History of Printing

Asking when printing began in Iran produces different answers depending on what is being counted: an experiment with currency, an imported technology, Persian-language publication abroad, or sustained book production within the country. These distinctions matter because the presence of equipment does not by itself demonstrate a lasting publishing industry. s1s2

In 1294, the Ilkhanid ruler Gaykhatu attempted to introduce printed paper money at Tabriz. The experiment encountered rejection and was withdrawn. Willem Floor's historical survey notes that the precise printing surface is not directly documented; evidence suggesting wooden blocks should therefore remain an inference. This episode belongs to the history of printing, but it should not be presented as the beginning of an uninterrupted Iranian book trade. s1

Language and location must also be separated. A Persian-language Torah printed in Hebrew characters appeared in Istanbul in 1546, while Persian-script works were printed in Leiden in 1639. Such books form part of Persian publishing history even though their presses stood outside Iran. s1

[s1] [s2]

For nineteenth-century Persian book production, Tabriz was a pivotal center. Ulrich Marzolph dates the introduction of movable-type printing in this phase to around 1817. Lithography subsequently became a powerful alternative: an early surviving example is a Quran dated 1832–33, probably printed at Tabriz. His chronology concerns this publishing phase and should not erase earlier printing activity. s3

Lithography, known in Persian as chap-e sangi, reproduced writing and images from a prepared stone surface. Its success was connected to the availability of skilled copyists, comparatively inexpensive equipment, and readers' attachment to calligraphy. A printed book could therefore retain the visual character of a handwritten volume while being reproduced in multiple copies. s2

The distinction was cultural as well as mechanical. Calligraphic layouts and illustrations were integral to the book rather than decorative additions to an otherwise standardized text. Lithographed volumes are consequently valuable evidence for the interaction of scribal skills and printing technology. s2s3

[s2] [s3]

Early presses depended heavily on elite support. From the later 1840s, booksellers and commercial investors helped make lithographic production more regular. Tehran and Tabriz remained leading centers, while provincial production and orders placed with Bombay connected Iranian readers to a wider publishing geography. s2

The State Printing House and the press associated with Dar al-Fonun, Tehran's modern polytechnic school, also published scientific and educational material. Printing thus served different purposes: literary reproduction, instruction, commerce, and state communication. s2

Movable type and lithography did not follow a simple pattern in which a new technology immediately eliminated its predecessor. Marzolph describes renewed competition between them before lithographic book production was displaced around the middle of the twentieth century. The useful historical question is therefore not merely which press arrived first, but why particular methods suited particular readers, workers, and publishers. s3

[s2] [s3]