Technology and Religious Change: How Printing Transformed the Islamic Tradition

Historians have long recognized how the spread of printing in early modern Europe was a major contributor to the Reformation and Renaissance. So, when printing spread across the Islamic world in the nineteenth century, what were the consequences for the religious and cultural life of Muslims? In this episode, we’ll explore this question by looking at the Middle East, with a particular focus on Cairo, which became the epicenter for not only Arabic printing but also for the ‘Arab renaissance,’ or nahda, and the religious reform movement that was later dubbed ‘Salafism.’ By bringing to light a technological revolution so successful that it’s now all but invisible, we’ll see how many of the things we take for granted about Islam were shaped by decisions made by the first few generations of Arab editors and printers. Nile Green talks to Ahmed El Shamsy, the author of Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition (Princeton University Press, 2020).