Arabs Printing: Race in 19th-Century Cairene Book Culture

Cairene textual production changed during the nineteenth century, with the incorporation of printing into the local manuscript economy. My paper examines how the meanings ascribed to Cairene textual production evolved with these changes. I do so with a particular view towards depictions of race and cultural stereotypes, as people increasingly associated printing with being civilized. In particular, I distinguish between contemporary Ottoman and European projections of Cairo’s writing industries. My sources include formal and ephemeral manuscripts and printings, and depictions of textual production through iconography and contemporary descriptions.