A blog post on this topic has been a long time in the making for me, because it has always seemed such a perfect fit for the Nizami Ganjavi Library and its collections. For, the achievements and importance of Islamic literary culture are rightly celebrated. However, as I dug into the subject of book history in the NGL, I was very much interested in looking at specific literary cultures within the Islamic world and their nuanced differences. I also found myself inspired by books on this topic from other parts of the NGL such as the Korean Studies Library and Eastern Christianity Library, as well as books on South Asian book production from the Bodleian Off-Site Storage. Furthermore, it was not long until I was spoilt for choice on which books to feature. Therefore, I decided to narrow the focus of this display to look at the techniques of book production used across the regions featured in the NGL and the social factors that have affected and been affected by those techniques over time.
A very good place to start with such an exploration is to start with the aforementioned Islamic literary culture to gain an understanding of how that culture and its books were formed. For this reason, I have included Ibadi Muslims of North Africa: Manuscripts, Mobilization, and the Making of a Written Tradition and In the Author’s Hand: Holograph and Authorial Manuscripts in the Islamic Handwritten Tradition. While the former takes a wide-ranging approach, looking at texts from various times and places, the latter looks at the relationship between one Muslim community and their manuscripts.
A good follow-on from this might be Al-Jahiz: In Praise of Books in which James E. Montgomery dives deeply into the way that a medieval proliferation of books affected life in the Abbasid Caliphate seen through the lens of the life and work of highly influential author and thinker. Then, in Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition, Ahmed Al Shamsy relates how this long-established history of book production was again upended by the nineteenth-century adoption of the printing press and Arabic movable type. He relates how, through deciding which manuscripts to prioritise for printing, the intellectuals and publishers involved solidified a key corpus of classical texts, and, in some cases were keenly aware of the political implications of their choices. Elsewhere in the display, Tyler Williams tells a very similar story about the history of Hindi texts in If All the World Were Paper: A History of Writing in Hindi, which I found a really interesting point of interdisciplinary comparison.
You might also recognise some books from previous displays, such as Syriac Books Printed at the Dominican Press, Mosul by J. F. Coakley, featured in our ‘Welcome to AMES’ display all the way back in Michaelmas term last year. Coakley, who is an expert on Syriac language and literature and collector of types in non-Roman scripts, is also represented in the display by The Typography of Syriac: A Historical Catalogue of Printing Types, 1537-1958. He furthermore, owns his own printing press – Jericho Press – and many of its publications can be found in the NGL and wider Bodleian Libraries.
The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press and Writing Women in Korea: Translation and Feminism in the Colonial Period might also be familiar from the International Women’s Day display. A good companion volume to Writing Women in Korea added to this display is Women Pre-Scripted: Forging Modern Roles Through Korean Print highlight how from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Korean women have used the power of print and publishing to seek greater autonomy and self-expression.
However, the history of printing and book production in Korea goes back much farther, as outlined by Byeng-Sen Park in Korean Printing: From its Origins to 1910. For example, the book details how Korean printed text began with woodblock printing, in which full texts would be carved and stamped onto paper. One such woodblock can be seen on display in the Window on Korea room in the NGL. This example is from the nineteenth century and shows how, even after the popularisation of movable type, woodblocks continued to be used in Korea.
However, Korea is also home to the earliest extant text printed using movable type from 1377. Park also relates how this early development of printing was closely tied to the development of hanji or traditional Korean paper. Made from the bark of the paper mulberry, hanji has long been renowned for its combination of durability and strength with fineness and flexibility. Exactly how long is a matter of some debate and the book Hanji: Everything You Need to Know About Traditional Korean Paper explains the various answers to this question.
Approaching paper-making from a different angle, I have also included two reports – one from 1979 and one from 1989 – examining the challenges and opportunities faced by the Indian paper industry at a key period of growth. Issues discussed include assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of various homegrown pulp materials, machinery required, particular areas of growth and relevant government policies. Furthermore, the earlier report, written by V. Podder, also includes a short history of paper in India from its beginnings in Bengal in the nineteenth century. For a more in-depth look at this topic, one can also find The Bengali Book: History of Printing and Book Making, which outlines the importance of Bengal to the Indian print industry. As a pictorial representation of this importance, I have included on the display an image of a printing press belonging to Panchanan Karmakar, the inventor of the Bangla font (pictured below).
