Yemeni books printed between 1850 and 1950

[EN] This dataset collects bibliographical information about books printed between 1850 and 1950 that were written by Yemeni authors or belonged to the Yemeni-Zaydi literary tradition. The printing of these books began in the second half of the nineteenth century with European Orientalist scholars as well as in various places in India. In Yemen itself, a small-scale programme of publishing printed books emerged after the foundation of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen in 1918. Using the technical equipment left behind by the Ottomans, the production of printed books was part of the state’s politics of institutional and cultural modernisation. Yet the main place for printing was, since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Egyptian capital Cairo. The dataset attempts to contribute to the investigation of the transition from manuscript to print culture, of the Imamic state’s intellectual programme in its domestic context as well as overseas, and of the rise of Orientalist scholarship on Yemen.