Post by wbb on Dec 29, 2010 5:35:19 GMT -5
Ibrahim Müteferrika or Turkish: Ýbrahim Müteferrika (1674 – 1745) was a Transylvanian-born Ottoman polymath: a publisher, printer, courtier, diplomat, man of letters, astronomer, historian, historiographer, Islamic scholar and theologian, sociologist,[1] and the first Muslim to run a printing press with movable Arabic type.[2] His volumes, printed in Istanbul and using custom-made fonts, are occasionally referred to as "Turkish incunabula".[2][3] Muteferrika, whose last name derived from his employment as a müteferrika, head of the household, under Sultan Ahmed III and during the Tulip Era, was also a geographer, astronomer, and philosopher.[2]
Born in Kolozsvár (present-day Cluj-Napoca, Romania), he was an ethnic Hungarian Unitarian who converted to Islam.[2][4] His original Hungarian language name is unknown.[2]
Following a 1726 report on the efficiency of the new system, which he drafted and presented simultaneously to Grand Vizier Nevþehirli Damat Ýbrahim Pasha, the Grand Mufti, and the clergy, and a later request submitted to Sultan Ahmed, he received permission to publish non-religious books (despite opposition from some calligraphers and religious leaders).[2] Muteferrika's press published its first book in 1729, and, by 1743, issued 17 works in 23 volumes (each having between 500 and 1,000 copies).[2][3]
Among the works published by Müteferrika were historical and generically scientific works, as well as Katip Çelebi's world atlas Cihannüma (loosely translated as The Mirror of the World or the World Seer).[2] In the appendices that he added to his printing, Müteferrika discussed the Copernican view of astronomy in detail, with references to relatively up-to-date scientific arguments for and against it. In this regard, he is considered one of the first people to properly introduce heliocentrism to the Ottoman readers.[5]
After 1742, however, Turkish printing activities were discontinued and an attempt by the British diplomat James Mario Matra, motivated by the exorbitant prices for manuscript books, to reestablish a press in Constantinople was aborted in 1779.[6] In his account, Matra refers to the strong opposition of the scribes which Müteferrika's enterprise had to face earlier:
A Press had been set up here about sixty years ago in the turbulent reign of Ahmed III but those who maintained themselves by copying of Books, apprehending with reason that their trade would be totally ruined, were so loud in their clamours as to alarm the Seraglio, and as they were supported by a seditious Corps of Janizarys, the Sultan apprehending what really did after happen, that as he mounted the throne by one insurrection, he might be tumbled from it by another, gave way to their complaints, and suppressed the Press, before anything better than the Koran, Sunna, and some trifling books of Mathematicks had been struck off.[6]
A statue of Müteferrika can be found just outside the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul[7]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_Muteferrika
Born in Kolozsvár (present-day Cluj-Napoca, Romania), he was an ethnic Hungarian Unitarian who converted to Islam.[2][4] His original Hungarian language name is unknown.[2]
Following a 1726 report on the efficiency of the new system, which he drafted and presented simultaneously to Grand Vizier Nevþehirli Damat Ýbrahim Pasha, the Grand Mufti, and the clergy, and a later request submitted to Sultan Ahmed, he received permission to publish non-religious books (despite opposition from some calligraphers and religious leaders).[2] Muteferrika's press published its first book in 1729, and, by 1743, issued 17 works in 23 volumes (each having between 500 and 1,000 copies).[2][3]
Among the works published by Müteferrika were historical and generically scientific works, as well as Katip Çelebi's world atlas Cihannüma (loosely translated as The Mirror of the World or the World Seer).[2] In the appendices that he added to his printing, Müteferrika discussed the Copernican view of astronomy in detail, with references to relatively up-to-date scientific arguments for and against it. In this regard, he is considered one of the first people to properly introduce heliocentrism to the Ottoman readers.[5]
After 1742, however, Turkish printing activities were discontinued and an attempt by the British diplomat James Mario Matra, motivated by the exorbitant prices for manuscript books, to reestablish a press in Constantinople was aborted in 1779.[6] In his account, Matra refers to the strong opposition of the scribes which Müteferrika's enterprise had to face earlier:
A Press had been set up here about sixty years ago in the turbulent reign of Ahmed III but those who maintained themselves by copying of Books, apprehending with reason that their trade would be totally ruined, were so loud in their clamours as to alarm the Seraglio, and as they were supported by a seditious Corps of Janizarys, the Sultan apprehending what really did after happen, that as he mounted the throne by one insurrection, he might be tumbled from it by another, gave way to their complaints, and suppressed the Press, before anything better than the Koran, Sunna, and some trifling books of Mathematicks had been struck off.[6]
A statue of Müteferrika can be found just outside the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul[7]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_Muteferrika