Sites of significance

ABSTRACT

Late 19th-century Singapore is considered the centre for the printing and distribution of Muslim-Malay lithographed texts in the Malay archipelago. In 1890, the island’s print output was approximately six million pages, with many of these printed from lithography. Thus informed, our recent readings of Singapore’s role in regional histories of the printed book tend to locate its prominence along contemporary, national lines – this is anachronistic. The island, historically, was neither nation nor state, but a British colonial settlement. Singapore’s advantageous geographical position certainly established it as a prominent site for book production and distribution. However, the existing corpus of lithographed publications, printed at multiple localities, indicate a broader range of regional locations involved in Muslim printing. These texts, from mushaf to syair, often feature printed defects and paratextual marks on their pages. Informed by approaches from analytical bibliography and printing history, the materiality of these marks and defects can be ‘read’ to identify specific print production techniques. These, in turn, suggest printing methods that were common in British and Dutch territories, and beyond – an indication of the mobility of techniques, materials, and practitioners within the lithographic trade, and the collaborative nature of print enterprises in the Malay world. By discussing these printed marks, this article will (a) re-situate and revise our understanding of interactions and practices within the Muslim-Malay lithographic printing trade; and (b) posit the notion that late 19th-century Singapore is not the locus, but one of several sites of significance within a regional ‘constellation’ of printing activity.

ABSTRAK

Singapura pada akhir abad ke-19 dianggap sebagai pusat percetakan dan pengedaran teks litografi (cap batu) Islam-Melayu di kepulauan Melayu. Pada tahun 1890, hasil cetakan pulau tersebut adalah kira-kira enam juta mukasurat, dengan kebanyakannya dicetak menggunakan teknik litografi. Oleh sebab itu, peranan Singapura dalam sejarah percetakan wilayah cenderung memaparkan kepentingannya menurut sempadan negara zaman sekarang – tetapi ini adalah anakronistik. Dari perspektif sejarah, pulau itu bukanlah sebuah negara atau negeri, tetapi merupakan satu penempatan kolonial British. Kedudukan geografi Singapura yang baik pasti menjadikannya tapak yang penting untuk pengeluaran dan pengedaran buku. Walau bagaimanapun, korpus penerbitan litografi yang sedia ada, yang dicetak di beberapa tempat, menunjukkan bahawa lingkungan lokasi-lokasi percetakan Islam adalah lebih luas. Teks-teks ini, dari mushaf hingga ke syair, sering memaparkan kecacatan cetakan dan tanda-tanda paratekstual pada halaman mereka. Dengan menggunakan pendekatan daripada bidang bibliografi analitis (‘analytical bibliography’) dan sejarah percetakan, kebendaan tanda-tanda dan kecacatan-kecacatan ini boleh ‘dibaca’ untuk mengenal pasti teknik-teknik pengeluaran cetakan tertentu. Ini seterusnya mendedahkan kaedah-kaedah pencetakan yang biasa digunakan di wilayah-wilayah British dan Belanda, dan seterusnya – satu petunjuk tentang pergerakan teknik, bahan, dan pengamal dalam perusahaan litografi, dan sifat kerjasama dalam perusahaan cetak di alam Melayu. Dalam membincangkan tanda-tanda cetakan ini, artikel ini akan (a) melihat semula dan mengubah pemahaman kita tentang interaksi dan amalan dalam perusahaan percetakan litografi Islam-Melayu; dan (b) mengemukakan tanggapan bahawa Singapura pada akhir abad ke-19 bukanlah lokus tersendiri, tetapi merupakan salah satu daripada beberapa tapak penting dalam ‘buruj’ aktiviti percetakan serantau.

