Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clivedurdle · 05-10-2009, 09:25 AM

Quote:

Printing and Interest Restrictions in Islam & Christianity: An Economic Theory of Inhibitive Law Persistence

Jared Rubin
California State University, Fullerton

Islamic Law and Law of the Muslim World Paper No. 08-10

Abstract:
Until recently, many scholars attributed the divergence in Middle Eastern and Western European economic development to the "conservative nature" of Islam. This paper departs from such scholarship, suggesting that institutions supporting economically inhibitive laws are more likely to be self-enforcing in the Muslim world - providing an appearance of conservatism. A theoretical model inspired and substantiated by the history of interest and printing restrictions in Islam and Christianity suggests that this outcome emanates from the greater degree to which Islamic political authorities derive legitimacy from the dictates of religious authorities.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...act_id=1086446

Roger's blog on printing and Islam got me researching.

Weber used similar arguments about the varieties of xianities - Northern Europe and North America compared with Southern Europe and South America for example.

A ban on printing until the nineteenth century would have had horrendous effects on the well being of a society. The issue of the digital divide is similar, and it begins to give a background to why Muslim literacy rates - especially of women - are so poor.

Clivedurdle · 05-10-2009, 09:36 AM

This Wiki article does not mention Islam, although Venice that had major links with the Islamic world, had a huge number of printers very early.

A proper study of this should include who produced books where, in what languages, and where were they exported to. This is high tech!

Quote:

Compared to woodblock printing, movable type page-setting was quicker and more durable. The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts. The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type, and printing presses rapidly spread across Europe, leading up to the Renaissance, and later all around the world. Today, practically all movable type printing ultimately derives from Gutenberg's movable type printing, which is often regarded as the most important invention of the second millennium.[10]
Gutenberg is also credited with the introduction of an oil-based ink which was more durable than previously used water-based inks. Having worked as a professional goldsmith, Gutenberg made skillful use of the knowledge of metals he had learned as a craftsman. Gutenberg was also the first to make his type from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony, known as type metal, printer's lead, or printer's metal, which was critical for producing durable type that produced high-quality printed books, and proved to be more suitable for printing than the clay, wooden or bronze types used in East Asia. To create these lead types, Gutenberg used what some considered his most ingenious invention, a special matrix wherewith the moulding of new movable types with an unprecedented precision at short notice became feasible. Within a year of printing the Gutenberg Bible, Gutenberg also published the first coloured prints.
The invention of the printing press revolutionized communication and book production leading to the spread of knowledge. Rapidly, printing spread from Germany by emigrating German printers, but also by foreign apprentices returning home.

A printing press was built in Venice in 1469, and by 1500 the city had 417 printers.

In 1470 Johann Heynlin set up a printing press in Paris. In 1473 Kasper Straube published the Almanach cracoviense ad annum 1474 in Cracow. Dirk Martens set up a printing press in Aalst (Flanders) in 1473. He printed a book about the two lovers of Enea Piccolomini who became pope Pius II.In 1476 a printing press was set up in England by William Caxton. Belarusian Francysk Skaryna printed the first book in Slavic language on August 6, 1517. The Italian Juan Pablos set up an imported press in Mexico City in 1539. The first printing press in Southeast Asia was set up in the Philippines by the Spanish in 1593. Stephen Day was the first to build a printing press in North America at Massachusetts Bay in 1638, and helped establish the Cambridge Press.
The Gutenberg press was much more efficient than manual copying and still was largely unchanged in the eras of John Baskerville and Giambattista Bodoni, over 300 years later.[11] By 1800, Lord Stanhope had constructed a press completely from cast iron, reducing the force required by 90% while doubling the size of the printed area.[11] While Stanhope's "mechanical theory" had improved the efficiency of the press, it still was only capable of 250 sheets per hour.[11] German printer Friedrich Koenig would be the first to design a non-manpowered machine—using steam.[11] Having moved to London in 1804, Koenig soon met Thomas Bensley and secured financial support for his project in 1807.[11] Patented in 1810, Koenig had designed a steam press "much like a hand press connected to a steam engine."[11] The first production trial of this model occurred in April 1811.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_printing

Clivedurdle · 05-10-2009, 09:40 AM

Quote:

By 1500, the cut-off point for incunabula, 236 towns in Europe had presses, and it is estimated that twenty million books had been printed for a European population of perhaps seventy million.[6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_...printing_press

Quote:

Due to religious qualms, Sultan Bayezid II and successors prohibited printing in Arabic script in the Ottoman empire from 1483 on penalty of death, but printing in other scripts was done by Jews as well as the Greek and Armenian communities (1515 Saloniki, 1554 Bursa (Adrianople), 1552 Belgrade, 1658 Smyrna). In 1727, Sultan Achmed III gave his permission for the establishment of the first legal print house for printing Arabic script.

Solo · 05-10-2009, 11:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

This Wiki article does not mention Islam, although Venice that had major links with the Islamic world, had a huge number of printers very early.

A proper study of this should include who produced books where, in what languages, and where were they exported to. This is high tech!

