traditional- ism’ etc. The generalization of the semantic kernel of the term tradition (taqlid) pre- supposes objects that could be identified, i.e. predicated, by the word taglid? as traditional. Either the same object had changed its predicate from ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’, or an object predicated as ‘traditional’ was now regarded as obsolete and supplanted by a second object considered ‘modem’. Having become an attribute, the semantic kernel of taqlid had to be associated with a polar counterpart. Originally the legal term taq/id ‘binding oneself to authority’, had a con- ceptual antonym in the word ijrihdd, reflecting a behaviour not character- ized by binding to authority, but rather by using independent judgement in a legal or theological question. As an attribute, however, the term taglid? could not be opposed to a word like ijtihdd?, as the former referred to situa- tions, things and persons as well; calling an inanimate object “ijtihddi” was semantically impossible. Hence, the term taglid had to be associated with a new antonym that represented in its lexical deep structure a common se- mantic field (like ‘good/bad’: scalar and polar interpretation of morality). Looking at the new antonyms, we are able to trace the revaluation of the term taglid. In Arabic, we find several terms used as antonyms of something that is 7 From Koranic °Ad, “se dit des choses d'une antiquité reculée, des constructions colos- sales et solides, des casques énormes en acier, etc.” A. de Biberstein Kazimirski, Dictionnaire arabe-francais, Paris 1860. U, p. 400. Edward William Lane, Arabic English Lexicon, London 1863, p. 2191: “Old”, “ancient”, also in the sense of “com- mon”. 33‘old’: the ideal typical distinction is made by the terms hadith / gadim: a second pair is jadid / khalaq/qadim. Whereas the first opposition judges something in accordance to its newness or oldness in time (in the sense of “once created” as opposed to eternal), the second describes its quality (- hence khalaq “wom”. The very specific usage of hadith (“new”), however, seems to have prevented it from becoming the actual term for something “untraditional”.8 The first terms that paralleled usage in European languag- es were the words jadid (“new”) in Arabic and yeni (antonym of eski ‘old’) in Ottoman turkish, Already in the 15th century, the Transoxanian scholars called their astro- nomical teachings al-hai'a al-jadida (“new astronomy”). Others, like as- Suydti, claimed that their “original” teaching should be labeled with al- hai’a al-islamiya (“Islamic astronomy™).? Consequently, the Paracelsian medicine was soon called tibb-i jadid ((Umar Shifa%i, 1704). In this con- text, it is interesting to compare the various titles of the first Ottoman book that contained a compilation of descriptions of the two Americas! COAT) yar palit GEE (08g ee (verve ve ek mf Sade OND Sete penal Lee Se esl OM ete en ged ee ue (S109) Gs Se gab 8 In this context, the semantic relation between the attributes gadim (in the sense of aza- fi) “eternal” and hadith “created, actual, qui parait pour la premiére fois, nouveau. re- cent”, is not under discussion. This philosophic antonymy played a role in later devel- opments, ¢.g. concerning the term fraddrha (“modemity”. originally “nouveauté d'une chose”). 9 Reinhard Schulze, “Inqueries into Islamic Modernity Prior to the 18th Century. The Reception of the Heliocentric World among Muslim Scholurs™. in: A. Harrak (ed.). Contacts between Cultures. West Asia and North Africa, Lampeter 1992, S. 423-428 (33rd Intemational Congress of Asian and North African Studies, Toronto 1990, Selected Papers. Vol. |.) 10 Cf. Thomas D. Goodrich, The Ottoman Turks and the New World. A Study of Tarih-i Hind-i Garbi and Sixteenth-Century Otloman Americana, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1990, p. 21 ss 34CVG te gle yh Ul ONAL IW) ba SS pul ee (CAVE Save 1988) ee This short list shows that Turkish yeni and Arabic jadid were used to char- acterize “new facts”, whereas the Persian word new referred to the “news” (hadith). Still, it was difficult to apply the term jadfd as an antonym of taqlid, as it was regarded as one of the so-called adddd (“words with two opposite meanings”). Many a lexicographer pointed out that jadid used as a passive participle could also signify “cut off”!! and that poets loved to play with its ambiguity !: pte ib le iy act ot elt at ol (“My love of Sulaima has refused to perish, but