In the studies that there have been on the press in Iran of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, newspapers have been, for the most part, evaluated only in terms of the degree to which they enabled activism and brought about a ‘new kind of politics.’ This has resulted in the conventional wisdom that there were no newspapers in Iran worth examining until the granting of the constitution in summer 1906, when a temporary lifting of censorship relaxed many of the restrictions on the press, giving way to the appearance of a large number of political dailies. As a result, the newspapers that appeared in Iran since the 1850s have been largely ignored as insignificant and inconsequential because they were too close to the state. My contention, here, is that early newspapers should not be dismissed out of hand. Not only did their appearance represent a sign of the change that the country was going through, but also and more importantly, they played a role in forging a newspaper culture, and laying the building blocks for an emerging public and a nascent public sphere. To this end, this paper will consider the cases of two lesser-known, privately-owned weeklies that were published in Iran in the years that preceded the Constitutional Revolution, more specifically between 1896 and 1906. They are 'Tarbiyat' (Education), and 'Adab' (Culture). They were semi-independent newspapers in the sense that while they were subject to censorship and answerable to the Ministry of Publications, in as much as they were privately-owned, they had to find their own sources of funding either in the shape of benefactors, or they had to sell enough copies of their newspaper to make ends meet. This paper will therefore consider the different ways in which these two newspapers tried to create and win over a reading public, and in so doing, not only gave currency to the idea of a public, but also played a part in giving shape to a newspaper culture.

The emergence of readership was an essential aspect of the cultural shift that affected the Ottoman Arab provinces following the adoption of printing in the nineteenth century. It was a manifold development in its geographical spread, the social sections it encompassed, its impact on inter-generational relations, and its bearing on the region's thought and discourse. The paper will focus on one aspect of this change: the entry of children and youth into the circle of readers, and its implications. The efforts to lift society's literacy level by building schooling systems naturally caused the readership to expand, most conspicuously, at the bottom of the age-pyramid. A great many of those who experienced the thrills of becoming readers were young people. Personal descriptions of that experience from different parts of the region shed much light on various facets of the process: difficult economic circumstances, wanting infrastructure, the dearth of appropriate reading materials, and the often-problematic gaps between the newly skilled youngsters and their illiterate parents, who were left behind. This will be illustrated through two early-twentieth century testimonies: that of Sayyid Qutb, who grew up in rural Upper Egypt, and that of Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, who spent his childhood in the Palestinian town of Bethlehem. Both have left accounts which depict in lively colors the experience of being a newcomer to the world of books. The former case will also illuminate another important aspect of the change: the spread of the practice of reading beyond the urban centers and into the countryside. Printed products did reach rural places, even those in the remote periphery, and linked their residents – again, mostly the younger generation – to the region's animated literary discourse. The change in these parts was slower than in the cities, but they were clearly being drawn into the circle.

The early 20th century saw the rapid expansion of Muslim printing and literary production in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the nominally Ottoman Balkan province then over two decades into Austro-Hungarian occupation. The existing literature, however, has broadly considered this process as a narrowly domestic phenomenon, typically within a master narrative of Europeanization and only occasionally motioning toward its participants’ extensive links with the wider Ottoman world. This paper challenges these Eurocentric and national readings by examining how the emerging Bosnian Muslim print scene drew on and interacted with other centers of Muslim publishing, most notably Istanbul. It focuses in particular on Mehmed Džemaludin Cauševic (1870-1938), a Bosnian-born Islamic legal scholar and journalist who returned in 1903 from his 15-year studies in the Ottoman lands to establish a number of influential reformist associations, institutions, and journals in contemporary Sarajevo. Reviewing both the contents of these journals as well as their exchanges with like-minded publications in Istanbul and elsewhere, I argue that Cauševic successfully integrated Bosnia-Herzegovina into the era’s polycentric and transnational Pan-Islamist public sphere. For a growing Bosnian Muslim reading public, his journals’ extensive translation of Arabic and Turkish materials both actualized lingering loyalties to the Ottoman state and made tangible the very notion of a global Islamic community, while the reverse translation of their own original texts contributed to a parallel process in the Istanbul press. Cauševic’s case ultimately suggests that the Ottoman Empire’s intellectual influence among Bosnian Muslims paradoxically intensified as its political authority receded, highlighting the significance of the expansion of communications technologies and their associated professional networks across imperial boundaries.

Following the Russian Revolution of 1905, restrictions on publishing and associational life loosened throughout the empire. This resulted in the birth of a thriving print culture and the foundation of numerous educational societies among the Azeris of Baku. One of the primary projects pursued by the reformist intellectuals leading these societies was the promotion of a vernacularized Azeri reading culture. In this paper I focus on aspects of associational life in Baku that promoted reading culture through the practice of public readings. I argue that this represents cultural continuity, reflecting a continuation of the Azeri tradition of literary assemblies, where members gathered to declaim poetry. It was also, however, a project of reform aimed at including the largely illiterate population into the practice of reading, encouraging them to take advantage of the educational initiatives spearheaded by Azeri societies so that they too might join the reading public. Looking at three venues where Azeris encountered public readings, I analyze how the material read and the practice of reading it tied Azeri audiences to familiar practices while introducing them to new genres, authors, and thought. The most common site of this practice was in the reading rooms founded by Azeri societies. Reading rooms were not simply a space of silent reading, but were communal spaces where patrons often read out loud, both as a social activity and for the inclusion of those who could not read themselves. In reading rooms, the literate and illiterate could read the day’s news, attend lectures, and debate the new materials they encountered. Societies also organized special events including evening soirees and jubilees celebrating the work of Azeri cultural figures. Soirees (“musamirs,”) hosted in the homes of wealthy Azeri industrialists, celebrated Azeri authors and European authors in translation by featuring readings of their works, be they prose, poetry, or plays, as part of the evening’s entertainment. Witty dialogues penned by the Azeri playwright Najaf bey Vazirov would follow scenes from Hamlet, with classical Azeri mugham music to conclude, blending both the familiar and the foreign for those in attendance. At Jubilees, Azeris celebrated their greatest writers, actors, and musicians, with their works and works about them read for the crowds. This paper will show how public readings in Baku were a key tool in the reformist project of promoting literacy, providing a known cultural tradition as an entryway into a new world of reading and literary production.