A Companion to the History of the Book (33 page)

East of the Ottoman empire, in Iran and southern Asia, publishing took somewhat different paths. As far as we can tell, the first Iranian book set in type dates from 1817. As in the Ottoman capital and provinces, the establishment of the press was impelled by political competition from European powers. Tabriz was the center of early printing: the governor of the province imported a press from Russia and sent workmen to England and Russia for training. A key printer, Miraz Zayn al-’Abidin, moved to Teheran where he printed about thirty works, many of them religious, over fourteen years. By 1844, his activities were taken over by his apprentices. It is safe to speculate that these early typographical presses were private businesses, although closely linked to high-ranking figures at court who commissioned the imprints.

Movable type in Iran and India was soon followed and eclipsed by lithographic printing. According to Ulrich Mazolph (2001), the first Iranian lithograph was a Quran printed in Tabriz in 1832–3, followed by more works of piety and some Persian classics. Presses were set up in Teheran later in the decade. Lithographs supplanted typographically produced books during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, for aesthetic and economic reasons. Scribes were able to reproduce the flowing
nastaliq
script beloved of readers and calligraphers alike. Text was copied on special paper and transferred to the lithographic stones that were plentiful in Iran. Lithographic equipment was cheaper to acquire and operate than typographical presses, and lent itself to reproducing illustrations. If the basic intent of printing was to duplicate manuscripts, then lithography was the perfect technique. A list published in the early 1890s reveals the scope of lithographic books on the market: they include science, technology, history, linguistics, and even books for children. Lithographic printing did not pass from the Iranian scene until the 1950s. The technique is still preferred in Pakistan and among Muslims in India.

Iran’s first newspaper,
Kaghaz-i Akhbar,
appeared in 1837. The first government newspaper was begun in 1851 and was followed by other long-lived official periodicals, some lithographed and some typeset. Their most noteworthy long-term impact was their influence on the development of a modernized Persian prose style and lexicon.

Ian Proudfoot (1997) has extended the detailed study of print culture beyond what are called the Central Islamic Lands (the Arab countries, Turkey, and Iran) to India and the European colonies of Southeast Asia. Each area has a distinct history that only occasionally parallels the Middle Eastern countries, but they share several common features. In India, a Catholic mission press was established in the mid-sixteenth century. Typography spread slowly, but at first not at all among the Muslim population. Protestant missionaries and East India Company personnel established presses, cut types, and experimented with printing books in the
nastaliq
style in Persian and other languages. The first Muslim-run press was not established until 1819, in the princely state of Oudh. “Then,” writes Proudfoot, “suddenly everything changed” when the Company imported lithographic presses for its administrative regions and supplied textbooks in several languages including Urdu, the principal language of Muslims. The Muslim community adopted the technique as it own, to the extent that it has been called “a Muslim technology.” Book production exploded in all parts of India, but especially in the north. Research by Proudfoot shows that “Lucknow alone had more than a dozen lithographic presses in 1848, all in Muslim hands. By that time the presses of Lucknow— Cawnpore alone had published about 700 titles, some in up to ten editions, mainly comprising students’ books, polemics, and religious tracts” (Proudfoot 1997: 163). The reasons for the success of lithography were the same as in Iran.

Although starting later than Indian Muslims, Malaysian, Indonesian, and Singaporean Muslims were also smitten with lithography. Their first printed book was a Qur’ān issued in 1854. From then on, the lithographic press grew into a veritable cottage industry. Religious works as well as entertaining folk tales were published and distributed through sales networks that included traveling vendors, agents, and mail order.

Thus, the contrast between the print experience of the eastern and western Muslims is striking. First, the lithographic press came to dominate the early decades of printing in the east, while it was a minor factor further west. Secondly, printing in the east was quickly commercialized and became a thriving (if not lucrative) trade, while in the west it remained largely (if not entirely) in government hands or under government control. Thirdly, book content in the east was largely Islamic, while in the west it could be technical, historical, or literary as well as religious.

In the turbulent twentieth century, the Muslim press spread the call for independence from foreign rule imposed by force and ratified as mandates after World War I. Western-educated nationalists, radicals, and women opened newspapers in Egypt, Iran, India, and elsewhere. Largely illiterate, the majority of the population listened to the recitation of these ideas in coffee shops, mosques, and other public places. During the turmoil of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1906 the press had a major impact on the national movement and government reform. Ahmad Amin’s call for women’s rights cited earlier was translated in Iran and provoked rebuttals from religious leaders. Later, a tidal wave of Islamic discussion was generated by Sayyid Qutb, who was executed in 1966 for his extreme Islamist views, and whose books are read today throughout the Islamic world. In a more secular vein, the works of Egyptian scholar Taha Husayn (d. 1973) are widely reprinted, as are the novels of Nobel Laureate Najib Mahfuz (d. 2006).

