Sharpshooter12
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The year was 1445, place was city of Mainz in Germany. The world’s first printing press was invented by Johannes Gautenberg, and it started a revolution.
To get an idea of what a ground breaking innovation printing press was, consider this. Prior to this innovation, if you were a poet or a mathematician or a scientist of some sort that wrote a book, you had two options.
Either get a bunch of scribes and ask them to make copies of your book for you. On average a good scribe could copy 15-20 pages per day. So if you wrote a 500 pages book, it would take a scribe around a month to make a single copy.
Or you could opt for block printing. This will require cutting a wooden block specifically for each page. Just imagine the time and effort put into achieving this.
So naturally books were far and few and hence expensive. Only the nobility and higher clergy had the means to buy such books and as a result knowledge was confined to a privileged class.
With printing press, one could print thousands of copies of a book in a single day. It was both cost-effective, required less labor and of course less time.
West’s Response to Printing Press
The west quickly realized the potential of this new technology and by 1470’s there was not a single major capital in Europe that was without a printing press.
Thousands of books in Literature, Science, Trigonometry, Astronomy, History and Medicine were published and were readily available. The cost of books fell down sharply and they became affordable for the middle class.
As a result public’s interest in the books increased and so did the literacy rate. This fueled the Renaissance and Age of Discovery, became the engine behind the Age of Enlightenment and was the building block of the Industrial revolution.
Muslim Response to Printing Press
Now coming to our side of the globe. In the late 15th century Ottoman Empire was the greatest of all Muslim states. They had conquered the Constantinople and were continuously pushing the boundaries of Islamic rule further west.
Europe had no answer to their military might, no match for their institutionalized bureaucracy and no equal to their tolerance of other faiths and cultures.
But even with all that, sultans were still under the influence of clergy and avoided offending them in any way.
In 1485, a Jewish immigrant to the Ottoman Empire tried to establish the first printing press in Muslim world. But that started a debate in Ottoman court with Ulemah calling it a Jewish conspiracy to corrupt the Holy Quran.
Sultan Bayezid II, ironically called the wise, gave in to clergy’s pressure and passed an edict banning anyone in his realm from printing in Arabic. Later in 1515 his son Sultan Selim I further reinforced the law and it was not until year 1727 that first printing press was established in Ottoman Empire.
Consequences
The consequences were obvious. While knowledge flourished in Europe and literacy rate increased tremendously throughout the continent, Ottoman Empire lagged behind.
By the year 1800 this was the situation. In England, 60 percent adult male and 40 percent of the adult female population was literate. In Netherlands and Germany, 70 percent of the adult male population and 50 percent of adult female population were literate.
In Ottoman Empire the literacy rate was meager 3 percent.
How could they possibly compete with west in technology, industry and innovation with such a low literacy rate. And so they became the Sick Man of Europe, with every European nation just waiting for them to collapse so they can divide their lands among them.
It did not take long, by 1918 Ottoman Empire had lost all of its territories and in 1922 it was officially abolished.
What We Can Learn From This
I am not implying at all that not allowing a printing press in 1485 was the sole reason for the downfall of Ottoman Empire. There were many other factors, a corrupt and lethargic bureaucracy, outdated military technology and outdated institutions to name a few.
But would not the bureaucracy have been able to improve itself if it had a large pool of literate and learned people to fill its cadres. Would not a literate populace helped the Ottomans with innovations in their military technology. A knowledgeable nation would have enjoyed fruits of the Age of Enlightenment and Industrial revolution and hence institutions would have improved.
But the fear of change and of innovation stopped the Ottomans from trying out a technology that would have taken their empire and people to new heights. Clergy called it a Yahoodi Sazish (Jewish Conspiracy) for corrupting Quran, but today Quran is published on printing presses across the Muslim world.
It is this fear of change, fear of new ideas and innovations that is still holding Muslims back. Whether it is political status-quo or intellectual conservatism, we still favor them, even though in our hearts we know they did not work well for us.
Status-Quo of course favors the ruling elite. In Ottoman times having control over knowledge helped clergy in keeping its dominant position in the society. Keeping people illiterate would have favored Ottoman rulers too as such ignorant folks could never be a threat to their absolute rule.