her tie (of affection to me) has become worn out and cut.”) Hadith also carried an ambiguous meaning: on the one hand it represented the original meaning “new”, on the other it denoted a khabar (‘what was reported”, “report”, news”). This latter sense led to the concept of “tradi- tion”, i.e., something that had occurred in the past. Thus we are confronted with the paradoxical situation that something new could also signify some- thing old, established, or even out dated. Perhaps this ambiguity prevented either term from being used as an antonym of “tradition” (in the sense of taglid). In addition, they did not cover the real meaning of the term taglid, which in the 18th century already described a concept of ‘imitating/- forging’. So we find both expressions like “dddt-i jadid (‘les usages modernes’, 1846), and the antonym jadid/atig (‘new/ancient, old’): Bt Got Ss ell ae IS (“tout ce qui est nouveau est agréable et tout ce qui est ancien est respectable”). 11 Cf. E, W. Lane, Arabie-English Lexicon, London 1863, vol. 1, p. 386. 12 Muhammad Murtada az-Zabidi, 14j al-ards fi jawahir al-gamis, Cairo 1868, vol. Il. p. 313 ss. 35The following title of a collection of Ouoman treaties explicitly distinguish- es between “former” and “modern” (Satig / jadid):'3 SY parle ae a eh ale ey EE Cand AY aa ag ig tae Jy al ae ce VARY ADA Jel gt ley ee pe tele OLS oS and likewise the Arabic!4: dese Fh, tae 1S whereas Suhaili, the Ottoman Turkish translator of Ahmad b. SAli Ibn Zunbul’s famous history of Egypt (written in about 1540) called his version he had completed in 1611/2 sdrikh-i Misir gadim ve-Mistr-i jadid, thus op- posing gadim to jadid. Here it is interesting to note that Suhaili equated the Ottoman occupation in 1516 with the beginning of a New Egypt. Jadid thus described the change of a quality of something. It could also mean the reestablishing of something “old”, that is of something that had existed, then vanished and returned again. This is why “day and night” were called al-jadidan, “the two new”, and a religious scholar who wanted to re- store the “authentic teachings” was named al-mujaddid, as he did not intro- duce anything new, he renewed something old. The Turkish word yeni could also implicitly describe a negative state of af- fairs: yenisi eskisini araur. (Das (schlechte) Neue 148t einen wehmiitig an das (gute) Alte zuriickdenken.”) Although the antonyms jadid/‘atiq and yeni/eski include the time aspect and implicitly tend to make a value judgment about the attributed object, they did not hit the exact connotations of the terms taqlid / taglid?. In Ottoman Turkish (and early modern Persian), the concept of taglid described a world of imitation, forgery, spectacle, duplicity but not genuine artificiality. Consequently, this concept required a notion that signified a 13 M. Seyfettin Ozege, Eski Harflerde Bastlms Tiirkce Eserler Katalogu, vols. I-V. Istanbul 1971-1979, n°3920. 14 az-Zabidi, 14j al-‘aras, vol. Il, p. 314. 36world of originality, genuineness, authenticity and innovation. This notion of taglid was already used by al-Maqqari when writing about the attitudes of Andalusian rulers ete ell, abil Is ge aM ope opty ol ds, (“{The scribe Abi Bakr Muhammad b. CAli at-TAjiri al-Ishbili died in 596/1199-1200] because he was denounced by al-Mansir when he deci- ded to give up following the (bad) old and to work for the (good) new.”) Here it should be noted that al-Maqqari used hadith as an antonym of taglid, In the 18th century in Ottoman Turkish usage, the term taglid designated an artificial world. In his voluminous dictionary. Mesgnien Meninski (Vienna 1680) entered the following meaning of taglid: “imitatio, representatio; contraffare, imitare, ne’gesti 6 nel favellare, rapresentare.” Then he added the example: ate et ths gall get an bir kimsenin avazint ve yazint taglid etmek. (“to imitate someone's voice and style”) In addition, we find the following entries: ahl-i taglid ~“imitator, comoedus, mimus; buffone, comediante burlevole” taglid oynu - “comoedia” taglidji/taglitgi, taglid oyuncu — “imitator, actor”. The semantic kernel “imitation” can also be found in Arabic texts of the 14th century. Ibn Khaldoun wrote: Pd 9 i pal aS abt La “(And) (people) came to follow the tradition of the two preceding dynas- ties with regard to the use of titles."