Book printing in the Age of Im膩m Ya岣膩 岣m墨d al-D墨n
Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic 大象传媒: Guest lecturer Jan Thiele talks about the first steps of book printing in the Age of Im膩m Ya岣膩 岣m墨d al-D墨n.
Main content
As part of the politics of modernisation, Im膩m Ya岣膩鈥檚 administration took the first steps to promote the use of print technology,聽which was gradually supplementing traditional manuscript culture. Technical equipment for printing was very limited in Yemen, as the imamic state聽disposed of only a few rudimentary printing machines introduced by the Ottomans in the late nineteenth century. Parallel to the聽emerging small-scale Yemeni publishing, the Im膩m authorised the printing of Yemeni books in other parts of the Arabic world. At聽the same time, Western scholars were increasingly accessing Yemeni literature in recently established collections of Yemeni聽manuscripts across European libraries, as well as while travelling to Yemen, and edited some of the texts they studied. This聽paper presents a project that attempts to map the prints produced during the first half of the twentieth century (in Yemen under聽Im膩m Ya岣膩, other parts of the Arabic world, and by Western scholars) through the development of an interactive visualization tool and the creation of a repository for bibliographical metadata.
Short bio
Jan Thiele is a scholar of Islamicate intellectual history based at the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid. He is the author of two books on Mu士tazil墨 theology among the Zayd墨 community,聽Kausalit盲t in聽her聽mu士tazilitischen Kosmologie聽(Brill, 2011) and聽Theologie in聽der聽jemenitischen Zaydiyya聽(Brill, 2013). In addition to Mu士tazil墨 theology, his research has focused on Ash士ar墨聽kal膩m, and聽more specifically on one of the early school's major figures, Ab奴 Bakr al-B膩qill膩n墨, as well as on the dissemination of Ash士ar墨 doctrines in聽the Maghreb and al-Andalus. He is the co-editor,聽along with Ayman Shihadeh, of the volume聽Philosophical Theology in Islam: Later Ash士arism East and West聽(Brill, 2020).