Soon after private Muslim publishers emerged, governments became aware that they posed a threat to the established order, and imposed press laws. In Turkey, printers required a license from 1857. Iran had equivalent laws, which remained in force in one way or another until the fall of the Shah in 1979. Thereafter, the Islamic Republic was even charier of free press and media. Today, post-publication censorship is widespread throughout the region, imposed by ministries of culture or information. Even an Islamic classic such as
al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah
by the thirteenth-century mystic Muhi al-Din Ibn al-’Arabi, published by the Egyptian government publishing house, was pulled from the market after protests by conservative religious leaders. Al-Azhar Mosque, recognized by millions as the headquarters of Sunni orthodoxy, regularly reviews not only editions of the Qur’ān, but also other books published in or imported to Egypt. The Arab book trade is dominated by large, state-owned publishing houses, such as the General Egyptian Book Organization and Dar al-Ma’arif Governments usually own the largest newspapers, publish the majority of books, organize the book fairs, and award prizes. Censorship is a sad fact of life and is a constant concern of authors and private publishers.

Numerous barriers and inconveniences confront private publishers and authors, including poorly administered copyright laws, custom and currency barriers, low rates of literacy (50 percent in Egypt), as well as political and religious censorship. Moreover, the industry is poorly integrated horizontally. Publishers generally market only their own publications, in effect keeping them in the condition of printer–publishers. General bookstores are rare, and adaptation to electronic commerce is slow. Book bazaars, such as those in Baghdad and Tunis, may be picturesque but are not models of efficiency. In Istanbul, the famous Sahaflar book market retains little of its former vitality. Yet publishers are relatively numerous and free in Lebanon and Turkey, and Egyptian publishers enjoy a wide market in the Arab world.

As may be expected in so vast a region, library service varies greatly. Most countries follow a Western pattern, with a flagship national library and more or less vital branch and provincial libraries. The expansion of higher education in recent decades has required new and better-equipped university libraries, though many countries have meager funds for adequate services and collection building. The situation is better in the oil-rich states of the Arabian peninsula, and at the American universities in Beirut and Cairo. The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria seeks to become a model of service in the electronic age as well as a center for researchers attracted by its collections and scholarly programs.

References and Further Reading

Arnold, Thomas (1965)
Painting in Islam.
New York: Dover.

Atiyeh, George N. (ed.) (1995)
The Book in the Islamic World.
Washington: Library of Congress.

Blair, Sheila and Bloom, Jonathan (1994)
The Art and Architecture of Islam 1250–1800.
New Haven: Yale University Press.

— and — (2003) “The Mirage of Islamic Art.”
Art Bulletin,
85 (1): 152–84.

Bloom, Jonathan (1999) “Revolution by the Ream.”
Saudi Aramco World,
50: 1–9.

Bosch, Gulnar, Carswell, John and Petherbridge, Guy (1981)
Islamic Bindings and Bookmaking
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cole, Juan (2002) “Printing and Urban Islam in the Mediterranean World, 1890–1920.” In Leila Fawaz, et al. (eds.),
Modernity and Culture from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean,
pp. 344–64. New York: Columbia University Press.

Green, Arnold (1988) “The History of Libraries in the Arab World: A Diffusionist Model.”
hibraries and Culture,
25: 454–73.

Ibn al-Nadim (1970)
The Fihrist of al-Nadim,
trans. B. Dodge. New York: Columbia University Press.

Issa, Ahmad Mohammad (1965)
Painting in Islam.
New York: Dover.

Marzolph, Ulrich (2001)
Narrative Illustration in Persian Lithographed Books.
Leiden: Brill.

Pedersen, Johannes (1984)
The Arabic Book.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Proudfoot, Ian (1997) “Mass Producing Houri’s Moles.” In Peter G. Riddell and Tony Street (eds.),
Islam: Essays on Scripture, Thought and Society,
pp. 161–86. Leiden: Brill.

