Manufactured Images:
The Engravings of 19th-Century Arabic Periodicals
Hala Auji
Synopsis:
Explore the diversity of printed images that became popular in illustrated Arabic journals during the late nineteenth century. These engravings, which included a range of topics from scientific diagrams to illustrations of zebras, exemplify the interconnected nature of the arts and sciences in the age of modernity. Such images also are markers of an artistic modernity that saw the convergence of painting, photography, and print culture.
References:
Auji, Hala. “Printed Images in Flux: Examining Scientific Engravings in Nineteenth-Century Arabic Periodicals.” In Visual Design: The Periodical Page as a Designed Surface. Journalliteratur 1. Edited by Andreas Beck, Nicola Kaminski, Volker Mergenthaler, and Jens Ruchatz. 119–136. Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag, 2019. 
Auji, Hala. Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
Ayalon, Ami. The Arabic Print Revolution: Cultural Production and Mass Readership. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Brummett, Palmira Image and Imperialism in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press, 1908–1911. Albany: SUNY Press, 2000.
Ersoy, Ahmet. “Ottomans and the Kodak Galaxy: Archiving Everyday Life and Historical Space in Ottoman Illustrated Journals.” History of Photography 40, no. 3 (2016): 330–357.
Sheehi, Stephen. “Arabic Literary-Scientific Journals Precedence for Globalization and the Creation of Modernity.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25, no.2 (2005): 439–449.
Citation:
Hala Auji, “Manufactured Images: The Engravings of 19th-Century Arabic Periodicals,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 9 February 2021.
Hala Auji is Associate Professor of Art History and the Hamad bin Khalifa Endowed Chair for Islamic Art at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond; she also co-chairs the Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art. Her research explores transcultural modernity, print culture, and photography in eastern Mediterranean communities during the long nineteenth century. With a background in graphic design, criticism, and art history, she examines intersections between art, design history, and comparative literature, focusing on Islamic and Middle Eastern art. She is the author of Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Brill, 2016) and co-editor of The Arab Nahda as Popular Entertainment: Mass Culture and Modernity in the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2023). Her current book project investigates printed portraiture in Ottoman provincial cities.