personal memories revolutionary states and indian ocean migrations

movable type was going on in some
languages in the Middle East, it is clear
that the use of movable type for printing
the Arabic language was being avoided
by deliberate choice. Middle Eastern
Languages and the Print Revolution deepens
our understanding of that choice. The
Quranic verses on the medieval block
prints were allowed to circulate so long
as they were simply popular amulets
carried on the person; when printing
with movable type threatened the
accuracy, sanctity, and beauty of Qurans
used for study and recitation, it was
rejected and the block prints
disappeared as well. So long as the
widespread network of scribes was able
to produce manuscripts in sufficient
quantity to fulfill demand, their vigorous
defense of their craft was accepted;
when manuscripts were in short supply
–as was the case in the Ottoman empire
in the 18 th century, when the export of
manuscripts was prohibited – then
Müteferriqa’s argument for the use of
typography won some assent.
But especially this book fills out
the challenges faced over the centuries
in creating fonts for the cursive Arabic
script, with its ligatures between
characters and its letters existing in four
forms, and in setting Arabic type.
Demand is important as well, Geoffrey
Roper stresses, but other authors stress
the success of lithography because,
reproducing a manuscript, it
simultaneously eased certain technical
problems and satisfied aesthetic
preference. Hrant Gabeyan, creator of a
computerized system for setting Arabic
type with all its ligatures and letter forms
with great efficiency, concludes on a
hopeful note that "in moving from lead
font to binary coding, and from qalam to
laser, Arabic script should not lose its
exquisite and multi-faceted qualities."
Middle Eastern Languages and the
Print Revolution furthers the history of the
book in many lands, but, as its authors
would agree, much remains to be done.
As the essay on medieval block prints
was being completed, its author learned
http://web.mit.edu/cis/www/mitejmes/
87
that several more had been discovered
in Istanbul; a book lithographed in
Meknès in 1865 is given as the first
printed book in Arabic in Morocco, but
Moroccan scholars have recently found
earlier editions. Book runs are given for
many presses, but the actual readership,
libraries, and impact on authors and
readers are beyond the scope of this
collection, as is a full treatment of the
dialectic between oral, written, and
printed forms. Still, in understanding
these other topics, future scholars will
find this beautiful and informative book
an essential step.
_______________________________
Fruma Zachs
The Making of a Syrian Identity:
Intellectuals and Merchants in
Nineteenth-Century Beirut
Leiden: Brill, 2005
Reviewed by Leila Hudson ∗
Fruma Zachs’s The Making of a
Syrian Identity: is a valuable and solidly
researched contribution to the cultural
history of Bilad al-Sham. Zachs’s
attempt to locate indigenous roots of
the twentieth century culture of
nationalism in the milieu of the “middle
stratum” Christians of Mount Lebanon
and Beirut fleshes out the long accepted
notion that these bourgeois intellectuals
formed the vanguard of proto-national
Syrian identity. To her credit, she
acknowledges that this is one Syrian
identity in a complex social, historical,
regional cauldron with the inclusion of
the particle “a” in the title. Noting that
Lebanese Catholics and Muslims also
had parallel processes of identity
development, she convincingly posits
the development of a Syrian, as opposed
to a Shami or Phoenicianist, identity as
the oldest and most influential and
arguably the most complex. The
∗ Leila Hudson is Assistant Professor in Middle
East history at the University of Arizona.