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THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRIVATE PRINTING IN CAIRO AS TOLD FROM A COMMISSIONING DEAL TURNED SOUR, 1871

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Kathryn A. Schwartz
Kathryn A. Schwartz*
Affiliation:
Kathryn A. Schwartz is the Postdoctoral Fellow for the Digital Library of the Eastern Mediterranean, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the political economy of Cairo's emerging Arabic private printing industry during the third quarter of the 19th century. I use the constituent texts of the industry to demonstrate that it developed upon the speculative model of commissioning, whereby individuals paid printers to produce particular works of their choosing. Commissioning indicates that Egyptian private printing grew from local traditions for producing handwritten texts. Nevertheless, print commissioning differed from manuscript commissioning by requiring individuals to assume great financial risk. I explore the nature and implications of this divergence through a treatise published in 1871 by Musa Kastali, a particularly prolific printer who helped to professionalize Cairene printing. Musa's treatise details his legal battle with a famous Azhari commissioner, and is unique for describing a printer's business practices. It demonstrates the importance of situating printings within their socioeconomic contexts in addition to their intellectual ones, a task which cannot be done without an appreciation for the functioning of the printing industry at a local level.

Keywords

book historymaterial culturepolitical economyprint culturesocial history
Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , February 2017 , pp. 25 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

NOTES

Author's note: This article benefited from the generosity of many of my mentors, colleagues, and friends. For written feedback, I am grateful to Khaled Fahmy, Jeffrey Friedman, Roger Owen, and the three IJMES reviewers. For deliberating over my first draft, I am grateful to the participants of the Middle East Beyond Borders Workshop at Harvard University and in particular to: Ceyhun Arslan, Chloe Bordewich, Farah El-Sharif, Mary Elston, Aslıhan Gürbüzel, Youssef Ben Ismail, Salmaan Mirza, Arafat Razzaque, Ari Schriber, and Malika Zeghal (to whom I am also grateful for encouraging me to write this piece). For alerting me to specific sources and terms that proved fundamental to this article, I am grateful to: Elise Burton, Omar Cheta, Ahmed El Shamsy, and Adam Mestyan. And for bringing this article to press, I am grateful to the editor and managing editor of IJMES, Akram Khater and Jeffrey Culang. I alone am responsible for all errors.

1 Hadhahi Risalatun Harraraha al-Afukatawa Katiski ʿan al-Daʿwa allati bayna al-Kavalir Musa Kastali wa-l-Shaykh Hasan al-ʿIdwi. Wa-Burhinat fiha ʿan Butlan Khulasitayn li-ma Khamirhuma min ʿAyb al-Kharuj ʿan al-Hudud wa-ʿAdm al-Insaf wa-ʿan Shart al-Wilaya al-Ikhtiyariyya wa-ʿan Shurut al-Raksafil wa-l-Tawassut al-Siyasi (n.p.: al-Matbaʿa al-Kastaliyya, 1871), 53.

2 Dates of birth and death are listed when known. Musa died sometime before June 1899, when his heirs referenced his estate in: Bollettino di legislazione e giurisprudenza Egiziana fondato dagli avvocati Th. Lebsohn, A. de Rensis, D. Palagi, A. Schiarabati con la collaborazione di diversi avvocati del foro Egiziano; anno undicesimo (Alexandria: V. Penasson, 1899), 272.

3 Elective legal power refers to the power of the litigant to allow a court or judge to assume legal powers that are not granted to them by law. Hadhahi Risalatun, 31–33. In this case, it refers to the majlis al-tujjār trying a European on a countersuit put forward by an Egyptian without first gaining the European's permission.

4 Requête civile is the opportunity to revise judgments in cases of final resort in the event of statutory procedural errors or misconduct by a party. Peter Herzog with the collaboration of Weser, Martha, Civil Procedure in France (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1967), 467–87Google Scholar.

5 Hadhahi Risalatun, title page.

6 Kathryn A. Schwartz, “Meaningful Mediums: A Material and Intellectual History of Manuscript and Print Production in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Cairo” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2015), chap. 5.

