USD $4,500.00
Early Printed Books from Egypt at the Great Exhibition, London 1851
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Early printed books from Egypt exhibited at the Great Exhibition, London 1851
Transformation of Egypt
The Arab world first encountered the full might of modern Western military technology when Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, and soon discovered - in the most painful way – how far it had been left behind. Out of the destruction of the old regime in Egypt, and the final repulse of the French invaders, emerged a remarkable ruler, Muhammad Ali (1805-1848). Ali set about methodically modernizing Egypt by introducing modern military and other technologies, and succeeded in transforming the country into a strong, self-sufficient power. Groups of Egyptians were sent to Europe to study modern sciences and foreign teachers were brought to Egypt. Schools were set up to disseminate the new knowledge, factories were established to produce weapons and other materials of war, and new model armed forces and administrative systems were created.
The Bulaq press
A government printing press was set up in Bulaq in 1822 to print manuals for the military, an official journal for the administration and textbooks for the new schools. This press produced books of a remarkably high quality. Besides technical and official publications, it printed many classics of Arabic literature for the first time. For example, the first complete edition of Arabian Nights was published in Bulaq in 1835. These editions are well known to scholars and can be found in the main libraries of the world. The technical manuals and scientific textbooks, however, are much harder to find. The books in this collection bear stickers showing that they were exhibited at the Great Universal Exhibition of 1851, for which the Crystal Palace was erected in London. Many of these books were left behind at the end of the Exhibition and eventually found their way to the SOAS Library.
Remarkably high quality
The Bulaq press was the first printing house in the Arab world, apart from some Syrian monasteries that printed a handful of religious books in the first half of the eighteenth century, and the short-lived press taken to Egypt by Napoleon's forces. Its productions are of a remarkably high quality and the technical works have some fine drawings and plans. These rare titles will be of great interest to scholars of Arabic printing and book production. The titles concerned with military matters - nearly all of which are in Ottoman Turkish - will be of great interest to scholars specializing in Egyptian and Ottoman military history.
Arabic renaissance
The technical and scientific works are mostly in Arabic. Great care was taken by the editors of the Bulaq productions in translating new concepts into Arabic for the first time. This was partly because of the esteem in which Arabic was held by Muslims as the language of the Koran, and partly because of the venerable tradition of grammatical study and the heritage of classical translations from Greek and Aramaic. This led to a concern with the purity of Arabic style, which was jealously watched over by the scholars of the world's oldest university, Al-Azhar in Cairo. The development of Arabic in its nineteenth-century renaissance is currently the subject of a great deal of scholarly interest. In his article 'Arabiyya in the second edition of The Encyclopaedia of Islam Hans Wehr wrote "even the works of early translators in Egypt already contain, side by side with numerous foreign words taken over indiscriminately, pure Arabic neologisms to express Western concepts." This collection makes widely available some excellent primary material to test this assertion.
Peter Colvin, SOAS Library, London
Transformation of Egypt
The Arab world first encountered the full might of modern Western military technology when Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, and soon discovered - in the most painful way – how far it had been left behind. Out of the destruction of the old regime in Egypt, and the final repulse of the French invaders, emerged a remarkable ruler, Muhammad Ali (1805-1848). Ali set about methodically modernizing Egypt by introducing modern military and other technologies, and succeeded in transforming the country into a strong, self-sufficient power. Groups of Egyptians were sent to Europe to study modern sciences and foreign teachers were brought to Egypt. Schools were set up to disseminate the new knowledge, factories were established to produce weapons and other materials of war, and new model armed forces and administrative systems were created.
The Bulaq press
A government printing press was set up in Bulaq in 1822 to print manuals for the military, an official journal for the administration and textbooks for the new schools. This press produced books of a remarkably high quality. Besides technical and official publications, it printed many classics of Arabic literature for the first time. For example, the first complete edition of Arabian Nights was published in Bulaq in 1835. These editions are well known to scholars and can be found in the main libraries of the world. The technical manuals and scientific textbooks, however, are much harder to find. The books in this collection bear stickers showing that they were exhibited at the Great Universal Exhibition of 1851, for which the Crystal Palace was erected in London. Many of these books were left behind at the end of the Exhibition and eventually found their way to the SOAS Library.
Remarkably high quality
The Bulaq press was the first printing house in the Arab world, apart from some Syrian monasteries that printed a handful of religious books in the first half of the eighteenth century, and the short-lived press taken to Egypt by Napoleon's forces. Its productions are of a remarkably high quality and the technical works have some fine drawings and plans. These rare titles will be of great interest to scholars of Arabic printing and book production. The titles concerned with military matters - nearly all of which are in Ottoman Turkish - will be of great interest to scholars specializing in Egyptian and Ottoman military history.
Arabic renaissance
The technical and scientific works are mostly in Arabic. Great care was taken by the editors of the Bulaq productions in translating new concepts into Arabic for the first time. This was partly because of the esteem in which Arabic was held by Muslims as the language of the Koran, and partly because of the venerable tradition of grammatical study and the heritage of classical translations from Greek and Aramaic. This led to a concern with the purity of Arabic style, which was jealously watched over by the scholars of the world's oldest university, Al-Azhar in Cairo. The development of Arabic in its nineteenth-century renaissance is currently the subject of a great deal of scholarly interest. In his article 'Arabiyya in the second edition of The Encyclopaedia of Islam Hans Wehr wrote "even the works of early translators in Egypt already contain, side by side with numerous foreign words taken over indiscriminately, pure Arabic neologisms to express Western concepts." This collection makes widely available some excellent primary material to test this assertion.
Peter Colvin, SOAS Library, London