Printing · a Light

The first Ottoman press printed a dictionary in 1729

Ibrahim Muteferrika, born in Hungary and a convert to Islam, obtained permission from Sultan Ahmed III and a legal opinion from the chief mufti, and in 1729 produced the first book printed with Arabic type by an Ottoman press: a two volume Arabic to Turkish dictionary. The permission excluded the Qur'an and religious texts, which stayed with the copyists, and his list ran to seventeen titles including geography, history and a treatise on military reform. Printing in Istanbul was not new. Jewish, Armenian and Greek presses had been working in the city since the 1490s, in their own scripts. What was new in 1729 was Arabic type, and the argument that had to be won first.

Istanbul · 1729