The Arabic Print Revolution

Ami Ayalon is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University. His scholarly interest focuses on the cultural and political history of Arabic-speaking societies in modern times, with a recent accent on the entry of printing into the Middle East and its wider implications. Ayalon has published numerous studies on these subjects, including Language and Change in the Arab Middle East (1987), The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (1995) and Reading Palestine: Printing and Literacy, 1900-1948 (2004).

• Preface; Introduction: the problem of genesis; 1. The formative phase of Arab printing - a historical overview; 2. Printers and publishers; 3. Books, journals, cartes de visite; 4. Diffusion channels; 5. Advancing circulation; 6. Reading and readers; 7. Reading in public; Conclusion; Bibliography.

'Significantly expanding his well-established studies on the history of printing, journalism, and literacy in the Arab world, Ami Ayalon's new book offers an incisive analysis of what amounted to an Arab printing and reading revolution. A transition which, in comparison to Europe, may have come late to the region but was all the more intensive and influential from the nineteenth century onwards. Systematically investigating the gradual diffusion and circulation of print, its initiators, and evolving reading habits, this is an impressively documented, tightly argued, and elegantly written account of the entire process, which will not only enlighten social, cultural, and intellectual historians of the Middle East, but anybody desiring to comprehend the evolvement of Arab society, or comparable developments elsewhere.' Uri M. Kupferschmidt, University of Haifa