!5 15 Ibn Khaldin, The Mugaddimah, transl. by F. Rosenthal, Princeton 1967, vol. Il, p. 1 37In this context, however, the word taglid had to be associated with a verb denoting someone's attitude regarding a usage. Only in later time did the word taqlid itself come to incorporate the meaning “imitation”. At the beginning of the 19th century at the latest, “the world of appearanc- es” was also rendered in Arabic by the word taglid. In his dictionary pub- lished in 1828, E. Bocthor used the term Jib at-taglid to translate the French “comédie”. According to him, taglid could signify the meaning “im- itation, copie, surtout pour ridiculiser, joue.” An example may be found in Rifaa Rafi¢ at-Tahtawi's kitdb takhlis al-ibriz fi talkhis Bariz (published in 1834/5): concerning the theaters of Paris, he wrote:!6 PA AN ale Rel dy by LZ le Ld ald os JK) Pll gad one prac BOLI elle oa Reed (“Among the places of amusement they have a place called “theater” or “spectacle”. There comedies on all that happened are performed. In real- ity, however, these plays are tragedies in comedy form.”)!7 The negative connotation “pour ridiculiser” may be found associated with the semantic root of taglid even in early Arabic texts, Az-Zamakhshari for example wrote: oe 396 WG a “Such a person was satirized with that which left upon him a lasting stigma,”!8 In Bocthor’s dictionary, we also find one of the first evidences of an attrib- utive use of raglid in the form taglid? (“imitatif’) in Ottoman Turkish. In early modern Persian, however, Na: Khusrow already used this attribute in the sense of “(an) unreasonable” or “imitating”, compare his two verses (mudarit)'9 16 ed. Bulag 1249/1834-5, p. 87, ed. Muhammad ¢Amméra, Cairo 1958. p. 119. 17 Cf. Reinhard Schulze, “Schauspiel oder Nachahmung? Anmerkungen zur Lektiire arabischer Reiseschrifisteller des 19. Jahrhunderts”, in Die Welt des Islams 34 (1994), 18 Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, vol. lV, p. 2557 19 Cited in “Ali Akbar Dehkhoda, lughaindme. vol. 15, Tebran 1341. p. 849 38A oie ple SF Ae Jol sb he “Do not accept the word of an unreasonable (imitating) ignoramus even though he might be celebrated all over the world.” and (ah) ay Se be pel ae iS lor a RS Gl galt oe SS oF “When an imitator heard this word from that wise man, he said with ignorance: What do we know? But he (pretends to know?) In these two cases, however, taglidi connotated someone’s attitude and not the characteristic of an “imitated” (hence traditional) thing. In summary, the term taglid developed the following field of meaning: tying around something girding Y adorning Y adorning someone with a necklace in order to stigmatize him Y old bad/old binding oneself to precedent copying, imitation, simulating counterfeiting play acting forging Owing to this broad field of meaning, aglid could be used in the context of different antonymies. They represent three axes or aspects: QUALITY bad / good jadid tagqlid TIME old / new hadith BEHAVIOUR bound / free ijtihad 39The revaluation of taglid as “bad, old and bound” at once preconditioned the existence of a concept that meant “good, new and free”. Which Arabic term fulfilled these conditions? The quality aspect has been broadened by the notion “originality /eopy”, which became the most important antonym of taglid. The term used to de- note “originality” — being the opposite of “copy” — was as/. From its seman- tic kernel as/ “root” Arab grammarians had derived the attribute asi? in or- der to signify underived Arabic words (as opposed to augmentative). The attribute asi? had a common figurative sense describing something primary or original, referring to someone's or something's natural disposition. In the stories of 1001 Nights, for instance, we find the expression: al-bait al-asli (or al-aslani) - “the parental home”. After the term taglid had developed into a concept of imitation and copying, it was often contrasted with the word asl or the attribute asi. Now, asif was used to characterize a manuscript which had not been copied but was the original: nuskha-yi asli [asli nuskha] or an-nuskha al-asliya. In Ottoman Turkish, a facsimile was rendered as taglid-i khatt (“script imi- tation”, khat usually meaning a manuscript). Accordingly, ast? was used as an antonym of raq/id in the question of originality or imitation: new good freed from precedent original20 hadith jadid ijtihdd(i) agli Asli was embedded into the aspect system of taglid. As a result, in the 18th century asli did not only predicate something as original, but added to this predication the connotations new/jadid, good new/hadith and freed from precedent (ijtihdd(i)) and falsification. The duality of originality and con- temporaneousness reflected the following view of history: 20 Secularized time interpretations favoured the development of the following line: new good freed from authority modern jadid hadith ijtthadi casri On the secular concept of “asri, see my article “Das islamische 18. Jahrhundert. Versuch einer historiographischen Kritik”, in Die Welt des Istams 30 (1990), p. 140-159. 