Ahmed El Shamsy is an associate professor of Islamic thought at the University of Chicago. As part of a new series from New Lines Magazine big ideas from history, El Shamsy joins culture editor Lydia Wilson to talk about how the Middle East changed in the age of printing. They discuss how the “European book drain” induced the Arab world’s adoption of the printing press, why printing enabled a revival of Islamic classical tradition, and how that revival led to the creation of the modern Middle East. Produced by Joshua Martin