Constantinople Press

The Ottoman printing press at Constantinople appears as a compact example of the suppression of printing: authorized by Sultan Achmet, it was barely put to work before it was destroyed and its plant thrown into a well. Its abrupt installation and removal give concrete force to the passage’s warning that sovereigns may come to ban an art they once encouraged.

Establishment and destruction

The account says that Sultan Achmet yielded to the importunities of people described as pretenders to taste and consented to have a press erected at Constantinople. The press was hardly set to work before those responsible were obliged to destroy it. The account adds a stark final detail: the plant was thrown into a well. No reason for the reversal is specified, so the episode records the act of suppression without identifying who ordered it or what was printed.

Place in the argument

The press is introduced in a forecast about printing’s harmful effects. The author reasons that, if the disorders already caused by printing are judged alongside the day-by-day progress of its evils, sovereigns may eventually take as much trouble to banish the art as they once took to encourage it. The Constantinople episode supplies a miniature of that reversal: permission gives way almost immediately to destruction.

The press’s brief working life makes the example pointed rather than expansive. It is not presented as a history of Ottoman printing or as evidence about a particular publication; instead, its destruction and disposal in a well serve the passage’s warning about political authority turning against an introduced technology. The contrast between erecting the press and casting its plant away compresses the argument into a material sequence: adoption, interruption, erasure.