40asl taglid asli —_— — time axis what it was what was what is originally (what is) (should be) OH > time axis [rarikh) taqlid casri Accordingly, something contemporary (Sasr?) could be either the original (asl?) or something absolutely ‘new’ (hadith). The predicates that signified the state “what is / what should be” had to be derived from the perceived world and depended on the positive or negative judgement of history. A medium that mirrored both the view of tradition and modernity was print- ing.2! Printing fundamentally changed the attitudes in the Muslim world to- ward history, and helped to class texts with both identities. Islamic book printing When, in September 1803, a manuscript text dealing with theological ques- tions was printed as a book by the newly established printing house dar at- tiba‘a al-jadida, the foundation was laid for a profound and momentous change within the cultural production of Islam. Since the foundation of the first official printing house in Istanbul ddr at-tibd‘a al-mamira seventy- six years earlier, the edict of Sultan Ahmad III of 15.11.1139 /5.7.1727 had been in force. It prohibited the printing of texts that dealt with Koran, tafsir, 21 See Lucien Febvre (en coop. avec J. H. Martin), L'apparition du livre, Paris 1958; Elisabeth L. Eisenstein. “L’avénement de I"imprimerie et ta Réforme”, in Annales 26 (1971) 6, pp. 1354-1382; Robin Myers/Michael Harris (eds.), Spreading the Word. The Distribution Network of Print 1550-1850, Winchester/Detroit 1990; Elisabeth L. Eisenstein, The printing revolution in early modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1990 (repr.): Michael Giesecke, Der Buchdruck in der frithen Neuzeit, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 1991; Hans Bekker-Nielson (ed.), From Script to Book: a symposium (Odense 15./16.11.1982), Odense: Odense UP 1986. 41hadith and figh. The original restricted injunction was later expanded to include the printing of any manuscripts containing Islamic texts.?? Until 1803, only those texts had been printed that could not be directly classed among the Islamic sciences. From 1727 to 1747. seventeen titles in twenty-one volumes had been printed. with a total circulation of 12,500. After a prolonged period of closure, the printing house was reopened in 1783/4. Still under the direct control of the Ottoman regime. the leasehold- ers of the printing house, Ahmad WAsif and Muhammad Rashid, edited 29 additional titles. Whereas during the first period the Imperial history had been stressed, now dictionaries, grammars and military texts were mainly printed. For Islamic cultural production, this early printing period was of no great importance. The production of manuscripts still occupied a monopolistic position in the field of Islamic sciences. Hence, the symbiotic concurrence of writing, copying and distribution, including permission to read a text in public (ijdza), was dominated by the ‘ulamd’ and qudat, who exercised strict con- trol over Islamic cultural production. Even though they did not directly earn their living by copying manuscripts, they controlled a large number of copyists and even the storage of manuscripts. Even after the introduction of printing, the scholars and judges were able to maintain their leading posi- tion within the system of production and distribution. The approximately forty booksellers of Istanbul, who were organized into a very highly es- teemed guild, were under the scholars’ and judges’ control. In addition, the scholars and judges were members of the board of censors that Sultan ¢Abdalhamid had created in 1784.23 2 Persian Islamic book printing started in India in the 1780s. The first Islamic book print- ed in Calcutta was perhaps Shaykh Sa‘di Shirazi [died in 691/1292]. pandandme (on ethics), Calcutta 1788 {with an English translation by Francis Gladwin). See C. A Storey, “The Beginnings of Persian Printing in India”, in J. D. C. Pavry, Oriental Studies in Honour of Curseyji Erachji Payry, London 1933, pp. 