7 See, for example, Robinson, Francis, “Technology and Religious Change: Islam and the Impact of Print,” Modern Asian Studies 27 (1993): 229–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schulze, Reinhard, “The Birth of Tradition and Modernity in 18th and 19th Century Islamic Culture—The Case of Printing,” in “The Introduction of the Printing Press in the Middle East,” Culture & History 16 (1997): 29–72 Google Scholar; and Roper, Geoffrey, “The Muslim World,” in The Book: A Global History, eds. Suarez, Michael and Woudhuysen, H. R. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 524–52Google Scholar. For further examples and a history of the views that are taken issue with, refer to Kathryn A. Schwartz, “Did Ottoman Sultans Ban Print?,” Book History (forthcoming).

8 See, for example, “Tarikh al-Tibaʿa,” al-Hilal (Cairo: Matbaʿat al-Hilal, September 1897–August 1898), 6:249–54; Radwan, Abu al-Futuh, Tarikh Matbaʿat Bulaq wa-Lamha fi Tarikh al-Tibaʿa fi Buldan al-Sharq al-Awsat (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Amiriyya, 1953)Google Scholar; and ʿAzab, Khalid and Mansur, Ahmad, al-Kitab al-ʿArabi al-Matbuʿ: Min al-Judhur ila Matbaʿat Bulaq (Cairo: al-Dar al-Misriyya al-Lubnaniyya, 2008)Google Scholar.

9 For examples of complementary works, refer to Barak, On, On Time: Technology and Temporality in Modern Egypt (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ghobrial, John-Paul, The Whispers of Cities: Information Flows in Istanbul, London, and Paris in the Age of William Trumbull (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chalcraft, John, The Striking Cabbies of Cairo and Other Stories: Crafts and Guilds in Egypt, 1863–1914 (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Fahmy, Ziad, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Hanna, Nelly, In Praise of Books: A Cultural History of Cairo's Middle Class, Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; and Stolz, Daniel, “Positioning the Watch Hand: ʿUlamaʾ and the Practice of Mechanical Timekeeping in Cairo, 1737–1874,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47 (2015): 489–510 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Records exist for some publisher-journalists starting from the late 19th century. See, for example: Ryad, Umar, “A Printed Muslim ‘Lighthouse’ in Cairo: Al-Manar’s Early Years, Religious Aspiration and Reception (1898–1903),” Arabica 56 (2009): 27–60 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Notably, commissioning was first applied to print by the government press at Bulaq in the 1830s. Schwartz, “Meaningful Mediums,” 206–26.

12 See, for example: Hourani, Albert, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Kedourie, Elie, Afghani and ʿAbduh; An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam (London: Cass, 1966)Google Scholar; and Sabat, Khalil, Tarikh al-Tibaʿa fi al-Sharq al-ʿArabi (Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1958)Google Scholar.

13 Rowland-Smith, Diana, “The Beginnings of Hebrew Printing in Egypt,” British Library Journal 15 (1989): 16–22 Google Scholar.

14 Dodwell, Henry, The Founder of Modern Egypt: A Study of Muhammad ʿAli (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 31 Google Scholar.

15 Scholars of Egyptian printing argued that Arabic private presses emerged in Cairo during the 1830s. Sabat, Tarikh al-Tibaʿa, 166; al-Tanahi, Mahmud Muhammad, al-Kitab al-Matbuʿ bi-Misr fi al-Qarn al-Tasiʿ ʿAshr: Tarikh wa-Tahlil (Cairo: Dar al-Hilal, 1996), 97 Google Scholar. But these conclusions derived from miscalculating dates of printing on the basis of the lifespan of the author of the text, and mistaking dates of printing for the dates of composition of the manuscripts from which texts were printed. Cheng-Hsiang Hsu, “The First Thirty Years of Arabic Printing in Egypt, 1238–1267 (1822–1851)” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 1985), 1:63, 65–66. The earliest dated private printing that I have consulted was produced in 1856. Khudari, Muhammad, Hashiya ʿala Sharh Ibn ʿAqil ʿala Alfiyyat Ibn Malik (Cairo: Matbaʿat al-Hajar al-Nayyira al-Latifa, 1856, HOLLIS number: 007140837, Widener Library, Harvard University), 722Google Scholar.

