Early Arabic Printing in the East

This book provides an overview of the activity and the output of the first Turkish press in the Ottoman Empire. Known as the Müteferrika Press, it was founded in Istanbul and was operated most actively from 1726 until 1747 when its founder Ibrahim Müteferrika passed away, though there were some printing efforts before this period and they continued after his death.

This volume retells the foundation story and activity of this press, focusing on its publications that were printed in Turkish but in Arabic script. These publications are discussed in terms of publication objectives, authors, contents, format and graphic layout, print run, sales, and later reprints and translations into European languages.

The book also includes images of the opening and colophon pages of all 17 publications, as well as images of all the engravings, geographical maps and charts included in them or printed separately. This information will be of particular use to scholars of the history of printing and Arabic typography, as well as to librarians, collectors, and curators who need to identify and catalogue surviving Müteferrika publications (books, maps and charts).

In 1724, Sylvester, a native of the island of Cyprus, was elected Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch and All the East. For more than four decades, he endeavored to preserve the legacy of one of the earliest Christian Churches in the Levant. He faced major challenges because of the ever changing balance of power between the Latin Church and its missionaries, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the French and English interests in the Levant, and the central and local Ottoman authorities. In his efforts to provide church books for the Arab Orthodox Christians, Sylvester was helped by rulers of the Romanian Principalities, Moldavia and Wallachia. He printed a number of books in Jassy and Bucharest and opened an Arabic press in Beirut. Alongside his patriarchal duties, Sylvester was also an accomplished icon painter. His works, in the Post-Byzantine Greek style of the 18th century, are preserved in Syrian and Lebanese churches, as well as elsewhere. Their study reveals just another aspect of his complex activity. The book presents for the first time in English the biography and achievements of Sylvester of Antioch, based on a wide range of contemporary Greek, Arabic and Romanian historical sources.

This first volume of Collected Works of the ERC Project TYPARABIC focuses on the history of printing during the 18^th century in the Ottoman Empire and the Romanian Principalities among diverse linguistic and confessional communities. Although "most roads lead to Istanbul," the many pathways of early modern Ottoman printing also connected authors, readers and printers from Central and South-Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the Levant.

The papers included in this volume are grouped in three sections. The first focuses on the first Turkish-language press in the Ottoman capital, examining the personality and background of its founder, İbrahim Müteferrika, the legal issues it faced, and its context within the multilingual Istanbul printing world. The second section brings together studies of printing and readership in Central and South-East Europe in Romanian, Greek and Arabic. The final section is made up of studies of the Arabic liturgical and biblical texts that were the main focus of Patriarch Athanasios III Dabbās’ efforts in the Romanian Principalities and Aleppo.

This volume will be of interest to scholars of the history of printing, Ottoman social history, Christian Arabic literature and Eastern Orthodox liturgy.