457-461. Independent Islamic book printing started in Lucknow in 1819/20 (Ahmad ash-Shirwani, al- mandgib al-haidartya, Lucknow 1235 (1819/20)), 23 A summary of early accounts of the whole story concerning the introduction of printing in Istanbul may be found in Abbé Toderini, Literatur der Tiirken. Aus dem ltalienischen mit Zusdtzen und Anmerkungen von Philipp W. G. Hausleutner, 1-I, Knigsberg 1790. Il, p. 169s. 42Thus, the production of printed books had become a part of the existing so- cial system without destroying its foundations. This, however, was only true for the sale and distribution of books. The most important change took place within the sphere of production. Already in the first edict issued by Sultan Ahmad III in 1727, the fact was stressed that a printed book was much cheaper than a manuscript. This commercial aspect was also emphasized in the decree of Sultan cAbdalhamid. He justified the reintroduction of printing by stating that books printed during the first phase of the Istanbul press’s existence (from 1727 to 1747) were no longer readily available for purchase. Moreover, if a copy were to be sold, the price was much too high, sometimes even higher than what had to be paid for a corresponding manuscript copy. As a result, the printing office was obliged to align the price of a book with the produc- tion costs and an adequate profit. Another factor in the equation was that the leaseholders of the printing office had to pay a duty for the profit on each printed sheet. On the basis of this calculation, the production cost of one printed sheet was fixed at | para and it was sold for 1.5 para, giving a printed book an average cost of 5 piasters; in comparison, a manuscript copy of the same text cost 100 to 500 piasters. Thus, generally speaking, a printed book cost only a tenth of the price demanded for a manuscript or, viewed from another per- spective, by using printing methods it was possible to produce ten times more copies of a text than by using manuscript techniques, although the same sum of money and less time were spent. As Ibrahim-i Pecuyi observed before 164074: Deby) cae 1 fib ale 4 Sale Sy "Printing a thousand volumes causes less drudgery than (writing) one manuscript.” In the long run, even the scholars involved in the production of manuscripts could not ignore this commercial reality. Since they earned their living by copying manuscripts, they obviously required manuscripts to copy. As a 24 Ibrahim-i Pecuyi, ¢arikh, vol. 1, Istanbul 1281 (1864/5), p. 363 s. 43rule, their income was — at best ~ sufficient to purchase one major manu- script a year. By buying printed books, however. they could acquire ten texts a year at the same cost. The edict of 1727 also gave emphasis to the fact that Islamic knowledge had become something different from non-religious knowledge. Whereas the latter could be spread through the new printing technique (which in fact was not new at all for the Ottomans) the proliferation of Islamic knowledge was restricted to production of manuscripts, a very sophisticated process. Manuscripts and books As long as only one printing office produced books, the manuscript tradi- tion was not endangered fundamentally, as the printing office could not meet the general demand for texts. Thus, for years both techniques of cultu- ral production Were complementary facets of a single process. Gradually, however, book printing gained ground. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Indian printing offices started to print literature on Islamic sub- jects. It is, however, not known whether these books were sold in the Ottoman Empire. When a printing office was opened specializing in setting texts in Arabic script was opened in Kazan in 1801, among the first works printed were the famous at-tariqa al-muhammadiya, written by Muhammad b. Pir CAli al- Birkawi (Birgili) (929/1523-98 1/1573), and translated into Tatar Turkish by the famous mystic, “Abdal‘aziz Tuqtamishoglu, and an anonymous versifi- cated translation of al-Birkawi's wasiyatndma.?5 The Russian administrati- on had given order that the owner of this printing office, the merchant Aba 25 German summary Ist die muhammedanische Religion an sich bose und verwerflich? Hat sie Aehntichkeiten mit der christlichen? Verdient sie nach der christlichen den er- sten Rang?, Ratiopolis 1790. Cf. Madelaine C. Zilfi, The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age, 1600-1800, Minneapotis 1988, pp. 129ss. It should be noted that the first book printed in Istanbul was a text of the Kadizadili tradition. See also Semiramis Gavugoglu, The Kadizadeli movement: An attempt of seriat-minded re- form in the Ottoman Empire, Ph.D., Princeton/N.J. 1990, p. 48 s. and Reinhard Schulze, “Was ist die islamische Aufklirung?”, Die Welt des Istams 36 (1996) p. 266-325. 