KEYWORDS:

• book history
• lithographed Qur’an
• Malay lithography
• Malay printing
• paratexts
• printing history

KATA KUNCI:

• sejarah buku
• cap batu
• al-Qur’an cetak batu
• litografi Melayu
• percetakan Melayu
• parateks
• sejarah percetakan

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Ibu Utik from the Pakualaman Palace Library and Ali Akbar for their assistance, guidance, and generosity during field work undertaken in Java as part of the author’s thesis and some of the material is presented in this article. The author also thanks Mulaika Hijjas and Elsa Clavé for their invitation to be part of their Euroseas 2019 panel and discussions, the culmination of which is this special issue of the journal.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The earliest lithographic press is mentioned in Council of World Missions/London Missionary Society (henceforth CWM/LMS), Ultra Ganges, Batavia/Java, Incoming correspondence, Box 1, 1814–1843, Folder 2, Jacket D, 20 January 1826; for Dyer’s experimental Chinese types see CWM/LMS, Ultra Ganges, Penang, Incoming correspondence, Box 3A, 1829–1832, Folder 2, Jacket A, 15 May 1830.

2 Eduard Kimman’s thesis (1981) on the economic history of 19th and 20th-century Indonesian publishing goes into much greater depth about the decrees and their evolution over time, and their impact on the colonies.

3 Various aspects of a Malay scribe’s craft (penmanship, preferred paper, et al.), emotions, and mental states while copying manuscripts are discussed by Vladimir Braginsky (2002: 38–40), gleaned from specific verses written into various syair and hikayat.

4 Historically there are almost no extant manuals (manuscript or otherwise) relating to scribal practices or manuscript production, or of anything mechanical or technical in nature for that matter, in the Malay world. Annabel Teh Gallop (2018) ruminates on this absence in relation to manuscript writing tools.

5 Van Bruinessen’s survey of printed kitab kuning used in Javanese pesantren offers some insight into the categories of texts that might be accorded particular levels of socio-religious capital in some sectors of Malay communities.

6 Namely, Haji Muhammad Said bin Haji Muhammad Arsyad Rembang, Haji Muhammad Siraj bin Haji Muhammad Salih Rembang, and Encik Ibrahim Riau for instance (Proudfoot 1993: 40–41).

7 Related parallels can be found in a series of investigative articles by Braginsky, Gallop (2017), Mulaika Hijjas (2017), Jan van der Putten (2017), and Farouk Yahya (2017) discussing paratextual annotations, marks, and illustrations found in Malay manuscripts. In a sense, this article builds on that ‘scaffold’. See their contributions in Indonesia and the Malay World 45 (132): 146–291.

8 Lim (2021: 126–218) presents a preliminary proposal for an illustrated cataloguing and classification system (based on the thesis’ corpus) for printing defects and paratextual marks in Malay lithographed publications. This was built on a foundational list for describing typographical printing defects collaboratively developed by Laura Carnelos (assisted by Clare Bolton) during Carnelos’ research project (2015–2017) titled ‘PATRIMONiT. From cheap print to rare ephemera: 16th-century Italian ‘popular’ books at the British Library.

9 Mushaf is the name of the codex format of the Qur’an, and is used specifically to refer to the material form of a lithographed Qur’an in this article.

10 For instance, the mushaf at Pakualaman Masjid, Yogyakarta, and both mushaf at Bayt al-Qur’an, Jakarta. A private collection edition viewed by the author contains nisf markers printed without roundels.

11 This means that the first page of a quire will usually contain the second page of a juz; variations are possible, and this hinges on how a printer organised his pages for printing.

12 These measurements of the hypothesised stone conform to a known lithographic stone size for the period. For a list of other common sizes, see Michael Twyman (1972: 27).

13 Lithographic transfer ink could be easily made by printers and various recipes were circulated in trade manuals. It could also be purchased. More primitively, or in the name of financial prudence, any form of grease-based ink composed of a mixture of shellac, lampblack, and soap, animal fat, or plant oil, mixed well, would function equally well (Rhodes 1914: 53).

14 The fact that Singapore-lithographed mushaf are printed with both juz and nisf markers, and bifolium numbers to mark each sheet’s position within a gathering and the codex is indicative of an orderly and sophisticated production sequence at pre-press, on-press, and post-press stages. See for instance BQMI 1.2.1, Bayt al-Qur’an, Jakarta; and the uncatalogued mushaf at Pakualaman Masjid, Yogyakarta.

15 A lithographer would typically have scrapers of different widths at a printing house, each corresponding to stones of different widths.

