The Nicholson Center for British Studies
Nicholson Faculty Lecture (2023-24)
Ulrike Stark
Professor, South Asian Languages and Civilizations
University of Chicago
Majestic Patronage
Muslim and Christian Printing at the Lucknow Royal Press, 1819-1849
Introduction by Rochona Majumdar
Wednesday, 24th April
Classics110
1010 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
5:00pm
Despite its importance as the first Muslim-owned printing press in northern India, the Matba‘-i Sultani, established by the King of Awadh in Lucknow in 1819, has received little scholarly attention. Best known for its production of Haft Qulzum (1821), a Persian dictionary and grammar, the Royal Press epitomizes the momentous transition from movable type to lithography in North India at an early stage in the global spread of print technology. It coincided with a shift from Muslim to European agency at the press. This talk highlights an untold story of Christian educational printing at His Majesty’s Lithographic Press, complicating standard narratives of the trajectory of print in nineteenth-century India. In tracing the history of the Royal Press over its existence of thirty years, I examine the participation of Awadh’s Shi’i Muslim rulers and local European actors in the production of printed knowledge and discuss material and cultural factors shaping pre-commercial print culture in the multilingual setting of Lucknow.
Images:[Left] Tāj al-lughāt (Lucknow: Matba’-i Sultani, 1831), © From the Collections of: The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.[Center] Gouache painting of Nasir al-Din Haidar (King of Oudh 1827-37) by an anonymous artist working in the Lucknow style in c.1831. [Right] A Collection of Moral Precepts & Reflections … (Lucknow: Printed at His Majesty the King of Oudh’s Lithographic Press, 1833), © From the Collections of: The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.