441-Ghazi Barashughli, should publish “Korans, prayer books and similar bo- oks only”. Barashughli published seven Islamic texts in 1801 and 1802, in- cluding extracts of the Koran, dogmatic texts for beginners (fmdn shart?) and a Koran.25¢ Al-Birkawi, who was known for his fierce attacks against those scholars who read the Koran for money, was also the first Islamic author whose books were printed in Istanbul. The owners of the new printing office in Skutari did not wait for official permission to print books dealing with Islamic subjects. Thus, they abrogated the decree of 1727 by publishing risdla-y: Birgiwi as the first Islamic book. This text was an Ottoman- Turkish translation of the abridged edition of al-Birkawi's af-tariga al- muhammadiva. The new director of the Istanbul printing office, “Abdarrahman Afandi, who had been appointed in 1801, scems to have been so pleased with the commercial success of the risd/a that in June, 1804 he edited the commen- tary of Qadizadeh Istanbuld Ahmad b. Muhammad Amin’s jauhariya-i bahiya-i ahmadiya-i fi sharh al-wasiya al-muhammadiya, which is a com- mentary on al-Birkawi’s shorter treatise on morals. In the same year, he published another commentary of Qadizadeh, namely the book fara’id al- faw@’id fi baydn al-Caqa’ commentary on an-Nasafi written by the fa- mous pietist preacher Qadizadeh Mehmed, 1582-163526), But whereas scholars from Kazan used the printing process to publish their own writings (they published seven volumes between 1802 and 1809)’, the scholars in Istanbul hesitated to follow their example. Tacitly they apparent- ly agreed, as far as their own (original) writings were concerned, to comply with the decree that had enjoined against the printing of Islamic texts. Yet another change engendered by the introduction of printing was a new outlook toward the text itself, which was now available both as a manu- 25a For a detailed discussion of this printing office see See Michael Kemper, Sufis und Gelehrie in Tatarien und Baschkirien 1789-1889. Der islamische Diskurs unter russis- cher Herrschaft, Bochum, unpubl. Ph.D. 1997, p. 44 s.. 155 s. 26 See Ibrahim Usakizadeh, Lebensbeschreibungen beriihmter Gelehter und Gottesmanner dey Osmanischen Reichs im 17. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans Joachim Kissting, Wiesbaden 1965, S. 43-45. 27 Cf. Kemper, Sufis und Gelehrte, S. 45script and as a book. Initially the printer of a book had the same attitude to- wards the text as the copyist of a manuscript; he just copied the text using a new medium. Soon, however, a new factor in the equation entered the com- mercial publishing process, namely the distribution of the book. The neologism used to describe the process of book distribution was nashr “spreading”. This term had already been used to designate the spreading of the contents of a manuscript. Now, the term was restricted to the book itself. In dictionaries printed at the beginning of the 19th century, we find entries like: édition- éditeur ~ tab wa-nashr (Bianchi) Soaps eh kf Silbe » (s.o. who prints and spreads a book of an author, Bianchi) édition ------- tab (Bocthor, 1828) sence izhdr al-kitab Thus, the production of a book was understood at that time both as a pro- cess of printing and distribution. This view was still valid in the beginning of the 20th century. ‘The synchronous existence of a manuscript and a book created a problem of value and use. As soon as a text had been printed and distributed as a book, the manuscript original was stored away and lost its use value to a group that, up to that time, had established its identity on the production and man- agement of manuscripts, namely, the scholars. It was they who now had to develop a new relation with the printed text. In lieu of the use value, the exchange value became important and underlined the fact that a manuscript had now become a pure commodity. A book, too, was a commodity, and, as we have seen, book production had begun as a pro- duction of commodities. Just as every commodity is offered to an anonymous public, the printed book entered a new market among a much broader