16 Schwartz, “Meaningful Mediums,” chaps. 3 and 5.

17 Ibid., 259–76.

18 For a discussion of lithography and typography in Cairo, see ibid., 244–92.

19 Ibid., 261–66.

20 See, for example, bin Hasan ʿAttar, Muhammad, Hashiya ʿala ʿUqud al-Maqulat (n.p.: 1874, Hartford Seminary Arabic MSS 0428, Beinecke Library, Yale University), f. 42 Google Scholar.

21 See, for example, Khudari, Hashiya ʿala Sharh Ibn ʿAqil, 722.

22 See, for example, ibid.; and Gacek, Adam, Arabic Lithographed Books in the Islamic Studies Library, McGill University (Montreal: McGill University Libraries, 1996), 42, book no. 54Google Scholar.

23 See, for example, bin Ahmad al-Shaʿrani, ʿAbd al-Wahhab, Kitab al-Minah al-Saniyya ʿala al-Wasiya al-Matbula (Cairo: s.n., 1859/60), 27–28 Google Scholar; bin Aybak al-Safadi, Khalil, Lawʿat al-Shaki wa-Damʿat al-Baki (Cairo: Matbaʿat al-Hajar al-Hamida, 1857), 181 Google Scholar; and al-Bajuri, Ibrahim bin Muhammad, Hashiyat Ibrahim al-Bajuri ʿala Mawlid Ahmad al-Dardir (Cairo: s.n., 1860), 72 Google Scholar.

24 See, for example, Heyworth-Dunne, J., “Printing and Translation under Muhammad ʿAli of Egypt: The Foundation of Modern Arabic,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 23 (July 1940), 325–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Khalid, Adeeb, “Printing, Publishing, and Reform in Tsarist Central Asia,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 26 (1994): 190 Google Scholar; and Green, Nile, Terrains of Exchange: Religious Economies of Global Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

25 See, for example, Auji, Hala, Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Leiden: Brill, 2016)Google Scholar; and Ibrahim, Vivian, The Copts of Egypt: Challenges of Modernisation and Identity (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2011), 23–24 Google Scholar.

26 See, for example, Hanna, In Praise of Books; and den Berg, Heleen Murre-van, Scribes and Scriptures: The Church of the East in the Eastern Ottoman Provinces (1500–1800) (Leuven: Peeters, 2015)Google Scholar.

27 al-Shirbini, Yusuf bin Muhammad, Tarh al-Madarra li-Hall al-Alaʾ wa-l-Durar (Cairo: Tabʿ Hajar, 1868/69)Google Scholar; al-Bajuri, Ibrahim bin Muhammad, Hashiyat al-Bajuri ʿala Banat Suʿad (Cairo: s.n., 1856); Qissat al-Qadi maʿa al-Harami, (n.p.: s.n., n.d., 894 F15, Special Collections, Leiden University, The Netherlands)Google Scholar.

28 ʿUthman, Nasir, “Taʾifat al-Sahafiyyin fi al-Qarn al-Sabiʿ ʿAshr,” in al-Tawaʾif al-Mihaniyya wa-l-Ijtimaʿiyya fi Misr fi al-ʿAsr al-ʿUthmani, ed. Ibrahim, Nasir (Cairo: Jamiʿat al-Qahira, 2003), 62 Google Scholar.

29 No documentary evidence suggests that a guild of copyists existed in Cairo. Indeed, early modern descriptions of Cairene guilds noticeably lack mention of a copyists’ guild. See, for example, Jalabi, Awliya, Siyahatnamat Misr, trans. ʿAli ʿAwni, Muhammad, eds. ʿAzzam, ʿAbd al-Wahhab and Sulayman, Ahmad al-Saʿid (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub wa-l-Wathaʾiq al-Qawmiyya, 2003), 452–87Google Scholar.

