Ami Ayalon

Arab Booksellers and Bookshops in the Age of Printing, 1850–1914

The emergence of massive printing in the Arab Middle East in the nineteenth century entailed a multiple set of changes. As well as the production of written texts in unprecedented quantities and the rise of a big reading public, that historic shift also gave birth to a range of diffusion channels-from bookshops to public libraries and from newspaper agents to reading clubs-which carried the printed works to their audiences. This article examines a small section of this scene: the growth, spreading and changing characteristics of book dealerships and bookshops in the Arab Ottoman provinces during the formative half-century prior to World War I. Exploring this mechanism casts light on the nature and pace of printing assimilation in the region, projecting it as a rather dramatic makeover.

Language as a barrier to political reform in the Middle East

Political reform in the Middle East has been largely inspired by foreign models. Ideas such as liberalism, parliaments, and constitutions have been borrowed from Europe, superimposed on local foundations, and assimilated, with varying degrees of resemblance to the original prototypes. The foreign ideas were initially conveyed to the regions society through local idioms. But since local languages were by definition inadequately equipped for the task, concepts were loosely represented and conceived. The discussion of these ideas during the formative phase was marked by ambiguity, which in turn seems to have impeded their assimilation. Taking Arabic as an example the paper illustrates these difficulties by focusing on three political terms: majlis, nuwwāb, and shūrā - three old words applied to modern concepts. That they carried traditional connotations often resulted in equivocalness and loose communication of the new ideas, indirectly hampering reform itself. Typical of the nineteenth century, the phenomenon persisted in some sectors well into the second half of the twentieth century