Bernard Lewis (The Middle East) notes that Italy (probably Venice most of all) was exporting printed Arabic material to the Middle East from early on in the 16th century. These were generally restricted to the Christian Arabic texts, bibles, prayer books, etc. But there were also some classical Arabic texts, such as Avicenna and the growing titles of the Orientalists which found their way into private collections in the Middle East. Lewis says that the ban on Arabic/Turkish printing in the Ottoman possessions had something to do with powerful vested interests of local scribes and calligraphers.

Jiri

mountainman · 05-10-2009, 06:10 PM

Whatever data is sieved and analysed to be attached to Islam
in this thread of discussion has the immediate potential to be
applied in a direct analogous fashion to Interest, the Codex
and Christianity.

Prior to the "quantum leap of the printing press was the "quantum
leap" of the codex, or bound book, over the earlier use of the scroll.

The technology of the preservation of literature via the codex
became widespread and popular from the fourth century Roman
empire, and was used widely by those administrators of
Chrisendom to further their literature based dogma.

Roger Pearse · 05-11-2009, 08:53 AM

Thank you Clive for picking this one up. It is a very little known fact; and it does seem to be a fact. But I found intense difficulty in finding any proper references for all this. Anything that anyone can find will be useful.

Are the edicts of the Ottomans online?

Solo · 05-11-2009, 09:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Thank you Clive for picking this one up. It is a very little known fact; and it does seem to be a fact. But I found intense difficulty in finding any proper references for all this. Anything that anyone can find will be useful.

Are the edicts of the Ottomans online?

I doubt it, Roger. They were suposedly obscure, according to this paper.

Jiri

Roger Pearse · 05-12-2009, 12:51 AM

Thank you Jiri for this most interesting paper. I have written to the author asking for some more details.

The sources given for the ban in this paper are two:

Nicolas de Nicolay, The navigations, peregrinations and voyages, made into Turkie by Nicholas Nicholay Daulphinois, Lord of Arfeuile. conteining sundry singularities which the author hath there seene and observed;devided into foure books, with threescore figures, naturally set forth as well of men as women, according to the diversitie of nations., T. Washington trans. (London, 1585). p.130.

Quote:

...Maranes [Marranos] of late banished and driven out of Spaine & Portugale, who to the great detriment and damage of the Christianitie, have taught the Turkes diverse inventions, craftes and engines of warre, as to make artillerie, harquebuses, gunnepouder, shot, and other munitions: they have also there set up printing, not before seene in those countries, by the which in faire characters they put in light divers bookes in divers languages, as Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and the Hebrewe toungue, being to them natural, but are not permitted to print the Turkie or Arabian tongue.’

The other is Busbecq in 1560. This turns out to be The Life and Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq By Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq, tr. Charles Thornton Forster, Francis Henry Blackburne Daniell. Published by C. K. Paul, 1881. Volume 1, which is online here, p. 255:

Quote:

No nation in the world has shown greater readiness than the Turks to avail themselves of the useful inventions of foreigners, as is proved by their employment of cannons and mortars, and many other things invented by Christians. They cannot, however, be induced as yet to use printing, or to establish public clocks, because they think that the Scriptures, that is, their sacred books – would no longer be scriptures if they were printed, and that, if public clocks were introduced, the authority of their muezzins and their ancient rites would be thereby impaired.

John-Paul Ghobrial suggests that the first reference refers not to a general ban on printing, but to restrictions on dhimmis (=you and me) in an Islamic state doing so in the language of the ruling Moslems. But of course that may or may not be so.

Clivedurdle · 05-12-2009, 03:00 PM

The linked paper noted that printed arabic looked like scribble - I wonder if printing was not up to transcribing arabic, and the problem was simply that.

It discusses the evolution of vernacular languages.

Fascinating the possible effects of how we write stuff.

Clivedurdle · 05-15-2009, 12:02 PM

Bump

Come on then:

A hypothesis to test

The religious tendencies of cultures are dependent on their writing technologies and how their spoken languages are translated into written form.

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05-10-2009, 06:10 PM	#5
mountainman Contributor Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Falls Creek, Oz. Posts: 11,192	Whatever data is sieved and analysed to be attached to Islam in this thread of discussion has the immediate potential to be applied in a direct analogous fashion to Interest, the Codex and Christianity. Prior to the "quantum leap of the printing press was the "quantum leap" of the codex, or bound book, over the earlier use of the scroll. The technology of the preservation of literature via the codex became widespread and popular from the fourth century Roman empire, and was used widely by those administrators of Chrisendom to further their literature based dogma.

05-11-2009, 08:53 AM	#6
Roger Pearse Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: N/A Posts: 4,370	Thank you Clive for picking this one up. It is a very little known fact; and it does seem to be a fact. But I found intense difficulty in finding any proper references for all this. Anything that anyone can find will be useful. Are the edicts of the Ottomans online?

05-12-2009, 03:00 PM	#9
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	The linked paper noted that printed arabic looked like scribble - I wonder if printing was not up to transcribing arabic, and the problem was simply that. It discusses the evolution of vernacular languages. Fascinating the possible effects of how we write stuff.

05-15-2009, 12:02 PM	#10
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	Bump Come on then: A hypothesis to test The religious tendencies of cultures are dependent on their writing technologies and how their spoken languages are translated into written form.

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