30 Lane, Edward William, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (London: East-West Publications, 1978), 212 Google Scholar; Michaud, M. and Poujoulat, M., Correspondance d'Orient (1830–1831) (Brussels: N.-J. Gregoir, V. Wouters et cie., 1841), 7:84–85 Google Scholar; and Raymond, André, Artisans et commerçants au Caire au XVIIIe Siècle (Cairo: Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 1999), 2:426 Google Scholar.

31 ʿUthman, “Taʾifat al-Sahafiyyin,” 62.

32 Lane, Manners and Customs, 210–11. The cost of a handwritten quire rose to five piasters in the decade that followed. Wilkinson, John Gardner, Modern Egypt and Thebes: Being a Description of Egypt (London: John Murray, 1843), 1:473 Google Scholar.

33 ʿUthman, “Taʾifat al-Sahafiyyin,” 62.

34 Lithographers could produce 100 to 120 imprints per hour from one stone in mid-19th-century Europe. Twyman, Michael, Early Lithographed Books: A Study of the Design and Production of Improper Books in the Age of the Hand Press (London: Farrand Press & Private Libraries Association, 1990), 20 Google Scholar. This number was higher for typographers.

35 Pinto, Olga, “Mose Castelli, Tipografo Italiano al Cairo,” in A Francesco Gabrieli; Studi orientalistici offerti nel sessantesimo compleanno dai suoi colleghi e discepoli, ed. Bardi, Giovanni (Rome: Giovanni Bardi, 1964), 218 Google Scholar.

36 See, for example, Reimer, Michael, Colonial Bridgehead: Government and Society in Alexandria, 1807–1882 (Colorado: Westview Press, 1997)Google Scholar, chap. 5; and Landau, Jacob, Jews in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (New York: New York University Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

37 Pinto, “Mose Castelli,” 218. For reference to the work of Musa's sons, see, for example, Abu Maʿshar, Jaʿfar bin Muhammad, al-Muhaqqiq al-Mudaqqiq al-Yunani al-Faylasuf al-Shahir (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Tulyaniyya, 1871), 86 Google Scholar; and Madrasi, Muhammad Sadiq, Kunuz Altaf al-Burhan fi Rumuz Awqaf al-Qurʾan (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Tulyaniyya al-Shahir bi-l-Kastaliyya, 1873), 40 Google Scholar.

38 While the title page of the Haggadah states that it had been printed in 1834, the chronogram lists the date of printing as 1851. Rowland-Smith, “The Beginnings of Hebrew Printing,” 17; Second Supplementary Catalogue of Hebrew Printed Books in the British Library 1893–1960, prepared for publication by Diana Rowland Smith based on the work of David Goldstein, Cyril Moss, and others (London: The British Library, 1994), 1:525.

39 Pinto, “Mose Castelli,” 218.

40 de Marchi, Francescantonio, La Propriété littéraire, artistique et industrielle en Turquie et en Égypte (Paris: A. Pinaud, 1880), 31 Google Scholar.

41 Al-Qawanin al-Tijariyya (Cairo: Matbaʿat Musa Kastali, 1860).

42 bin Asʿad al-Yafiʿi, ʿAbd Allah, Mukhtasar Rawd al-Rayahin fi Manaqib al-Salihin (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Kastaliyya, 1863), 131 Google Scholar; al-Sunni, ʿAbd Allah, Kitab Hadirat al-Quds (Cairo: Matbaʿat Musa Kastali, 1861), 26 Google Scholar.

43 Qaʾimat al-Kutub allati Tubiʿat bi-l-Matbaʿa al-Tulyaniyya al-Maʿrufa bi-l-Kastaliyya (Cairo: Matbaʿat al-Kastaliyya, 1873, Phil 8° 02212/04, University and Research Library Erfurt/Gotha, Germany), 3, 13.

44 Qurʿat al-Tuyur (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Kastaliyya, 1862/63), last page.

45 Schwartz, “Meaningful Mediums,” 285–92, 313–14.

46 Qissat al-Tajir ʿAli Nur al-Din (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Kastaliyya, 1880); Abu Maʿshar, al-Muhaqqiq al-Mudaqqiq. For newspapers, see “Jaraʾid: A Chronology of Nineteenth-Century Periodicals in Arabic (1800–1900),” ZMO, accessed 13 July 2016, https://www.zmo.de/jaraid/.

