Bulaq Press

From The Arab Awakening, George Antonius, G P Putnam's Sons, 1946. 

 

Bulaq printing press was established in Cairo in 1922. Until that time, scarcity of books in Arabic was a factor in the lack of cultural development in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire. Bulaq, along with another printing press established in Constantinople in 1816, published books of scientific or literary value in Arabic.

 

Bulaq Press was the more important from the point of view of Arab culture. Between 1822 and 1830 its publications amounted to over fifty books in Arabic, Turkish and Persian. By 1850, it had issued some 300 books in those three languages, of which a good portion were in Arabic and related to medicine, surgery, mathematics and literature.  

 

In 1958 the printing press and its operations were relocated to the Imbaba area of Cairo.