So elite always favors the Status-Quo over change. But it is the common man who is to benefit from the change. Whether it is social, economic, intellectual or scientific innovation, it ultimately improves the lives of the common folk.So it is imperative that the common people accept the change and stop fearing it.
https://throughbabarseyes.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/fear-of-change-that-destroyed-an-empire/
To get an idea of what a ground breaking innovation printing press was, consider this. Prior to this innovation, if you were a poet or a mathematician or a scientist of some sort that wrote a book, you had two options.
Either get a bunch of scribes and ask them to make copies of your book for you. On average a good scribe could copy 15-20 pages per day. So if you wrote a 500 pages book, it would take a scribe around a month to make a single copy.
Or you could opt for block printing. This will require cutting a wooden block specifically for each page. Just imagine the time and effort put into achieving this.
So naturally books were far and few and hence expensive. Only the nobility and higher clergy had the means to buy such books and as a result knowledge was confined to a privileged class.
With printing press, one could print thousands of copies of a book in a single day. It was both cost-effective, required less labor and of course less time.
West’s Response to Printing Press
The west quickly realized the potential of this new technology and by 1470’s there was not a single major capital in Europe that was without a printing press.
Thousands of books in Literature, Science, Trigonometry, Astronomy, History and Medicine were published and were readily available. The cost of books fell down sharply and they became affordable for the middle class.
As a result public’s interest in the books increased and so did the literacy rate. This fueled the Renaissance and Age of Discovery, became the engine behind the Age of Enlightenment and was the building block of the Industrial revolution.
Muslim Response to Printing Press
Now coming to our side of the globe. In the late 15th century Ottoman Empire was the greatest of all Muslim states. They had conquered the Constantinople and were continuously pushing the boundaries of Islamic rule further west.
Europe had no answer to their military might, no match for their institutionalized bureaucracy and no equal to their tolerance of other faiths and cultures.
But even with all that, sultans were still under the influence of clergy and avoided offending them in any way.
In 1485, a Jewish immigrant to the Ottoman Empire tried to establish the first printing press in Muslim world. But that started a debate in Ottoman court with Ulemah calling it a Jewish conspiracy to corrupt the Holy Quran.
Sultan Bayezid II, ironically called the wise, gave in to clergy’s pressure and passed an edict banning anyone in his realm from printing in Arabic. Later in 1515 his son Sultan Selim I further reinforced the law and it was not until year 1727 that first printing press was established in Ottoman Empire.
Consequences
The consequences were obvious. While knowledge flourished in Europe and literacy rate increased tremendously throughout the continent, Ottoman Empire lagged behind.
By the year 1800 this was the situation. In England, 60 percent adult male and 40 percent of the adult female population was literate. In Netherlands and Germany, 70 percent of the adult male population and 50 percent of adult female population were literate.
In Ottoman Empire the literacy rate was meager 3 percent.
How could they possibly compete with west in technology, industry and innovation with such a low literacy rate. And so they became the Sick Man of Europe, with every European nation just waiting for them to collapse so they can divide their lands among them.
It did not take long, by 1918 Ottoman Empire had lost all of its territories and in 1922 it was officially abolished.
What We Can Learn From This
I am not implying at all that not allowing a printing press in 1485 was the sole reason for the downfall of Ottoman Empire. There were many other factors, a corrupt and lethargic bureaucracy, outdated military technology and outdated institutions to name a few.
But would not the bureaucracy have been able to improve itself if it had a large pool of literate and learned people to fill its cadres. Would not a literate populace helped the Ottomans with innovations in their military technology. A knowledgeable nation would have enjoyed fruits of the Age of Enlightenment and Industrial revolution and hence institutions would have improved.
But the fear of change and of innovation stopped the Ottomans from trying out a technology that would have taken their empire and people to new heights. Clergy called it a Yahoodi Sazish (Jewish Conspiracy) for corrupting Quran, but today Quran is published on printing presses across the Muslim world.
It is this fear of change, fear of new ideas and innovations that is still holding Muslims back. Whether it is political status-quo or intellectual conservatism, we still favor them, even though in our hearts we know they did not work well for us.
Status-Quo of course favors the ruling elite. In Ottoman times having control over knowledge helped clergy in keeping its dominant position in the society. Keeping people illiterate would have favored Ottoman rulers too as such ignorant folks could never be a threat to their absolute rule.
So elite always favors the Status-Quo over change. But it is the common man who is to benefit from the change. Whether it is social, economic, intellectual or scientific innovation, it ultimately improves the lives of the common folk.So it is imperative that the common people accept the change and stop fearing it.
https://throughbabarseyes.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/fear-of-change-that-destroyed-an-empire/