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to highlight some relevant online resources available via SOLO. For a short while now, the Bodleian Libraries have had access to the database Muteferriqa which is an invaluable resource for Ottoman Turkish materials from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library database which contains works spanning over four centuries. One e-book I would like to highlight as well, is Image and imperialism in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press, 1908-1911. Many other books in this display are also available online, and I very much encourage you to explore both on SOLO and on the library shelves.
Bibliography
H. S. AbiFarès, Arabic Typography: A Comprehensive Sourcebook, London, Saqi, 2001.
G. N. Atiyeh, The Book in the Islamic World: The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1995.
B. Baron, The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2009.
F. Bauden, In the Author’s Hand: Holograph and Authorial Manuscripts in the Islamic Handwritten Tradition, Leiden, Brill, 2020.
D. Behrens-Abouseif, The Book in Mamluk Egypt and Syria (1250-1517): Scribes, Libraries and Market, Leiden, Brill, 2018.
G. K. Bosch, J. Carswell and G. Petherbridge, Islamic Bindings & Bookmaking, Chicago, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, 1981.
P. J. Brummett, Image and Imperialism in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press, 1908-1911, Albany N.Y., State University of New York Press, 2000.
J. F. Coakley, The Typography of Syriac: A Historical Catalogue of Printing Types, 1537-1958, New Castle DE, Oak Knoll, 2006.
J. F. Coakley, Syriac Books Printed at the Dominican Press, Mosul: With an Appendix Containing the Syriac Books Printed at the Chaldean Press, Mosul, Piscataway NJ, Gorgias Press, 2009.
J. F. Coakley, ‘ABOUT’, Jericho Press, accessed 8 June 2026.
A. El Shamsy, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2020.
M. J. Heller, Printing the Talmud: A History of the Individual Treatises Printed from 1700 to 1750, Leiden, Brill, 1999.
M. Ibn Bādīs, Mediaeval Arabic Bookmaking and its Relation to Early Chemistry and Pharmacology, trans. M. Levey, Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, 1962.
International Symposium on the Printing History in East and West, Printing and Publishing Culture: Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium, Cheongju, Cheongju Early Printing Museum, 2000.
M. H. Khan, The Bengali Book: History of Printing and Book Making, 1667-1866, Dhaka, Bangla Academy, 1999.
A. Lee, Hanji Unfurled: One Journey into Korean Papermaking, Ann Arbor MI, Legacy Press, 2012.
J. Lee, Women Pre-Scripted: Forging Modern Roles Through Korean Print, Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 2015.
P. M. Love, Ibadi Muslims of North Africa: Manuscripts, Mobilization, and the Making of a Written Tradition, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2018.
J. E. Montgomery, Al-Jahiz: In Praise of Books, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
S. Nir, The Order and Disorder of Communication: Pamphlets and Polemics in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Empire, Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 2024.
E. Oğuzhan et. al., Mucibince Amel Oluna: Türk Matbaa Tarihi I: Matbaa Kurulurken, Istanbul, Ötüken, 2025.
B. Park, Korean Printing: From its Origins to 1910, Seoul, Jimoondang, 2003.
V. Podder, Paper Industry in India: A Study, New Delhi, Oxford & IBH, 1979.
Y. A. Rao, The Paper Industry in India: Status and Prospects, New Delhi, Oxford & IBH, 1989.
G. Roper (ed.), Historical Aspects of Printing and Publishing in Languages of the Middle East: Papers from the Third Symposium on the History of Printing and Publishing in the Languages and Countries of the Middle East, University of Leipzig, September 2008, Leiden, Brill, 2014.
O. Sabev, Waiting for Müteferrika: Glimpses on Ottoman Print Culture, Brighton MA, Academic Studies Press, 2018.
P. Son, Early Korean Typography, Seoul, 1982.
T. W. Williams, If All the World Were Paper: A History of Writing in Hindi, New York, Columbia University Press, 2024.
S. Yi, Hanji: Everything You Need to Know About Traditional Korean Paper, Seoul, Heyoenamsa, 2012.