Oral recitation preserved textual authority in pre-print Islamic scholarship

Evidence

This was a tradition which rejected the use of the printing press and accepted blindness (there was an entire college for the blind at al-Azhar) for the same reason. Namely, that the only way to read a text and retain its uncertain authority was to hear it read aloud, phrase by phrase, by one who had already mastered it, and to repeat and discuss it with such a master. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 421

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the epistemics of oral textual authority: a text’s authority is retained only through live recitation by a master, which is why print (freeing text from the master) and blindness both fit the same logic.
• XREF: Connects to the broader theme of oral vs. written authority across cultures — similar to how The Namesake and other works treat knowledge transmission, and to the communication-theory material on how media shape communities and symbols. — connects to: Scholastic method presupposed Scripture as the supreme authority in all debate; Shared recitation’s meaning does not survive passage into mature citizenship — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 361