The Codex in the West 400–2000

13

The Triumph of the Codex: The Manuscript Book before 1100

Michelle P. Brown

The two major vehicles for writing in classical antiquity were the papyrus scroll
(rotulus
or
volumen),
used for formal literary texts, and sets of wooden or wax tablets
(tabulae
or
codex)
for informal and pragmatic uses. Tablets were not confined to antiquity; they continued alongside other media throughout succeeding centuries – an important “missing link” in the written record (Brown 1994). One of the earliest examples of writing from Ireland consists of extracts from the Psalms inscribed at the beginning of the seventh century upon thin, oblong, wax tablets (the Springmount Bog Tablets), probably by an aspirant priest who was memorizing them to become “psalteratus” (being able to recite the Psalms from memory). Other early medieval examples include decorated diptychs of bone or ivory covered with wax, upon which liturgical feasts were inscribed. Medieval accounting tablets survive, and tiny sets of tablets could be worn as girdle-books, as notebooks, devotional talismans, or love tokens.

The codex assumed respectability along with Christianity during the fourth century, when it became the state religion of the Roman empire. Books were no longer a cheap alternative favored by a persecuted underclass, but honored receptacles of sacred text within a powerful established religion. Leaves of wood were too cumbersome for lengthy texts and folded sheets of papyrus cracked, so techniques of book production developed featuring the use of parchment (sheep or goatskin) and vellum (calfskin). Emperor Constantine (who began to promote Christianity from 313) ordered Bibles for his foundations, for prestigious churches needed prestigious books – the chosen vehicle for Christian Scripture, as the scroll was for the Judaic Torah. Codex Sinaiticus (BL Add. MS 43725), the earliest extant full Bible, probably made in fourth-century Caesarea, features a four-column page layout resembling a section of unfurled scroll, indicating technological adaptation, but this soon gave way to a one- or two-column page (de Hamel 2001; Brown 2006b).

From the fifth century, Scripture began to be illustrated (such as the Byzantine Vienna Genesis, Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. Theol. Gr. 31, and the Syriac Rabbula Gospels, Florence, Bibl. Medicea-Laur., MS Plut. I.56; Weitzmann 1977; de Hamel 1986; Nordenfalk 1988; Brown 2006b) and penned in gold and silver on purple pages, opulent materials imparting symbolic stature to tomes such as the sixth-century Italian Codex Brixianus (Brescia, Bibl. Civica Queriniana) and the Canon Tables painted on gold-stained vellum in Constantinople around 600 (BL Add. MSS 5111–12). Pictures, not favored by classical bibliophiles, also appeared in old favorites such as the Italian fifth-century illustrated copies of works by Virgil, Terence, and Homer (Weitzmann 1977; Wright 1993).

In the sixth century, the flexible quill
(penna)
replaced the reed pen
(calamus),
completing the technological revolution. The codex has remained the primary means of publication ever since. The scroll endured for storing cumulative data, such as financial records, and display contexts, such as genealogical and heraldic rolls and Italian eleventh-century Exultet Rolls, which were unfurled over the lectern during the dedication of the Paschal Candle (their images upside down, so that they could be “read” by the congregation). The text no longer ran horizontally along the roll, but vertically, like the scrolling computer screen.

The fifth and sixth centuries witnessed the emergence of successor states and the evolution of the Byzantine empire from the old eastern Roman empire. Urbanized classical civilization gave way to new networks of power bases and intellectual centers. Many towns became bishoprics and were joined by rural manors, royal citadels, and monasteries. Monastic rules proliferated, most including study and scribal work, but the growing popularity of the Benedictine rule from the ninth century increasingly fostered organized copying within the scriptorium (writing office).

The Roman system of scripts had consisted of capitals, uncials, half-uncials, cursive half-uncials/quarter-uncials, and cursive minuscules. “Upper case” letters occupying the space between two lines, such as “D” and “Q,” are considered “majuscule,” and “lower case” letters with ascending and descending strokes, such as “d” and q,” “minuscule.” These, and other paleographical and codicological practices, were adapted or replaced by a plethora of local variations favored by individual monastic scriptoria or monastic federations, and by the chanceries established by the papacy, the Byzantine Exarch of Ravenna, and the Merovingian dynasty of Gaul (Brown 1990: 32–47).