public. In the European context, this process was reflected in the technical terms that describe the world of books. In the 18th century, European book pro- duction had been expanded to a lay, i.e. non-clerical, market. The term “to publish” (publier) was used to connotate the process of editing a book. 46In German, the analogous term veréffentlichen came into use only in the 1830s, in accord with the specific situation of the German book market. The term Edition, which had been used up to then, was now restricted to the very specific sense of publishing journals and texts. These terms can be viewed in the context of a new, organic form of social organization that had emerged in the 8th century; this was the dichotomy “public realm” / “private realm” (Offentlichkeit /Privatheit). As a commod- ity, printed books targeted the public, who constituted the abstract body of consumerism. Manuscripts, however, were now relegated to the domain of privacy. The relation manuscript-book, further, paralleled the concepts “old” and “new”. A manuscript was old in the sense that it had been written in former times; a book was new because it was printed. An Islamic text now had a double identity. It could be: old rare belonging to the private realm without use value (later of great material value) (Manuscript) or it could be new widely spread belonging to the public realm having a high use value (generally of little materiat value) (Book) This double identity created the preconditions for a changing attitude towards texts. Before being printed as a book, the text had to be verified, and out of a great number of manuscript copies, the editor had to choose the one that was “true”, that is the one that best represented the original text of the author. The Muslim editors spoke of tahgig, meaning verification of a text before printing. The Arabic term asl? was now applied to a text that was deemed worthy of being printed. But what was agli, and who decided what was to be considered as as/7? 47From 1803 to 1850, Islamic scholars were still the authorities who con- trolled the private and public libraries where thousands of manuscripts had piled up. It was their task to decide the ones to release for printing. At first, they favoured texts that could be used in the field of teaching. Consequently, they gave precedence to manuscripts that had been com- posed the way they were used to: the text consisted of the original, a com- mentary, glosses and sometimes even super-glosses (matn, sharh, hdshiya, ta‘ligat). This technique permitted timeless continuity of an original text. However, reading a text and commenting on its contents was one matter. Anyone who had purchased a manuscript was able to read the original and the different grades of commentaries, assuring him a close link to the au- thor. But soon the scholars had to take cognizance of the fact that printing made different demands on the text. Unlike a manuscript penned by a learned man, the printed book was sold to an anonymous public. The scholar, who had been used to propagating the ideas in a specific text by reading it out to his pupils?8, now had to face the fact that the book, once it left the printing office, was beyond the sphere of his direct authority. It was no longer possible for him to influence the read- ers or have an effect on their attitudes towards the text. On the other hand, the reader of a book - who had now lost contact with the scholars — fre- quently ignored the commentaries, and concentrated solely on the original. This state of affairs permitted the editor — concerned with selling as many copies of a book as possible — two alternatives: he could place the original text clearly in the foreground of the printed page, or he could choose to edit only new texts written by contemporaries for which no commentary existed. During the 1840s, the term asl? assumed a positive connotation, contrasting originality with non-originality. Books containing original texts were more valuable than books formatted like manuscripts”, i.e., with extensive com- mentaries in the margins or elsewhere. 28 In doing so he was also allowed to teach the book's contents (ijdza khdssa), 29 In German, the word Originalitat still reflects this attitude. It means either “original” in the sense of asfi (originar), or originell, with the meaning “novel”, or “a novel type” of something. 