The emergence of printing in Qajar Iran: An overlooked chapter of the history of Arabic-script printing

This talk has two objectives: the first briefly considers some of the inadequacies in the existing literature – particularly those written in European languages – that generally claim to investigate the history of printing in the Arabic script or document printing in the Middle East. This discussion sets the context for the second and primary objective of this paper which is to explore the introduction of printing and typefounding in nineteenth-century Iran. A few scholars have focused on different aspects of print history in Iran (mainly printing with lithography); however, there seems to be little serious discussion of this subject from the perspective of typefounding within the wider context of Arabic-script printing. Yet, as will be shown, the under-studied history of printing in Iran reveals significant and pioneering achievements in Arabic-script printing and typefounding that began in the nineteenth century