Seminario GEAR-DEFIHIS: "From manuscript to print: The creation of the classical Islamic canon"

12:00 hrs. Sala Caro Baroja 1D

 

Por Ahmed EL-SHAMSY (University of Chicago)

 

The transition from a manuscript culture to a culture of printed Iiterature in Islamic scholarship began barely a century ago, and its significance remains untheorized. The advent of the printing press did not merely replace one medium of recording with another. Rather, the process of selection, edition, and publication of medieval lslamic texts that took place in the early twentieth century effectively created a new canon of classics. This process was guided by the agendas of the scholars who carried out the work, and their choices markedly shaped the "Islamic tradition" that emerged from the presses. Far from offering a neutral representation of classical lslamic scholarship, therefore, the published Iiterature that we have today is underpinned by scholarly debates and polemical agendas that need to be identified and recognized. A study of the editors and their role in the creation of the classical canon offers a window into twentieth-century debates about what the Islamic tradition is and what it should be, as well as into struggles regarding the external influence of Orientalist scholarship in defining the tradition.

 

Organiza: Grupo de Estudios Árabes GEAR-DEFIHIS (ILC-CCHS)