ABSTRACT
Keywords. Arabic, Contemporary chronicles, Impact of print scholarship, Journalism, Khabar, Lithography, Maqala, Orientalism, Print, Scribal culture.
At a certain point in his famous travelogue of Syria and Egypt in the late 18th century (1787), the Comte de Volney (d. 1820) digresses from observations
about the new environment in which he found himself to indulge in a moment of congratulatory self-reflection (Volney 1787:2:267-68; my emphasis).