Book production continued in the Middle East and North Africa, with distinctive codicological practices and styles of script and illumination developing in Caesarea, Armenia, Georgia, Syria, Coptic Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia (Badawry 1978; Nersessian 2001; Brown 2006b). The bibliographical traditions of their churches, and of Hebrew scribes, who eschewed figural representation in their Scriptures, continued despite the Islamic conquest of the “fertile crescent” of the eastern and southern Mediterranean from the seventh century onward (Avrin 1991; Déroche and Richard 1997). Islamic book production did not really get underway until the ninth century, avoiding “idolatrous” figural imagery and evolving sacred calligraphy to glorify the Word. Scholars such as Avicenna (d. 1037) and Averroës (d. 1198) did much to preserve and extend classical learning, including the works of Aristotle which were lost to the early medieval West and reintroduced through contact with Islam during the Crusades.

In the West, public literacy contracted; book production was no longer undertaken by secular scribes and publishers but was perpetuated by the Church. The pagan Celts and Germans had proto-writing systems of their own, ogam and runes, inspired by Roman writing, but used them only for commemorative or talismanic purposes, preferring to cultivate the memory and oral literacy (Brown 1998). Their conversion to full literacy accompanied their conversion to Christianity. As we shall see, faced with the challenges of learning Latin as a foreign language, and how to write, they made major contributions to book production. Their enthusiastic recognition of its potential, along with that of their eastern counterparts, gave the book much of its distinctive appearance and apparatus – the codex was here to stay.

Visigothic Spain fostered early Christian scholarship through the writings of scholars such as Isidore of Seville (whose works included encyclopedic classification of subjects such as natural history, building on Pliny’s work), and poetry could help promote resistance to invasion: Orosius’
History Against the Pagans
and Prudentius’
Psychomachia
(an allegorical battle between the virtues and vices). Visigothic scribes developed a distinctive minuscule script, which survived into the twelfth century, signaling independence from Carolingian authority and the perpetuation of Christian identity under Islamic rule (Brown 1990: 32–32, 46–46; Walker 1998). In the 780s, Beams of Liebana composed his influential commentary upon the Apocalypse, and the raw energy and Picasso-esque images in its tenth- to twelfth-century copies made in scriptoria such as San Salvador de Tavara and Silos, speak eloquently of Mozarabic culture.

In Italy, power passed to the Byzantine province of Ravenna, the papacy in Rome, the Ostrogoths and the Lombardic kingdoms of northern Italy and Benevento. The romanophile Ostrogothic kingdom did not survive, weakened by its espousal of the Arian heresy, but its disaffected Roman officials composed influential works: Boethius’
Consolation of Philosophy,
written in a prison cell, and the exegesis and
Institutiones
of Cassiodorus, who retired to found the monastery of Vivarium, devoted to studying and copying Scripture. Cassiodorus’ injunctions to scribes proved influential, including “the scribe preaches with the pen” and “unleashes tongues with the fingers” and “each word written is a wound on Satan’s body,” asserting that the pen is mightier than the sword (Brown 2003). Such works span the transition from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages. The Lombards fostered their own Beneventan minuscule, which survived until 1300 and beyond (Brown 1990: 32–3, 116–19), along with a Germanic love of animal ornament, whilst the eighth-century Codex Beneventanus, a splendid Gospel-book, its canon tables set within classical marble columns, is a tribute to the more classicizing book production.

In Rome, arts and learning were given a boost under Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604). This great missionary, intent upon reviving Rome’s western empire in Christian guise, was a gifted theologian whose letters, exegesis, and
Cura pastoralis
exerted a lasting impact. Books produced in his Rome displayed elegant uncial script, with initials featuring Christian symbols such as crosses and fish, and sometimes illustrations: portraits of the evangelists as classical authors and registers of biblical scenes, such as those preserved in the St. Augustine Gospels, traditionally thought to have accompanied Augustine on his mission to Anglo-Saxon England in 597 and still used at the installation of his successors as Archbishop of Canterbury (Ganz 2002).

Another force was Ireland, which received Christianity during the fifth century. Over the next three hundred years, Irish scribes significantly developed the book arts (although the earliest extant books date from c.600). They introduced word separation and systematic punctuation to clarify legibility – inspired by the injunctions of Isidore of Seville and Bede to engage in silent reading to facilitate meditation and comprehension, in addition to the classical emphasis upon oratorical reading out loud (Parkes 1992). They also began enlarging and decorating initials to mark text divisions and developed half-uncial script for Scripture and calligraphic minuscule for less formal purposes.

