8vo. Volume I: 112 pp., / Volume II: 113-232 pp., Arabic text, title printed in Arabic in volume one & in English in volume two, contemporary green cloth, slightly spotted and rubbed round edges, previous owner’s name inscribed in Arabic on front endpaper, browning to end leaves, otherwise set in very good condition, printed at the Urdoo Guide Press, Calcutta, first edition, 1880.

Synopsis

Extremely rare. In the last quarter of the 18th century, Calcutta grew into the first major centre of commercial and government printing. For the first time in the context of South Asia it became possible to talk of a nascent book trade which was fully fledged and included printing, binding, subscription publishing and also libraries.
The work explains how the British East India Company introduced printing not simply to facilitate trade, but more importantly, to consolidate the Empire. Fort William College, founded in Calcutta in 1800, provided a further stimulus for printing Arabic, Persian and particularly Urdu texts needed to instruct servants of the East India Company in those languages. By 1820 about twenty Arabic and another twenty Persian texts were printed for the College’s use at various Calcutta presses.
The East India Company had introduced lithography to India in the early 1820s, which rapidly displaced typography for Islamic printing as presses were established right across Northern India.” (Encyclopaedia of Islam Volume VI, pp. 805-06). Not at Copac.