16 For instance, LUB O 891 E 42 1890 Syair Siti Zubaidah, Leiden University Library, Leiden.

17 See for instance ER 2055 37064 / IBA 810 37064 1871 Syair Bunga Ayer Mawar, SOAS.

18 This defect is visible in two volumes: EC84.2 /31372 1849 Hikayat Abdullah at SOAS; A13Z 32 1863 Hikāyat Sulṭān Bustamām, Ancient India and Iran Trust, Cambridge.

19 Gatherings in A13Z 32 1863 Hikayat Sultan Bustamam comprise eight pages, folded from four conjugate leaves. The terminology for ‘Arabic’ numerals here follows the definition by Gallop (2015: 89–114) in outlining Arabic and Malay numeral forms in Malay seals.

20 For additional notes on Chinese paper stamps, and paper used in Malay manuscripts, see Devlin Fitzgerald (2017) and Gallop (2014).

21 The watermark indicates the paper mill as Jan, Claes and Aris van der Ley, and is likely to have been made in Zaandijk, the Netherlands after 1846. Imposition type and page dimensions of mushaf, hypothetically, can give us the possible length and width of the untrimmed sheets of paper, and lithographic stones used for their printing. The question and precise identification of paper types, watermarks, chainlines however, is a vast subject beyond the scope of this article (see Hinzler 1986: 5–7; Jones 1999: 97–108).

22 ‘Walter Medhurst to LMS, 22 July 1828’, CWM/LMS, Ultra Ganges, Batavia/Java, Incoming correspondence, Box 1, 1814–1843, Folder 3, Jacket A.

23 Twyman elaborates on the qualities of Solhofen limestone that made it prized by, and highly appealing to lithographers, and the process of quarrying the Solhofen stone.

24 O’Sullivan does not indicate the number of lithographic stones that Keasberry procured from Germany. She did, however, indicate that Keasberry’s request to the LMS was for four stones; two measuring 350 x 250mm, and the other two, 450 x 350mm (the dimensions are presumably converted by O’Sullivan).

25 A secondhand lithographic press owned by the American missionaries in Singapore was a donation. It was in turn loaned to, and used by the LMS. See ‘Annual tabular view, — for the year 1840’, ABC 16.2.4 (Mission to Singapore 1838–1844), Houghton Library, Harvard University.

26 The lithographic press was purchased for 500 guilders. Ibrahim bin Husayn was also noted in the colophon as being a student of Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir (Peeters 1996: 182–183).

27 Walter Medhurst made a wooden lithographic press from scratch in his Parapattan printing establishment. Records suggest that this press was difficult to maintain, and was quickly replaced when the means became available. ‘Walter Medhurst to LMS, 22 July 1828’, CWM/LMS, Ultra Ganges, Batavia/Java, Incoming correspondence, Box 1, 1814–1843, Folder 3, Jacket A.

28 Proudfoot (1993: 36) also mentions an instance of a 1920 article by Zwemer in which ‘Naqshabandia and Shathalia literature’ were sold in towns, cities, and railway stations in Java and Sumatra.

29 Various lithographed objects from Penyengat’s lithographic press(es) survive, two of which have been viewed by the author: an 1856 single-sheet astrological calendar PLANO 53 F 1: 28 Sa’at musytari (University of Leiden Library), and an Islamic history ER 2055 24241 (IBA 29 24241) Futuh al-Sham (SOAS), printed in 1879. The copyists responsible for both imprints are not identified. For a catalogue of extant Riau-printed artefacts, see Proudfoot (1993: 674). Jan van der Putten (1997: 717–736; 1997: 99–133) has written extensively about printing in Riau, and the lithographed works of Raja Ali Haji, the Riau doyen of Malay literature. For more, see Mulaika Hijjas (2011: 14–22).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wei Jin Darryl Lim

Wei Jin Darryl Lim is a book and print historian, with a focus on the histories of lithography, type and typography in the Malay world. His doctoral thesis, completed at the University of Reading, examined the transregional networks of lithographic printing in a 19th-century Malay milieu. He is the co-editor of a forthcoming volume to be published by Peter Lang entitled Script, print and letterforms in global contexts: the visual and the material. Darryl was previously an Early Career Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies, University of London, October 2022–2023, and the American Printing History Association’s Mark Samuels Lasner Fellow 2019. Email: [email protected]