Muslim reading rooms in the Caucasus: adaptation, emulation, and the cultivation of a reading public

In the early twentieth century, a burgeoning group of middle-class Muslim intellectuals in the southern Caucasus promoted native-language literacy and reading culture through a multifaceted programme of reform. Highly prioritized in this programme was the establishment of reading rooms. Highlighting common themes that characterized the print revolution that transformed societies from the eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia, this article analyses the role of reading rooms as key sites for the dissemination of texts, the promotion of bourgeois cultural values, and the development of a specific cultural identity. It argues that looking at the proliferation of reading rooms and the socialization that occurred within their walls provides key insights into the evolution of literate culture in the Middle East.