Waiting for Meferrika ― Glimpses on Ottoman Print Culture

This book is a study of the first Ottoman/Muslim printer Ibrahim Müteferrika and his printing activity in the first half of the eighteenth century. By reviewing the existing views in narratives dating from the fifteenth through the nineteenth century and modern scholarly works, most of them quite critically discussing the relatively late introduction of Ottoman Turkish/Muslim printing, the book argues that the delay was mainly due to the lack of an appropriate printer who would be capable and eager enough to set a printing house and whom the Ottoman authority could trust. By focusing on Müteferrika’s western-formed mindset the book detects the influence of his printing enterprise upon the transition from scribal tradition to print culture.

Orlin Sabev is Associate Professor at the Institute of Balkan Studies with Centre for Thracology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Sofia). He has published six books and over a hundred articles in Bulgarian, Turkish, and English on various topics in the field of Ottoman education, print culture, social history and sexuality, in particular: on the history of Ottoman/Muslim education (2001), on the first Ottoman Turkish/Muslim printing press in Constantinople in 1726-1746 (2004 and 2006), on the history of Robert College, founded in Constantinople in 1863 by American missionaries (2014 and 2015), and on the history of Ottoman libraries (2017).