Dr. Geoffrey Roper

Dr. Geoffrey Roper is a bibliographical consultant. He is considered by many to be the foremost bibliographer for Islam and the Middle East, and has received in 2005 the Partington Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of Middle Eastern librarianship. Dr. Roper was head of the Islamic Bibliography Unit at Cambridge University Library, 1982-2003, and editor of Index Islamicus and of the World Survey of Islamic Manuscripts. He has written and lectured on the history of printing and publishing in the Muslim world, and curated an exhibition at the Gutenberg Museum. He is currently an Associate Editor of the forthcoming Oxford Companion to the Book.

The travails of Euro-Arabic: calligraphy, logography and typography in the early modern period

Although the Arabic script appears in printed documents in Egypt as early as the 10 th century CE, these were designed as amulets rather than for reading, and the production of books was not attempted. Arabic typography and printed book publishing were born in 16 th -century Europe, and developed there over the next three centuries, before being reintroduced to the Arab world. This birth and early development, however, were by no means painless. The creation of the first Arabic type-faces was very much a matter of trial and error, and it took nearly a century to produce one which came anywhere near to calligraphic standards. Although Arabic manuscripts were in some cases used as sources for the letter shapes copied by punch-cutters, they were not really familiar with how the script was written. This, combined with the technical and financial difficulties of creating sorts for all the different letter forms and ligatures, meant that the results were often unsatisfactory. Some of the best typographers, notably Granjon, Savary de Brèves (or the typographer who worked for him), Caslon and a few others achieved acceptable results. But most of the type-faces used by European presses until the 19 th century were remarkably inelegant.

Meanwhile, when types were not available, as was the case before the first fount was created in 1514, and at many times and in many places later, other expedients were used. Sometimes whole words were cut on wood-blocks and set within pages, often very crudely. At other times engraving, on wood or metal, was used to create passages of text in the Arabic script, or decorative and illustrative material incorporating it. The latter technique occasionally allowed some approximation to calligraphy, particularly in the nasta`liq script.

This paper seeks to trace some of these strands in the history of the use of Arabic script in European printing up to the 19 th century, and to consider what effect they may have had on the subsequent development of Arabic type styles.