How the Ottoman Empire "Slept Through" the Book Printing
History The story of how the Ottoman Empire abandoned the printing press for three hundred years has long been a textbook example of technological backwardness. The usual story goes like this: the sultan became alarmed, the clergy became uneasy, calligraphers went on strike—and the empire stood in the way of progress. But a closer examination of the sources reveals that the real picture is far more complex, and many "commonly known facts" turn out to be myths, growing from a single, unreliable piece of evidence.
When printing came to Istanbul
Printing arrived in the Ottoman Empire not at the end of the 15th century, as is commonly stated, but at its very end. In 1493–1494, the first printing presses appeared in Istanbul and Thessaloniki. They were founded by Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain after the signing of the Edict of Alhambra. The brothers David and Samuel Ibn Nahmias opened a printing house in Istanbul and began printing books in Hebrew. In their masthead, they prudently wrote: "May God preserve Sultan Bayezid, amen."
This fact alone calls into question the popular story of a complete ban on printing. If the sultan had indeed issued a decree in 1485 banning book printing under penalty of death, where would the printing press have emerged eight years later—and why did it flourish?
The Shadow of André Thevet
The only source that mentions the decrees of Bayezid II and Selim I banning printing is a book by the Frenchman André Thevet, royal cosmographer of France, published in 1584. In his biography of Gutenberg, Thevet makes a digression and reports that Sultan Bayezid II banned the use of printed books in 1483 under penalty of death, and his son Selim I confirmed the ban in 1515.
The problem is that Thevet was not a reliable observer. In his lifetime, he was accused of charlatanism and plagiarism. He visited the Ottoman Empire from 1549 to 1554, but first mentioned the decrees banning the press when he was 82 years old—thirty years after his visit. Ottoman archival sources before the 18th century are silent about any ban on printing. We can neither confirm nor deny Thevet's words, but building a large-scale historical narrative on them would be rash.
It's worth noting, however, that the dates in Teve's account correspond to the actual reigns of the sultans. This may indicate that he was relying on actual information, but distorted by time and transmission.
What was actually prohibited
Even if Bayezid and Selim's decrees did exist, they didn't concern printing in general, but only the Arabic script. This is precisely how earlier and more reliable European sources describe the ban. Pierre Belon, a French naturalist who visited Istanbul in 1546–1549, wrote that the Jewish printing house printed in Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, and German. "But," he added, "they don't print in Turkish or Arabic, because they are not allowed to."
Why Arabic script? The answer lies not so much in religious censorship as in a combination of factors. Arabic script is cursive, with letters connected by ligatures and taking different forms depending on their position in a word. This meant that printing Arabic required six times more typefaces than European alphabets. The typesetting process became significantly more labor-intensive and expensive. A typical European press became a cumbersome machine, requiring specialized knowledge and additional time from the typesetter.
Nevertheless, printing did exist in the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian community had its own printing press from 1567 to 1569. In 1546, the Jewish Soncino family published the Torah in four languages, including Arabic, but in Hebrew script—and this was permitted by the authorities. Later, in 1610, a Maronite archbishop printed the Psalter in Syriac and Arabic, using Syriac letters. So the ban was targeted: it concerned a specific script, not the idea of reproducing texts.
The Myth of the Hundred Thousand Calligraphers
Another legend often associated with the Ottoman ban on printing is the story of a colossal army of scribes who supposedly resisted the introduction of printing presses. Estimates range from 30 to 100, but upon closer inspection, they turn out to be the product of a decades-long game of telephone.
An English traveler who visited Istanbul in 1610 mentioned only a "number" of scribes facing unemployment. By the 1670s, this number had become "infinite" in European sources. In the 1680s, the figure of 10-12 appeared. In the 1700s, 30. And in the 1730s, the Italian diplomat Count Marsilli reported 90 scribes in Istanbul. Marsilli himself wrote that there was no direct ban on printing in the Ottoman Empire, but that the authorities feared that printing would put tens of thousands of people out of work.
Researcher Anton Howes, who has thoroughly studied the primary sources, points out an important nuance: not a single source states that the scribes themselves opposed printing. Their unemployment is cited as an argument the authorities used to reject proposals from foreign traders and missionaries. This wasn't a corporate struggle, but protectionist rhetoric—a kind of "protection of domestic producers" in the pre-capitalist era.
Why printing didn't catch on
The most interesting question is not why printing was banned, but why Muslim rulers themselves refused to use it. The answer likely lies in economics, not ideology.
For European monarchs and the church, printing was a tool for controlling information and a profitable business. For the Ottoman sultans, these advantages were much less obvious. Arabic script made printing expensive and inconvenient. Gutenberg's wooden presses were cumbersome and required significant capital investment. The tradition of calligraphic manuscript art in the Islamic world was much more developed than in Europe, and handwritten books were considered works of art.
Moreover, the Ottoman Empire lacked the social demand for the mass distribution of texts that existed in Europe. The Reformation, university culture, and a growing middle class—all of these factors that spurred printing in Europe were either absent or significantly less pronounced in the Ottoman Empire.
What happened next
The first Muslim printing press in the Ottoman Empire was founded in 1727 by Ibrahim Mutaferrika, a Hungarian intellectual who converted to Islam. In his address to the Grand Vizier, he enumerated the advantages of printing: "Thousands of books can be printed, which makes books cheaper. Books will be easy to find in rural areas. The printing press enhances the honor of the state."
Mutaferriki's printing house published 21 books and two maps. Print runs ranged from 500 to 1000 copies—a considerable number for the time. However, as historian Şukrü Hanioğlu notes, over more than a century, from 1727 to 1838, all Ottoman printing houses produced only 142 books. Printing did not transform the cultural life of the empire until the mid-19th century.
Not one factor
The story of how a single decree from the Sultan "buried Turkey" is beautiful as a literary plot, but it doesn't stand up to factual scrutiny. The decline of the Ottoman Empire was the result of dozens of factors: military defeats, economic crises, internal conflicts, and colonial competition. Printing is just one element in this complex picture.
Moreover, the very question of "why didn't the Ottoman Empire adopt printing" contains a hidden assumption that the European path of development was the only correct one. The Muslim world didn't "lag behind" Europe—it followed a different path. When Stanhope's metal press appeared in the early 19th century, making printing truly cheap and accessible, Muslim countries adopted it almost immediately. Printing houses using Arabic script emerged in Iran, Egypt, and India between 1817 and 1820. The Muslim world missed out on Gutenberg's revolution, but not Stanhope's.
The story of printing in the Ottoman Empire is not a story of barbarism or religious fanaticism. It is a story of how different societies evaluate the benefits of new technologies differently, and how the benefits of innovations are not always obvious to those they are intended for.
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