İbrahim Müteferrika
and the First Printed Books of the Islamic World
Yasemin Gencer
Synopsis:
This presentation video offers an overview of the first Islamic incunabula printed at the Müteferrika press in the first half of the eighteenth century. A chronological survey of their visual attributes reveals the Ottoman publisher’s early experimentations with the new medium.
Worksheet:
A worksheet for this video is available here.
Also visit the Khamseen worksheets page here.
References:
Gencer, Yasemin.“İbrahim Müteferrika and the Age of the Printed Manuscript.” In The Islamic Manuscript Tradition: Ten Centuries of Book Arts in Indiana University Collections, edited by Christiane Gruber, 154–193. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. 
Kut, Turgut and Fatma Türe, eds. Yazmadan Basmaya: Müteferrika, Mühendishane, Üsküdar. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1996.
Murphy, Christopher M., trans. “Appendix: Ottoman Imperial Documents Relating to the History of Books and Printing.” In The Book in the Islamic World: The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East, edited by George N. Atiyeh, 289–291. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
Sabev, Orlin. Waiting for Müteferrika: Glimpses of Ottoman Print Culture. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2018.
Zoss, Emily. “An Ottoman View of the World: The Kitab Cihannüma and Its Cartographic Contexts.” In The Islamic Manuscript Tradition: Ten Centuries of Book Arts in Indiana University Collections, edited by Christiane Gruber, 154–193. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
Citation:
Yasemin Gencer, “İbrahim Müteferrika and the First Printed Books of the Islamic World,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 28 August 2020.
Yasemin Gencer is a Pre-Faculty Fellow in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design at Wayne State University. She is a scholar of Islamic art and civilization specializing in the history of Ottoman and modern Turkish art and print culture. She has authored a number of articles on printing and the early Turkish Republican popular press, and she regularly writes a research and translation blog entitled Today in 1920s Turkey. Gencer is currently preparing for publication her English translation of Celal Nuri’s Hatem ül-Enbiya (Seal of the Prophets), an Ottoman Turkish scholarly monograph on the Prophet Muhammad written in 1914 CE.