Sacred Language and Cultural Decline: Were Arabs too Backward to Print Books?

Im Rahmen des Jahresthemas der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften tragen monatlich Fellows und Mitglieder des Forschungsprogramms Europa im Nahen Osten - Der Nahe Osten in Europa zu Aspekten der politischen, sozialen und kulturellen Verflechtungen zwischen Europa und dem Nahen Osten vor. Die Veranstaltungen finden in englischer oder in deutscher Sprache statt.

Dr. Dana Sajdi

(Zentrum Moderner Orient, z.Zt. Fellow des Forschungsprogramms Europa im Nahen Osten - Der Nahe Osten in Europa)

Sacred Language and Cultural Decline: Were Arabs too Backward to Print Books?

In addressing print culture and book history in the Arab world, the usual question asked is related to the delay of the introduction of printing technologies in the region. Inevitably, the answer is attributed to the special location of Arabic as the sacred language of the Quran. Implied in the answer is a cultural stagnation associated to peculiar religious sensibilities. This talk seeks not only to debunk the answer, but also to explode the original question.  It argues against the technological determinism that has characterized the scholarship on the subject and suggests new approaches and questions in treating the dissemination of knowledge in Arabo-Islamic history.

Dr. Dana Sajdi was educated in Nablus, Amman, Cairo, and New York and received her PhD from Columbia University with a dissertation on "Peripheral Visions: The Worlds and Worldviews of Commoner Chronicles in the 18th Century Ottoman Levant." She was Assistant Professor of Middle East History at Concordia University, Montreal and a fellow of the Working Group Modernity and Islam (2005/6).  Dana Sajdi is currently working at the Zentrum Moderner Orient on "Civic Identity and Narrations of the City of Damascus from the 11th to the 20th Centuries."