Muslims of Ethiopia – and of the Horn of Africa in general – have a venerable and still living manuscript tradition, whose dated antecedents can be traced to the beginning of the eighteenth century, even if codicological and paleographical analysis (in particular of the lay-out of manuscripts and of the styles of the handwriting) points to its earlier origin. Manuscripts have been continuously produced until now and there are many available examples of texts copied during the twentieth and even the twenty-first century. Moreover, as in other regions of the Islamic World, since the 1960s the practice began to spread to mechanically reproduce manuscripts, bound and sold just as printed books on the market. As a major turning point in the intellectual history of the Muslim communities of Ethiopia, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Islamic books authored by Ethiopian learned men started to be printed in Cairo at different printing presses. Taking as case studies the publication in Cairo of the works of the Ethiopian Muslim scholar shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn al-Annī (d. 1882) this paper describes the origins and the further development of an Islamic print-ing press in Ethiopia and tries to tentatively assess the impact the diffusion of printed books has had on the production and circulation of manuscripts in the Muslim communities of Ethiopia.