香蕉视频

The Islamic Studies Library is pleased to display a new exhibition featuring a fascinating selection of Arabic lithographed books from the Islamic Rare Books Collection.

Invented in Germany in 1796, the printing technique called 鈥渓ithography鈥� remained a subsidiary method for book production in Europe, but quickly spread to the Muslim world. Lithographic printing consists of writing by hand on a smooth limestone plate, on which ink is then applied, to produce a printed page. The word "lithography" comes from the ancient Greek "lithos" (位喂胃慰蟼) meaning 鈥渟tone鈥�.

From the nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century, lithography coexisted in the Muslim world with manuscripts production as the most common technique for printing.

There are a number of reasons for lithography鈥檚 acceptance and development in the Muslim world including:

• it requires the skills of calligraphers and copyists making it less of a threat than movable type by incorporating these workers
• it is more versatile than printing by movable type in terms of the production of designs, specifically in the reproduction of the particularities of Arabic calligraphy
• it produces texts very similar to the look and feel manuscripts particularly in terms of the textual, graphic, and artistic layout
• it is portable, easy to operate, and cost-efficient

The Islamic Rare Books Collection includes many examples of lithographed books in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish and Urdu dated from the eighteenth century until the mid-twentieth century. The聽Arabic lithographed books exhibition displays sixteen items encompassing the different periods, calligraphic styles, graphic designs, and publishing houses from the Muslim world. In short, the lithographs exhibited recount a brief history of the evolution of lithography in the Muslim world.

The exhibition is accessible in the Islamic Studies Library during opening hours from April 1^st to September 30^th 2014. Free entrance.