47 bin ʿUthman Jalal, Muhammad, al-ʿUyun al-Yawqaiz fi al-Amthal wa-l-Mawaʿiz (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Kastaliyya, 1870, 845 F 7Google Scholar, Special Collections, Leiden University, The Netherlands).

48 Abu Maʿshar, al-Muhaqqiq al-Mudaqqiq, 76; Qurʿat al-Tuyur, last page.

49 Abu Maʿshar, al-Muhaqqiq al-Mudaqqiq, 86; Qissat al-Tajir ʿAli Nur al-Din, 72.

50 Jalal, al-ʿUyun al-Yawaqiz, 161.

51 Pinto, “Mose Castelli,” 218.

52 See, for example, Madrasi, Kunuz Altaf, 40.

53 Pinto, “Mose Castelli,” 218.

54 See, for example, bin Ahmad bin Iyas, Muhammad, Badaʾiʿ al-Zuhur fi Waqaʾiʿ al-Duhur (Cairo: Matbaʿat Musa Kastali, 1871), 188 Google Scholar.

55 al-Zirikli, Khayr al-Din, al-Aʾlam, Qamus Tarajim li-Ashhar al-Rijal wa-l-Nisaʾ min al-ʿArab wa-l-Mustaʿribin wa-l-Mustashiriqin (Beirut: s.n., 1969), 2:214 Google Scholar.

56 I arrive at this number through the bibliographic information available from WorldCat.

57 See, for example, bin Ahmad al-Shaʿrani, ʿAbd al-Wahhab, Kashf al-Ghumma ʿan Jamiʿ al-Umma (Cairo: s.n., 1860/61), 185 Google Scholar; and al-ʿIdwi, Hasan, Kitab Kanz al-Matalib fi Fadl al-Bayt al-Haram wa-fi al-Hijr wa-l-Shadharan wa-ma fi Ziyarat al-Qabr al-Sharif min al-Maʾarib (Cairo: s.n., 1865/6)Google Scholar.

58 Goldziher, Ignac, “Muhammadan Public Opinion,” trans. Payne, Jerry and Sadgrove, Philip, Journal of Semitic Studies 38 (1993): 133 Google Scholar.

59 al-ʿIdwi, Hasan, Mashariq al-Anwar fi Fawz Ahl al-Iʿtibar (Cairo: Matbaʻat Bulaq, 1859), 343 Google Scholar.

60 ʿIdwi, Mashariq al-Anwar (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Kastaliyya, 1861)Google Scholar.

61 ʿIdwi, Mashariq al-Anwar (n.p.: s.n., 1860), third and second from last pages.

62 For example, Shaykh Hasan commissioned and corrected a printing of bin Ahmad Shaʿrani, ʿAbd al-Wahhab, Kitab al-Mizan li-l-ʿArif al-Samadani wa-l-Qutb al-Rabbani (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Kastaliyya, 1862), 246 Google Scholar.

63 This was probably Domenico Gatteschi, an Italian who married into the prominent De Rossetti family and served as a lawyer in the Mixed Courts. Shlala, Elizabeth, “The De Rossetti Affair: Legal Pluralism and Levantine Identity at the Crossroads of Empires,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 43 (2016): 46–47 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Hadhahi Risalatun, preface 1.

65 No other Arabic printing is attributed to Gatteschi, for example, despite his four publications on Ottoman and Egyptian law in French and Italian.

66 Hadhahi Risalatun, 2.

67 Ibid., 3.

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid., 4–5.