The Anglo-Saxons, whom the Irish helped to convert via monasteries such as lona and Lindisfarne, further developed the range of scripts under renewed influence from Rome via centers such as Canterbury and Wearmouth/Jarrow, adding capitals and uncials, perfecting half-uncials and evolving several grades of minuscule. Within this system of scripts, termed “Insular” (i.e. of the islands of Britain and Ireland, c.550–850), form was suited to function: it was generally inappropriate to use the same script for a Gospel-book as for a letter (Brown 1990, 2007b; Bately et al. 1993). The role of the scribe was varied: Bede described himself as simultaneously “author, notary and scribe” as a manifestation of his monastic humility, and St. Columba and others achieved public acclaim as saintly hero-scribes (Brown 2003). For copying the Gospels was seen as the highest scribal calling, in accordance with the teachings of Cassiodorus, Cummian, and others, in which the scribe became an evangelist by contributing to the process of transmission and, by study and meditation upon the text
(ruminatio
and
meditatio),
became a living ark of Scripture and might glimpse the divine
(revelatio).
The Lindisfarne Gospels, one of the most elaborate books of its age, was accordingly the work of a single gifted artist-scribe (probably Eadfrith, bishop of Lindisfarne, 698–721), his work conducted not in the eremitic solitude of the eastern desert fathers, but in the context of an active communal monastic life (Brown 2003). Classical and medieval authors rarely penned their own works, but some of these monastic author–scribes were exceptions. Patterns of book production varied, however. The Book of Kells, probably made on Iona c.800, was the work of a team of at least eight (Alexander 1978).

The power of writing was reinforced by the iconic nature of the book in a religious context. Secular rulers were quick to employ it, enlisting the support of the Church in penning law codes, charters, and genealogies to legitimize their rule (Kelly 1990; Webster and Brown 1997). The earliest English seventh-century documents are written not in the cursive scripts of the late Roman bureaucracy, as elsewhere, but in uncials used for Scripture. In the early ninth century, Archbishop Wulfred of Canterbury could assert in court that his impressively penned charter contained the written proof of the matter, establishing the primacy of written evidence at law over age-old oral witness (Brown 2002). Forgeries soon flourished.

Fascination with the remnants of antiquity led monastic scribes to preserve what they could of classical learning, imported to northern Europe from Italy, Spain, Asia Minor, and North Africa, copying works by Pliny, Dioscorides, and the Grammarians, as well as writings by Christian poets and the Church Fathers (Bately et al. 1993). Such learning combined with their own imaginative cultures to produce new works of poetry, prayer, exegesis, science, and history (such as the great Irish epic the
Táin Bó Cuailgne,
the poetry and correspondence of Columbanus, and the Anglo-Saxon
Dream of the Rood,
Aldhelm’s
Riddles
and Bede’s
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum).
There was no inherent resistance to the learning of pagan antiquity on the part of such Christian authors (any constraints being due more to lack of availability) and there was little segregation between the sacred and the secular. Bede (d. 735), one of the leading post-Roman scholars, did not write biblical studies, history, or scientific works (such as his “On the Nature of Time”) per se, but was engaged in a more integrated exploration of the divine plan, addressing the why as well as the how.

Copying past works led Insular scholars to apply the lessons learned to their own literary cultures, making Old Irish and Old English amongst the earliest written Western vernaculars. One of St. Augustine’s first tasks was to write down the law code of King Ethelberht of Kent – inventing written Old English in the process by adding Germanic runic symbols to the Latin alphabet. On his deathbed, Bede was translating St. John’s Gospel into English (Brown 2003), free of the persecution later directed at Wycliffe and Tyndale – everything possible was employed to share the Good News (Old English “Godspell”).

The Middle Eastern churches also employed their own languages (Armenian, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopie, Georgian), even for Scripture, but in the West the primacy of the “sacred languages” – Hebrew, Greek, and Latin (in effect, the Roman vernacular) – generally prevailed, although knowledge of Hebrew was rare amongst scholars and Greek patchy (Herren 1988; Brown 2005, 2006b). The reluctance of the East and West Franks and of Italy to promote the vernacular has been ascribed to the gradual evolution of the Romance languages from late Roman latinity and to Carolingian promotion of Latin, and Caroline minuscule, as a means of cultural cohesion and control throughout the territories forged into the Carolingian empire (McKitterick 1989, 1990). In this way, German identity could not be unduly distinguished from that of Gaul, with its marked Roman legacy and mixed population (Brown 2005).