'The ink of excellence': Print and the Islamic written tradition of East Africa

This article examines the social and intellectual ramifications of print as both an innovative new medium and an extension of the manuscript tradition, from the middle of the nineteenth century to the 1950s. Taking a broad transregional framework that highlights the emerging connectivity between the Islamic centers of learning and print production in Egypt, on the one hand, and Muslims in East and Northeast Africa, on the other hand, it examines how print created new sets of discursive webs and relationships that entangled Muslims across various physical and conceptual spaces. Furthermore, this piece surveys the elements of the manuscript tradition that find their way onto the printed page exploring how such elements persist from one media to the next and the transformations they undergo in the process.