İbrahim Müteferrika

İbrahim Müteferrika was the Ottoman printer authorized in 1727 to establish the first printing press in the Ottoman lands. His press introduced movable-type printing into a society where the technology had long been restricted, but permission came with close supervision. Its small output—and the limited continuation of the work by his family—shows the difference between allowing an innovation and allowing it to transform access to knowledge.

Permission Under Restriction

The opening came after a long prohibition. In 1485, Bayezid II forbade Muslims to print in Arabic, and Selim I reinforced the rule in 1515. Only in 1727 did Ahmed III issue a decree permitting Müteferrika to establish a press. The delay contrasted sharply with printing’s spread through Western Europe from the mid-fifteenth century, where books became increasingly available after Johannes Gutenberg’s movable-type innovation.

The decree presented the new technique in celebratory language, describing the day it would be unveiled like a bride, but its authorization was conditional. Müteferrika’s books had to be checked by a panel of religious and legal scholars: three Kadis and the Sheykh of the Kasim Paşa Mevlevihane were named as overseers of proofreading. The arrangement made the press possible while placing its production under institutional scrutiny.

A Small Publishing Record

Müteferrika’s press began operating in 1729. By the time he stopped working in 1743, it had printed only seventeen books. His family attempted to continue the enterprise, but produced just seven more before giving up in 1797. These figures mark the narrow scope of the permission: printing was no longer wholly forbidden, yet the press did not displace the existing practices of book production.

Outside the Ottoman imperial center in Turkey, printing arrived later still. In Egypt, the first press was established in 1798 by Frenchmen accompanying Napoleon Bonaparte’s unsuccessful attempt to capture the country. Well into the second half of the nineteenth century, scribes continued to hand-copy most books across the Ottoman Empire; in the early eighteenth century, Istanbul alone was reputed to have eighty thousand scribes.

Knowledge and Political Control

The restrictions on Müteferrika’s press belonged to a broader pattern of political control over information. Printed books could widen literacy and make knowledge available beyond the groups that had traditionally guarded it. They could also circulate ideas that challenged established political and social arrangements. The Ottoman rulers and religious authorities therefore had reason to treat printing not merely as a technical improvement, but as a possible threat to the existing order.

The educational contrast was stark by 1800: probably only 2 to 3 percent of Ottoman citizens were literate, compared with 60 percent of adult men and 40 percent of adult women in England. The account links the sultans’ hostility to printing with the absolutist character of Ottoman institutions, which sought to preserve control over knowledge as well as political power. Müteferrika’s limited authorization thus stands as both an opening and a boundary: the press was allowed to operate, but its capacity to unsettle the distribution of knowledge remained constrained.