48This attitude contributed to the fact that, after the introduction of printing, an original text was only valid and useful if it was printed; before being printed or edited, a text no longer had any use value. As a result, thousands of manuscripts covering widely differing subjects were consigned to the background of contemporaneous cultural production because, from the viewpoint of the scholars who formed part of the new public, they repre- sented an obsolete tradition from which the ahistorical, timeless originality of important texts needed to be distinguished. This obsolete tradition was identified with the Islamic term taqlid. But whereas this word had formerly been used to describe the behaviour of a person, it was now applied to a past period embedded in history. History, itself, was divided into two forms of tradition: the good (as/f), and the bad (taglid). In the former, the individual's behaviour reflected the con- strued originality of the “new age”, whereas in the latter, behaviour was characterized by eclecticism, copying, mimicry and imitation. The taglid- time separated the good tradition from the present time. With the help of printed books, the “good” tradition could be revived or in- vented. The revival or invention of an original tradition, however, pertained to the world where the “up-to-date” scholars and intellectuals lived. It could be modelled according to the identification needs of those social groups secking a new self-understanding. By choosing texts out of the thousands of manuscripts, scholars were able to create a “good” new tradition and a con- temporary self-knowledge. Themes and subjects of Early Islamic Book printing By 1817/18, the impact of the tabu against printing books that dealt with Islamic topics had been weakened. Its effect, however, was still noticeable. From 1803 to 1817 only eight books dealing with of this type had been printed in Istanbul. An initial boom started in 1818. Within ten years, twen- ty-one Islamic books were printed and, according to Jale Baysal’s count- 49ing*0 the figure may have been as high as thirty two. This amounted to 11.2% of the total book production of Istanbul. After a short recession, in 1835 a second boom set in. Subsequently, manu- script production decreased significantly in Istanbul. The invention of litho- graphic printing by Aloys Senefelder, which enabled the first books to be published in Paris around 1816, also fundamentally influenced the spread of the printing of Islamic books.3! This new technology was first used in Madras and Lucknow in 1820, spread to Tabriz in 182532 and reached Istanbul in 1830.43 With the help of lithography, the last tabu could be broken, namely the printing of the Koran. In Teheran, a lithographed Koran was published in 1828, one year later in Houghy/India and finally, in 1830, in Istanbul.4 A concomitant benefit was that, due to lithographic printing, at least some fa- mous copyists could be integrated into the printing production process. The editor of the Istanbul Koran (Sharafz4deh) hinted at this very important fact in his postscript. Finally, since the Ottoman Sultan Mahmid II himself or- dered the printing of the Koran, it may be assumed that the regime no long- er had interest in maintaining the printing tabu. From 1821, after the official Egyptian printing office in Bulag had been in- augurated, no one spoke of a specific injunction against printing religious 30 Jale Baysal (Bugra), Miiteferrika‘den birinci mesrutivete kadar Osmanh Tiirklerinin bastiklart kitaplar, Stambul 1968. 31 Aloys Senefelder, Vollstdindiges Handbuch der Steindruckery. Miinchen/Wien 1818. 32 Printing at Tabriz already started in 1812 under the patronage of Crown Prince Abbas Mirza: the first book printed was the fathnme (1817). The printing press known as basmakhane was directed either by Mirzi Salih Shirazi, who had visited England, or irza Zayn al-Abidin. Because of technical problems and esthetic considerations. introduced lithographic printing in 1824/5 from Russia, cf. Y. Porter, “Arts du livre et illustration”, in Y. Richard (ed.), Entre Iran et 'occident, Paris 1989. 33 In 1830/1, the walt of Iraq, Da°dd Pasha, also used a lithographic press to print a histo- cara’, written by Rasdl Hawi, See Michael W. Albin, “Iraq’s First in Libri 31(1981), pp. 167-174. 34 In Kazan, the Koran was printed as a fourth edition of the famous St. Petersburg Koran (Ist ed. probably 1787) in 1809, A new edition was published in 1817. See Bibliotheque de M. le Baron Silvestre de Sacy, vol. 1, Paris 1842, p. 320s. (n° 1464-1467) SO