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.
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.
Worksheet:
A worksheet for this video is available here.
Also visit the Khamseen worksheets page here.
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 scholar of Islamic art and civilization specializing in the history of Ottoman and modern Turkish art and print culture. She is the author of multiple articles on printing and the early Turkish Republican popular press and publishes a research and translation blog entitled Today in 1920s Turkey. Gencer is also preparing for publication her English translation of Celal Nuri’s Hatem ül-Enbiya (1914), an Ottoman Turkish scholarly monograph on the life of the Prophet Muhammad. She is an Affiliate Scholar at Indiana University’s Institute for Advanced Study and Content and Captions Coordinator of Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online. She also teaches Islamic Art History courses at Wayne State University.