Rediscovering the Islamic Classics

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Historians trace the roots of Islamic scholarship to late antiquity, with Muslim scholars actively copying commentaries and legal opinions as early as 750 CE/AD. The adoption of movable type in the Middle East came late, in the early nineteenth century, and scholars initially hesitated to embrace this new technology. It wasn't until the late nineteenth century that the first printed editions of classical religious works emerged. This shift to print transformed both popular and scholarly perceptions of the Islamic tradition, as certain religious texts gained prominence due to their availability in published form, while others remained obscure in manuscript repositories. The editors and publishers of these new print editions played a pivotal role in shaping the literary tradition, effectively determining what constituted the classical written 'canon' of Islamic thought by the early twentieth century. This small group of editors significantly influenced how Muslim intellectuals, the public, and various Islamist movements understood their intellectual heritage. Ahmed El Shamsy focuses on the vibrant Islamic literary culture of Cairo during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, highlighting the ambitious agendas of these editors, who were among the greatest minds in the Muslim world, and their interactions with European orientalists that contributed to the burgeoning Islamic print culture.