As @John7755 يوحنا Say a lot of theological debate at the time and how reliable would be, depend a lot of things, if they decided they can got forward and is good enough might work.
Printing press invented by Muslims
- Thread starter Bebop
- Start date
The susceptibility of the printing press tl errors as well as the lack of beauty of the printed script seem like well-grounded reasons.
But let's say that a printing press emerges in a place with looser religious tendencies. Say, it emerges in Al-Andalus, or the later Delhi Sultanate. Could it then be adopted for use in printing the Quran?
My understanding of Islamic theology is pretty superficial, but I have a pretty good idea of the practical results of it, and I agree with @John7755 يوحنا adopting moving types to print the Quran is pretty unlikely, beside any theological aspect, there's also the hostility based on purely on practical term, with the scribes being very hostile to it. In the West on the other hand the main use of books was also the main producer before the Printing Press (the Church), which meant that you removed much of the "Luddite" hostility toward labour saving devices. It's also important to get that the view of how the Bible and Quran was seen, was pretty radical different. There was a fundamental understanding of the Bible as God's word written by fallible human, while the Islamic view of the Quran was and is .... well different.
But let's say that the Scribes are ignored, and we see woodblocks are adopted. Yes it's still a labour saving device, but every plate takes far longer to make and moving types offered that relative small print was viable, woodblocks means that only large print are economic viable. So let's say it's adopted, the result will be far more Qurans being produced, but few other texts. On the other hand, when it's introduced to Europe, the Europeans will almost certainly soon develop the moving type, which fit well with the European alphabets.
But let's say that the Scribes are ignored, and we see woodblocks are adopted. Yes it's still a labour saving device, but every plate takes far longer to make and moving types offered that relative small print was viable, woodblocks means that only large print are economic viable. So let's say it's adopted, the result will be far more Qurans being produced, but few other texts. On the other hand, when it's introduced to Europe, the Europeans will almost certainly soon develop the moving type, which fit well with the European alphabets.
Flocculencio
Donor
In that specific scenario, sure, but once the printing press is loose in 11th C Mesopotamia, it's surely going to get into the hands of other sects. Who's to say that non-Arabising power factions might not be more successful if they choose to adopt the press and the Arabisers don't. In fact if an analogue to the Mongol invasion shows up on schedule 100 years later the societal disruption might well be more amenable to Islamic groups less beholden to central authority to spring up in the ashes, supported by the texts they can produce.
The butterflies, of course would be huge but I can't agree to the argument that 11th C Islamic culture is somehow less amenable to taking advantage of printing than 15th c Europe.
You're arguing against the efficacy of something that was done on a routine basis for centuries. There are thousands of woodblock print publications on calligraphy in China and Japan with only hundreds of copies. Printing something requring as many copies as the Quran easily defray cost of producing the wood negatives. There was neither a technological nor economic barrier for printing anything in Arabic.
Even if there was a religious prohibition against printing holy works, surely there could be no objection to printing books of science and poetry. Think of all the works that were lost from the Mongol destruction of Baghdad that could have been preserved had they been printed widely.
Vuru
Banned
I think that would be awkward since arab words are written on a single line, so all letters have 3 positions: "start", "mid" and "end", which makes it cumbersome
Maybe they slowly get separated and become more alphabet like?
Not to mention, is there a way with these blocks to put diacritics, as in vowels? Chinese and Japanese, may be complex, but it is a different kind of complexity to Arabic.
excatly that is why litography is vital, arab have a lot of accents but just a wait to read, heck arab is far diffucult that chinese-japanese.
Vuru
Banned
Tbh, arabic is better than Chinese, but to me everything is weird since for some reason we're the only ones to actually force a orthography that is almost completely phonetic, so you never doubt how things are written, ever
Which language is yours buddy? Yeah for some people is different but for me arab have been far difficult to learn that kanjis-chinese ideograhs....
In our timeline the first people to print the Qur'an were the Venetians in 1537. They apparently were able to overcome the technical difficulties of printing in Arabic but otherwise produced an awful edition that to could never have been sold to Muslims as intended (maybe because they probably couldn't actually speak Arabic). I would be interested to know what solutions they found to the problems of printing in Arabic and how easily easy these were.
It could be like an earlier Nastaliq, or if not that, a wholly different "printed script" style.
Vuru
Banned
Now that could work
I was thinking for a printed style, something akin to Kufic or Garshuni but letters detached, and for "italics" something like Nastaliq
You could write Arabic with the Hebrew abjad. That would be easy to type frankly.
It depends. It however could be more recognizable, since Arab Characters separated would look odd. Whereas a modified Hebrew abjad would be separated by convention.
There may be resistance, but then again, most people cannot read anyway.
This wasn't actually true by the time the printing press was invented. Book "production lines" run by stationers guilds and other private organisations were actually doing most of the writing of books on a for profit basis. The Churches role was still fairly considerable but no longer accounted for a majority of printing
From what i understand very early pre-Islamic Arabic separated the letters. Would have people been aware of this and was the Quran ever written in this form? This might be a tradition they can use or is it utterly forgotten by this stage?