Print and the Urdu Public is a welcome addition to the rich and ever-growing scholarship on print and publics in colonial India, and on Urdu print culture, qasbahs, and Muslim publics in particular.Footnote ¹ While other studies, such as Dubrow's Cosmopolitan Dreams and Kavita Datla's The Language of Secular Islam, have emphasized the capaciousness of Urdu as a cosmopolitan, secular language, this book specifically focuses on Madīnah (1912–1960s) as a Muslim Urdu newspaper.Footnote ² Coming out of the qasbah (small town) of Bijnor in northwestern Uttar Pradesh, Madīnah “transformed its geographic isolation into a source of moral authenticity for the modern age, and as a modern Islamic voice it wove its local public into the fabric of a history lived by Muslims in many places” (p. 182). What made Madīnah a Muslim newspaper—and in the early, feverish decades of the twentieth century—a very successful one? It was a combination of attractive visual and poetic aesthetics, vocal concern for the fate of the Caliphate and of Muslims in the wider world, a claim to represent the interests of Indian Muslims, and the voices of leading Islamic scholars or ‘ulamā. Compared to earlier qasbah newspapers, which focused on local and agricultural news, Madīnah connected Islam both to the qasbah context and to broader political processes and aspirations. Its telegram news section borrowed Hafiz's line ‘tāzah ba-tāzah nau ba-nau’ (literally, “ever fresh and ever new,” p. 76). Madīnah made the career of its proprietor, Majid Hasan, who, like Naval Kishore, another successful print entrepreneur, seems to have been a self-made man, and it employed many a graduate of madrasahs such as Deoband and Nadwa (chapter 1).

Megan Eaton Robb reads Madīnah through two analytical prisms: space and time. Spatially, Madīnah successfully projected the qasbah as a space of “moral authenticity” in contrast with the godless colonial cities: “We are grateful to exalted God that he has allowed us to live in a remote township to perform the duties of journalism, a township that is safe from the piety-destroying and faith-removing elements of civilization” (p. 76).Footnote ³ The timescape of the qasbah combined rootedness in the longue durée history of Islam in South Asia with a keenness to keep up with the pace of the times, or raftār-i zamānah. The colonial qasbah emerges not as a space of nostalgia, but as a secure vantage point onto the contemporary world, and as a node in a lively network stretching across India to the wider Muslim world through madrasahs, associations, travel, scholarship, and of course, the press. An ad for a “Muslim wristwatch for faithful Muslims” including an image of the crescent, Arabic writing, and Roman numbers (p. 72) and a childhood memory of daily evening gatherings after prayers to read and comment the news, articles, and editorials of Madīnah convey the success of Madīnah in “[e]mbodying as a business the virtuous rhythms of Muslim devotion” and becoming “an indelible part of the life rhythm of its home qasbah and of communities far beyond, vividly remembered to this day” (p. 182).

Writing a monograph on a newspaper is a daunting task—how does one read, process, select, arrange, and shape an argument when the material is so vast, heterogeneous, and overwhelming? One must be brutally selective and yet convey the peculiar texture and appeal of the paper, summarize the articles and still communicate their particular voice, tone, and style of argument. Print and the Urdu Public is admirably clear and crisp in its many arguments, but this comes partly at the cost of a thicker description of the newspaper and a fuller discussion of the style and voice of the articles and editorials. The book pays attention to the technologies of the telegraph, railway, and lithography, and there are wonderful pages on Madīnah's covers and its lithographic calligraphy. However, the detailed discussion of the lithographic production process (chapter 3) does not quite explain how “the visual culture of Urdu as expressed through the newspaper reveals a popular culture whose production and consumption constituted pious action” (p. 116). One would also have expected a greater focus on just how Madīnah managed to continue to project an ashrāf identity while becoming a profitable mass newspaper for the “common” Muslim (p. 76), or on how the ‘ulamā it gave space to adapted their arguments and style to the broad newspaper public. Some sloppy copyediting from Oxford University Press is counterbalanced by a beautiful, vibrant yellow cover.