70 Ibid., 11.

71 A Handbook for Travelers in Egypt (London: John Murray, 1875), 9, 324, 319–20.

72 Hadhahi Risalatun, 5, 5, 5, 66, 54–55 and 5, 54–55 and 5.

73 Ibid., 6.

74 Ibid., 7–9.

75 Ibid., 6.

76 Ibid., 56, 5.

77 Ibid., 56.

78 Ibid., 56, 7.

79 Ibid., 56, 8.

80 Ibid., 56.

81 Ibid., 8.

82 Ibid., 57.

83 Ibid., 7.

84 Ibid., 58.

85 al-ʿAbbasi, Muhammad, al-Fatawa al-Mahdiyya fi al-Waqaʾiʿ al-Misriyya (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Azhariyya, 1887), 5:289–309 Google Scholar.

86 Peters, Rudolph, “Muhammad al-ʿAbbasi al-Mahdi (d. 1897), Grand Mufti of Egypt, and His al-Fatawa al-Mahdiyya ,” Islamic Law and Society 1 (1994): 70–73 Google Scholar.

87 Al-ʿAbbasi, al-Fatawa, 292, 300. Notably, there are no fatwas related to printing within the published collection of fatwas that were issued by Muhammad al-Banna (1828–96), who served as Grand Mufti from 1887 to 1889. Musa, Nifin Muhammad, Mukhtarat min Wathaʾiq al-Misri fi al-Qarn al-Tasiʿ ʿAshr: Qiraʾa fi Fatawa al-Shaykh Muhammad Muhammad al-Banna (Cairo: Matbaʿat Dar al-Kutub wa-l-Wathaʾiq al-Qawmiyya, 2013)Google Scholar.

88 The exception was al-khawāja Yusuf Mansan. Al-ʿAbbasi, al-Fatawa, 293–94.

89 Ibid., 292–93, 294, 297, 300, 294 and 295, 295.

90 Ibid., 300.

91 Ibid., 292–93.

92 Ibid., 293–94.

93 Ibid., 296.

94 Ibid., 297.

95 This is also true of the empire broadly. For the only publication focused on the topic of Ottoman censorship of which I am aware, see Cioeta, Donald, “Ottoman Censorship in Lebanon and Syria, 1876–1908,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 10 (1979): 167–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Scholars are now revisiting print regulations with specific cities in mind, such as Cairo, Damascus, and Istanbul. See, for example: Schwartz, “Meaningful Mediums,” 300–13; Till Grallert, “To Whom Belong the Streets? Property, Propriety, and Appropriation: The Production of Public Space in Late Ottoman Damascus, 1875–1914” (PhD diss., Freien Universität Berlin, 2014), 44–65; Ayse Polat, “Subject to Approval: Sanction and Censure in Ottoman Istanbul (1889–1923)” (PhD diss., The University of Chicago, 2015). Ayşe Başaran of Boğaziçi University is also examining this topic with regard to Istanbul in her dissertation, “The Making of Ottoman Imperial Print Culture, 1831–1868.”

96 For these press laws, see Jallad, Filib, al-Qamus al-ʿAmm li-l-Idara wa-l-Qada (Alexandria: Matbaʿat Bani Laghudaki, 1899–1902), 3:539, 534–38, 540–46, 546–49Google Scholar.

97 For example, Saʿid struggled to stop two Italians from printing a newspaper (jarīda) in Alexandria in 1862. Sami, Amin, Taqwim al-Nil (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Amiriyya, 1915–36), 3:1:390–91Google Scholar.

98 Refer to titles such as Hashiyat al-ʿIdwi ʿala al-Zarkani, Matn al-Shifaʾ, and Hashiyat Bajuri approved in 1871. Al-ʿAbbasi, al-Fatawa, 294–95.

99 Hadhahi Risalatun, 9–10.

100 Ibid., 10.

101 Ibid.

102 For a discussion of what constituted the buying, selling, and circulation of commercial goods in the majlis al-tujjār, see Omar Cheta, “Rule of Merchants: the Practice of Commerce and Law in Late Ottoman Egypt, 1841–1876” (PhD diss., New York University, 2014), 106–16.

