Ahmed El Shamsy, "How Printing Remade the Islamic Tradition"

"How Printing Remade the Islamic Tradition"
University of Chicago Humanities Day
October 15, 2016
Ahmed El Shamsy, Assistant Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
In the world of Islamic scholarship, the transition from a manuscript culture to a culture of printed books took place less than two centuries ago. The advent of the printing press did not merely replace one medium of recording with another; rather, it lifted almost forgotten medieval texts out of oblivion and effectively created a new canon of Islamic classics. This talk sketches the reinvention of the Islamic intellectual tradition through the printing press and sheds light on the diverse agendas that drove the process.
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