Presenter:
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.