UCL Rare-Books Club 2021: the emergence of Arabic printing in Europe - Samantha Brown

Samantha Brown, with contributions from Professor Charles Burnett and Dr Jan Loop and chaired by Dr Tabitha Tuckett, traces the emergence and evolution of Arabic printing in Early Modern Europe through books held in UCL’s Special Collections. Event: 31 August 2021.

0:00 introduction
5:09 Samantha Brown (PhD student, UCL): the emergence of Arabic printing in Europe
30:09 Professor Charles Burnett (Warburg Institute, University Of London)
35:51 Professor Jan Loop (University Of Copenhagen)
40:57 Vanessa Freedman (UCL Library Services)
45:17 Professor Charles Burnett
48:35 Professor Jan Loop
51:58 Alexandra Plane (PhD student, University Of Newcastle and National Library Of Scotland)
1:01:18 Professor Charles Burnett

‘What is fit to be done or may be’: The Emergence of Arabic Printing in Europe.'I receiud a part of your excellent notes upon that arabique dialogue, & haue had some speech with the printer concerning them. His answere is yet somewhat uncertain. What is fit to be done or may be… shalbe hereafter... performed' (John Selden to Thomas Greaves, March 1635/6)

The first attempt to print the Arabic script in Europe came just 30 years after Gutenburg’s Bible, but the quality and evolution of Arabic print technology varied across the continent throughout the Early Modern period. In this UCL Rare-Books Club event, Sam Brown uses items held in UCL’s Special Collections to illustrate over 130 years of Arabic printing in Europe, from crude fifteenth-century woodcuts and Rome’s celebrated Medici Oriental Press of the late sixteenth century, to England’s own slow progress, which culminated in the production of the first English book featuring moveable Arabic type in 1635. As well as exploring the range of results achieved by a variety of European presses, Sam will also consider what drove the increasing desire for Arabic print, and what marks of ownership and use can indicate about who was reading these books and why.

Samantha Brown is in the first year of a part-time PhD at UCL’s Centre for Editing Lives and Letters. Her research focuses on material signs of ownership and use in Arabic books and manuscripts, and aims to shed light on the transmission of Arabic linguistic knowledge in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England.

UCL Rare-Books Club was founded in 2017 by Tabitha Tuckett with the aim of promoting UCL’s Special Collections and facilitating conversations between library staff and student and professional researchers working on the collections.

Speaker:
Samantha Brown (UCL PhD student)
Chair:
Dr. Tabitha Tuckett (UCL Rare-Books And Academic Liaison Librarian)
Collections:
Strong Room Collections - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/special...
Ogden Collection - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/special...
Euclid Collection - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/special...
Digital images of Euclid Collection - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/digital...