103 Ibid., 59–60; personal correspondence.

104 Hadhahi Risalatun, 62–64, 12–13.

105 Ibid., 12.

106 Ibid., 62–64, 12–13, 70.

107 Ibid., 14.

108 Ibid., 15.

109 Ibid., 14.

110 Ibid., 71–73.

111 Ibid., 15.

112 Ibid., 72.

113 Ibid.

114 Ibid., 73.

115 Ibid., 15–17.

116 Ibid., 73.

117 Ibid., 16.

118 Ibid., 53.

119 Jurisprudence des tribunaux de la réforme en Egypte; recueil officiel (n.p.: s.n., année judiciaire, 1875–76 and 1876–77), 1:61–64, 2:56–57.

120 Répertoire général de la jurisprudence Égyptienne mixte et indigene; première partie (Cairo: Typo-lithograhie Cadéménos & Dessyllas, 1897), 535.

121 Social histories of Ottoman law derive largely from court records which mediate scholars’ access to the litigants’ own narratives. See, for example, the work of Leslie Peirce, Rudolph Peters, Khaled Fahmy, and Liat Kozma. The Risala is also distinct for portraying judicial practice from the perspective of a lawyer.

122 “Muhawara bayna Abi Nazzara wa-Milaff Jurnalat tahta Batihi wa-Sayyid Ahmad al-Bulis fi Shariʿ al-Muski,” Abu Nazzara 7 (1878): 3–4.

123 See, for example, the presses of Wadi al-Nil, Jamʿiyyat al-Maʿarif, al-Azhar, and al-Hilal; descriptions of presses and their bookshops in al-Tanahi, al-Kitab al-Matbuʿ, 82; and Lauziere, Henri, “The Construction of Salafiyya: Reconsidering Salafism from the Perspective of Conceptual History,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42 (2010): 369–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

124 I arrive at this conclusion via WorldCat.

125 Jerrold, Blanchard, ed., Egypt under Ismail Pacha: Being Some Chapters of Contemporary History (London: Samuel Tinsley & Co., 1879), 222 Google Scholar.

126 I reach this conclusion by comparing the number of the press' works on WorldCat from the 1870s to those printed over the previous decade and listed for sale in 1873. Qaʾimat al-Kutub.

127 Philipp, Thomas, The Syrians in Egypt, 1725–1975 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1985), 97 Google Scholar; Ayalon, Ami, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 217 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

128 See, for example, the lack of reference to Musa in works that rely heavily on Sanua's Abu Nazzara, such as Gendzier, Irene, The Practical Visions of Yaʿqub Sanuʿ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; and Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians.

129 These encounters may be relevant to research on cosmopolitanism, but I hesitate to characterize Arabic private printing in Cairo as a site of cosmopolitanism because I doubt the extent to which such interactions were unique to the modern period. Nonetheless, printing could serve as a useful entry point for Egyptian cosmopolitanism because it encompasses the wider public that formed the market for texts, and that is often neglected in discussions of the topic. Hanley, Will, “Cosmopolitan Cursing in Late Nineteenth-Century Alexandria,” in Cosmopolitanisms in Muslim Contexts: Perspectives from the Past, eds. MacLean, Derryl and Ahmed, Sikeena Karmali (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 92–104 Google Scholar.

130 Gasper, Michael, The Power of Representation: Publics, Peasants, and Islam in Egypt (Stanford, Calif.; Stanford University Press, 2009), 58, 35Google Scholar.

131 See, for example, the surprise registered because a manuscript had not been printed by the Bulaq press in Hamzah, Dyala, “Nineteenth-Century Egypt as Dynastic Locus of Universality: the History of Muhammad ʿAli by Khalil bin Ahmad al-Rajabi,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27 (2007): 82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

132 Scholars of Egyptian collective belonging tend to emphasize the 1870s onward in their studies, a periodization which corresponds with the rise of the periodical press. See, for example, the work of Ziad Fahmy and Hoda Yousef.

133 See, for example, Roper, Geoffrey, “The Printing Press and Change in the Arab World,” in Agent of Change: Print Culture after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, eds. Baron, Sabrina, Lindquist, Eric, and Shevlin, Eleanor (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 250–67Google Scholar; Mitchell, Timothy, Colonising Egypt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; and Messick, Brinkley, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar.