The history of the printing press in the Ottoman Empire begins not in 1727 but in 1493. That year the Jewish press in Istanbul printed its first book; the Armenians founded their own press in 1567, and the Greeks theirs in 1627. The real question is why Muslims were late to start printing in the Arabic script. İbrahim Müteferrika’s printing press opened in 1727 with a ferman (imperial edict) of Ahmed III and a fatwa from the şeyhülislam (chief mufti), on condition that it would not print religious books.
Quick Summary
- Istanbul’s first Jewish, Armenian and Greek presses began work in 1493, 1567 and 1627 respectively.
- The first Turkish press using the Arabic script obtained permission by ferman and fatwa in July 1727; religious books were excluded.
- The first book was the Vankulu Dictionary, completed on 31 January 1729; by 1742 the press had printed seventeen works.
- The printing ban attributed to the reigns of Bayezid II and Selim I cannot be documented.
- The books were not as cheap as expected and the market was narrow; the press closed after Müteferrika.
- The Ottoman printing press really spread in the nineteenth century; by the end of that century Istanbul had fifty-four large presses.
Contents
- When did the printing press reach the Ottoman lands?
- How was the first Turkish printing press in Arabic script founded?
- The first book and the works Müteferrika printed
- The claim of a religious ban and the fermans
- Calligraphers, cost and readers: the real reasons
- How did the Ottoman printing press spread in the nineteenth century?
- Was the Ottoman printing press really late?
- Frequently asked questions
- Conclusion
When Did the Printing Press Reach the Ottoman Lands?
It is generally accepted that the first printing with movable type was done by Johann Gutenberg in Mainz in 1440. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, Spanish Jews who had taken refuge in the Ottoman state brought the printing press to Istanbul towards the end of the same century. A law book called Arba’ah Turim, printed by the Nahmias brothers, became the first product of this press on 13 December 1493.
The Armenian and Greek communities also founded their own presses. The first Armenian press in Istanbul was opened in 1567 by Tokatlı Apkar (Apkar of Tokat), who had learned printing in Italy. The first Greek press was founded in 1627 by Nicodemus Metaxas; it closed the following year under pressure from the Jesuits. According to the encyclopedia, the non-Muslim presses concentrated mainly on works on religious subjects.
A book of psalms printed in Aleppo in 1706, for its part, is the first work printed in Arabic in the Ottoman Arab world. We discussed the place of the non-Muslim communities in the Ottoman order in our article on the Ottoman millet system. This picture shows that the question of the Ottoman printing press is really about printing in the Arabic script by Muslims.
How Was the First Turkish Printing Press in Arabic Script Founded?
The Turkish press was born amid the search for innovation that marked the Tulip Era. We described the general framework of the period in our article on what the Ottoman Tulip Era meant. Here we focus only on how the venture to set up a printing press in the Ottoman Empire obtained permission.
The Paris Embassy and Said Efendi
Yirmisekiz Çelebi Mehmed Efendi, who had also taken part in the Passarowitz negotiations, was sent to France as ambassador extraordinary in 1720 and returned in October 1721. His son Said Efendi had gone to Paris with him. According to the encyclopedia, Said Efendi saw printing at close quarters in France and studied it. On his return, also making use of his father’s influence with the state, he brought about the founding of the first Turkish printing press.
Who Was İbrahim Müteferrika?
İbrahim Müteferrika was born in the city of Kolozsvár (today Cluj, in Romania) in Transylvania. His birth is estimated to have been between 1670 and 1674; his original name and family are unknown. According to the research of Niyazi Berkes, he belonged to the Unitarian denomination, which rejected the Trinity. He became a Muslim, entered Ottoman service and in 1716 became a müteferrika of the imperial court (dergâh-ı âlî), that is, a member of a select corps attached to the palace. In his own day he was better known as “Basmacı İbrahim Efendi” (İbrahim Efendi the Printer).
Permission for the Ottoman Printing Press: Ferman, Fatwa and Conditions
In 1726 Müteferrika wrote a treatise called Vesiletü’t-tıbaa (The Means of Printing). According to Erhan Afyoncu, he argued in it that thanks to the press, texts would be printed more legibly and without errors, and prices would fall. According to Kemal Beydilli, the treatise stressed that the works to be printed would be dictionaries and books on history, medicine, physics, astronomy and geography. According to the treatise, religious books would not be printed, and the privilege of printing in the Arabic script should not be granted to foreigners.
Permission was granted to Müteferrika and Said Efendi in early July 1727. It rested on a ferman of Ahmed III and on the famous fatwa of the şeyhülislam Yenişehirli Abdullah Efendi concerning the printing of non-religious works. The grand vizier, Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha, also took the venture under his protection.
According to Beydilli, the berat (warrant) of privilege provided for four members of the ulema to serve as proofreaders (musahhih) and for sixteen people to write supporting commendations (takriz). Beydilli regards these as necessary official formalities and notes that they gave a legitimate identity to a press whose setting-up had probably been completed long before. Indeed, by his own account, Müteferrika had been engaged in printing work since 1719. We described the place of the office that issued fatwas within the state in our article on the şeyhülislam and the balance between religion and state.
Where Did the Type and the Presses Come From?
The press was set up in İbrahim Müteferrika’s house in the Yavuz Sultan Selim quarter of Istanbul. According to Beydilli, the first technical help came from the city’s non-Muslim presses: a printing press was obtained from the Armenian press, and the help of Jews was used in casting type. When Said Efendi’s attempt to have Arabic type cast did not prove very successful, six Turkish craftsmen were sent to Holland via Vienna for training. Some 200–250 kilos of Arabic type were cast there and brought to Istanbul.
The First Printed Book and the Works Müteferrika Printed
The press’s first book was the Vankulu Dictionary (Vankulu Lügati), completed on 31 January 1729. According to Afyoncu, the work, which appears in the sources mostly under this name, is a translation of al-Jawhari’s al-Sihah (Sıhâhu’l-Cevherî). According to Turgut Kut, the use of metal type among the Turks also began at this press. The name of the press appears for the first time in this book, as “Dârüttıbâati’l-ma‘mûre” (the Flourishing Printing House).
According to Beydilli, the press printed seventeen works between 1729 and 1742; if the histories of Raşid and Küçükçelebizade are counted as one work, the number is sixteen. Afyoncu points out that the books were concentrated in the fields of history, geography, language and military affairs. They included Katib Çelebi’s Cihannüma, the History of Naima and İbrahim Müteferrika’s own work, the Usulü’l-hikem. According to Afyoncu, it was in this work that Müteferrika first used the expression “nizâm-ı cedîd” (new order).
Print runs were generally 500 copies; 1,000 copies of Tuhfetü’l-kibar and 1,200 of Tarih-i Seyyah were printed. The total output is 12,500 copies in Beydilli’s entry “Matbaa” (Printing Press) and 10–11 thousand in the entry “Müteferrika Matbaası” (Müteferrika Press). According to the 1747 record of Müteferrika’s estate, 70 per cent of the books had been sold and 2,981 books remained unsold.
The Claim of a Religious Ban and the Fermans
The most widespread account of the Ottoman printing press rests on a ban. According to this account, in the reigns of Bayezid II and Selim I (Yavuz Sultan Selim), Muslims were forbidden to print works in Arabic letters. According to Beydilli, although this claim has been put forward, it cannot be documented. Arabic works printed in Europe in Maghribi letters, on the other hand, had been brought into the Ottoman lands for sale at an early date.
In October 1588 Murad III issued a ferman allowing the free sale of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s commentary on Euclid, which had been printed in Arabic in Rome. According to Beydilli, this ferman, added to the printed edition of the book, is the first example of printing in Turkish. In his view, the ferman also shows that there was no serious prejudice against printed books.
The Story of Attempts Before the Printing Press
There are also stories about attempts made before Müteferrika. According to Babinger’s account, a set of printing equipment brought from Venice was confiscated and thrown into the sea, and a convert (mühtedi) who wanted to bring in a press was executed. An attempt in the reign of Mehmed IV also came to nothing after the ulema warned that the copyists would lose their livelihood. Beydilli states that it is not possible to fully investigate the accuracy of this information.
Were the Ulema Against the Printing Press?
According to Beydilli, the claim that the ulema caused the delay by opposing the printing press likewise “has nothing acceptable about it”. The şeyhülislam issued a fatwa, leading scholars wrote commendations, and boards of ulema proofread the books. The former qadis of Istanbul, Salonica and Galata and the sheikh of the Kasımpaşa Mevlevi lodge were appointed to supervise and correct the first works.
The restriction on religious books, however, was real and lasted a long time. According to a ferman dated 3 August 1797, cited by İsmail E. Erünsal, the printing and sale of the Qur’an, books of hadith and other religious works were forbidden. Beydilli, for his part, notes that the press opened in 1797 in Kazan, under Russian rule, was given permission to print only religious works, “in exact contrast to the initial Ottoman practice”.
Calligraphers, Cost and Readers: The Real Reasons
The reasons most often cited in the debate over the Ottoman printing press are the calligraphers, cost and the readership.
Were Calligraphers and Copyists an Obstacle?
The best-known explanation is the resistance of the copyists (müstensih), who made their living by copying books. According to Beydilli, this claim “goes no further than a conjecture based on guesswork”. Similar concerns existed in Europe too. In Paris, 6,000 copyists and book illustrators, fearing for their jobs, had opposed the printing press as “a diabolical art”.
The number of copyists is also disputed. It is recorded that in the eighteenth century there were 80,000 copyists in the Ottoman lands, some 6,000 of whom worked in Istanbul; the first figure goes back to Marsigli. According to Beydilli, this information shows that works could be reproduced in sufficient numbers and that there was a significant group that could have objected for economic reasons. Erünsal, on the other hand, writes that “rather exaggerated figures” have been given on this subject. In his view, it does not seem possible today to find in libraries the books written by so many calligraphers.
According to Beydilli, the objection that might have come from the copyists was resolved by allowing only works on non-religious subjects. The claim that Istanbul’s 6,000 copyists took part in the revolt of 1730, meanwhile, goes back to Baron de Tott. According to Tott, the press and the paper mill at Kağıthane had also been destroyed. Beydilli states that these claims do not reflect the truth and that the press came through the uprising unscathed. According to Afyoncu, the press’s activity was interrupted for about a year only during the Patrona Halil Revolt.
There was an aesthetic concern as well. According to Beydilli, Arabic works printed in Europe in ugly type disturbed eyes accustomed to the art of calligraphy, and it took time to get used to them. Long texts and copies of the Qur’an (mushaf) were written in the naskh script; according to Kut, only naskh type was used at Müteferrika’s press as well.
Arabic Letters and Technical Difficulties
Arabic letters take different forms at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of a word. According to Kut, this made the layout of the type case all the more important. The type cases of the Arabic-script era had 480 compartments; those for Latin letters had 141 or 118.
Cost, Readers and the Problem of the Market
Müteferrika had argued that printed books could be obtained more cheaply. According to Beydilli, however, the sale prices of printed books did not turn out to be as low as expected. An example of the price of copying by hand appears in Galland’s diary: a sheikh of the booksellers (sahaflar şeyhi) had a work of history copied at 70 akçe for every sixteen pages.
The market for the Ottoman printing press was also narrow. The non-Muslim presses printed far more works; Beydilli finds it misleading to explain this by differences in literacy or demand. In his view, Turkish books addressed a more limited group within the Ottoman borders who understood the language. Greek, Hebrew and Armenian books, by contrast, could also reach a much wider public living beyond those borders.
How Did the Ottoman Printing Press Spread in the Nineteenth Century?
A Long Pause After Müteferrika
After İbrahim Müteferrika’s death, the Ottoman printing press entered a long period of stagnation. Its operation was left to two qadis, İbrahim Efendi and Ahmed Efendi; according to Beydilli, they achieved nothing apart from the second edition of the Vankulu Dictionary in 1757. According to Turgut Kut, under a ferman issued in 1784 the court historian (vakanüvis) Ahmed Vasıf Efendi and Beylikçi Raşid Efendi bought the press and ran it again. This press, too, closed down completely in 1792–93.
From the Mühendishane to the Dârüttıbâa
Printing in the Ottoman Empire revived in the Nizam-ı Cedid (New Order) period of Selim III. For the Mühendishane-i Berri-i Hümayun (Imperial School of Land Engineering), founded at Hasköy in 1795, Raşid Efendi’s printing equipment and 316 volumes of books were bought in 1797 for 7,500 kuruş. We described the place of the engineering schools (mühendishane) in education in our article on the Ottoman education system. The press reopened at Üsküdar in 1803 and took the name “Dârüttıbâati’l-cedîde” (the New Printing House). In the uprisings of 1807 and 1808 it became one of the targets of the reaction against the Nizam-ı Cedid and was badly damaged.
In 1824 the press moved to the Istanbul side of the Bosphorus. According to Beydilli, it became truly active only in the new era that began after 1826. Towards the end of the century the number of presses in the provinces reached the hundreds; in Istanbul alone, fifty-four large presses were at work.
Takvim-i Vekayi and the Official Press
The state’s official gazette, the Takvim-i Vekayi (Calendar of Events), published its first issue on 1 November 1831. According to Nesimi Yazıcı, the aim was to inform public opinion at home and abroad more regularly and quickly. In its early period the paper had a little over 3,000 subscribers. Officials of a certain rank were obliged to subscribe for 120 kuruş a year.
In 1832 the management of the newspaper and of the press was given to Sahaflar Şeyhizade Esad Efendi, and the two were merged. Until the Second Constitutional Era, the press kept the name Matbaa-i Amire (Imperial Press). According to Turgut Kut, Arabic letters were used in printing and publishing until 1 December 1928.
Was the Ottoman Printing Press Really Late? Different Views
How fitting the word “late” is for the Ottoman printing press is a matter of debate. According to Kemal Beydilli, there is no valid basis for the common view of 1727 as a delay. His reasoning is that the existing literate public and the madrasa students were sufficiently supplied with the books they needed. He also bases this view on the printing and sales figures after the press opened.
According to Beydilli, judging by the volume of sales, it could be argued that Müteferrika’s press can hardly be considered a failure. On the other hand, Beydilli writes that the failure to reach a wide readership played an important role in the closure of the press after Müteferrika. Erhan Afyoncu also notes that the books’ failure to sell played a part in the fall of print runs from 1,000–1,200 to 500.
There are also studies that openly treat the subject as a “delay”. The encyclopedia’s bibliography includes İsmet Binark’s article “Türkiye’ye Matbaanın Geç Girişinin Sebepleri Üzerine” (On the Reasons for the Late Entry of the Printing Press into Turkey, 1968). Orhan Koloğlu’s book Basımevi ve Basının Gecikme Sebepleri ve Sonuçları (The Reasons for and Consequences of the Delay of the Printing House and the Press, 1987) is on the same list. The Turkish press in Arabic script opened 234 years after the first Jewish printing in Istanbul.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was the printing press established in the Ottoman Empire?
In Istanbul a Jewish press was already printing books in 1493. The first Turkish press in Arabic script, on the other hand, received permission in July 1727 and printed its first book in 1729.
Who founded the printing press in the Ottoman Empire?
The first press in Istanbul was founded by Spanish Jews at the end of the fifteenth century. The Turkish press in Arabic script, on the other hand, was founded by İbrahim Müteferrika and Said Efendi.
What was the first book Müteferrika printed?
The first book was the Vankulu Dictionary, completed on 31 January 1729. The work is a translation of al-Jawhari’s al-Sihah.
How many books did İbrahim Müteferrika print?
His press printed seventeen works between 1729 and 1742. The print run was usually 500 copies.
Was the printing press forbidden by religion in the Ottoman Empire?
The ban attributed to Bayezid II and Selim I cannot be documented. The 1727 permission, however, did not cover religious books. And according to a ferman dated 1797, the printing and sale of the Qur’an, hadith and other religious books were forbidden.
Conclusion
The printing press entered the Ottoman lands at the end of the fifteenth century with Jewish printers, and Armenian and Greek presses followed. The Turkish press in Arabic script was founded in 1727 with a ferman, a fatwa and the condition that it would not print religious books. The alleged early bans cannot be documented, while the narrow readership played an important role in the closure of the press after Müteferrika. The Ottoman printing press became widespread only in the nineteenth century, with the official press and the Takvim-i Vekayi.
Sources
- TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Matbaa” (Printing Press; Ottoman State: Kemal Beydilli; Printing Types: Turgut Kut)
- TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Müteferrika Matbaası” (Müteferrika Press; Kemal Beydilli)
- TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “İbrâhim Müteferrika” (Erhan Afyoncu)
- TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Dârüttıbâa” (Printing House; Turgut Kut)
- TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Sahaf” (Bookseller; İsmail E. Erünsal)
- TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry “Takvîm-i Vekāyi‘” (Nesimi Yazıcı)
