İbrahim Müteferrika

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Title page of Müteferriqa's book Fayudat-i miqnatisiye (Treatise on Magnetism) from his own printing press, Istanbul 1732

İbrahim Müteferrika (* between 1670 and 1674 in Kolozsvár ; † 1745 ) was an Ottoman scholar and diplomat of Hungarian origin.

His Hungarian name is not known. How he got to the Ottoman court is unclear.

Diplomatic career

İbrahim Müteferrika spoke many languages, including a. Latin, Ottoman, Arabic, Persian and French. In the diplomatic service he undertook many diplomatic missions and negotiated with Austria, France, Russia and Sweden, among others. a. he was ambassador in Vienna in 1715 and met Prince Eugene there . In 1717 he went to Paris .

printing house

In 1726 he applied for the establishment of a printing press and received from Sultan Ahmet III in 1727 . permission to operate a printing press for the production of non-religious printed matter. In 1729 he put the first Ottoman printing press in Arabic script into operation. Previously there had only been Hebrew and Armenian printing works in the Ottoman Empire. The first printed work was Vânkulı Lügatı , an Arabic-Turkish dictionary. Müteferrika printed both his own works and translations of scientific and historical works from Latin. Another important printed work was the Cihân-nümâ , a world atlas by Kâtib Çelebi . He printed a French-language grammar of the Turkish language in Latin script.

By 1742 Müteferrika's printing house had published a total of seventeen works with an average print run of 500 to 1000 copies. The Turkish printing press fell asleep again afterwards; An attempt by the British diplomat James Mario Matra to resume printing in Constantinople, motivated by the exorbitant prices for manuscripts, was unsuccessful in 1779.

Works

  • Risâle-i İslamiyye
  • Vesiletü't-Tıbâa
  • Usûlü'l-Hikem fî Nizâmi'l-Ümem
  • Füyuzat-ı miknatisiye

References

  1. ^ Watson 1968, p. 436
  2. ↑ Clogg 1979, p. 67

literature

  • Zsusza Barbarics-Hermanik: İbrahim Müteferrika as a transcultural mediator in the Ottoman Empire. In: Arno Strohmeyer , Norbert Spannenberger (ed.): Peace and conflict management in intercultural spaces. The Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy in the Early Modern Period. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-515-10434-0 , pp. 283-308.
  • Beatrix Caner: Turkish Literature: Modern Classics. Georg Olms Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3-487-10711-2 , p. 34f.
  • Richard Clogg : "An Attempt to Revive Turkish Printing in Istanbul in 1779", in: International Journal of Middle East Studies , Vol. 10, No. 1 (1979), pp. 67-70.
  • Vefa Erginbaş: Forerunner of the Ottoman enlightenment: İbrahim Müteferrika and his intellectual landscape. Master thesis, Sabancı University, İstanbul 2005.
  • Klaus Kreiser / Christoph Neumann: A short history of Turkey. Reclam 2003, p. 265.
  • Orlin Sabev: İbrahim Muteferriqa . In: Cemal Kafadar, Hakan Karateke, Cornell Fleischer (eds.): Historians of the Ottoman Empire ( http://ottomanhistorians.uchicago.edu ), October 2011. (English)
  • Orlin Sabev: Portrait and Self-Portrait: Ibrahim Müteferrika's Mind Games. In: Osmanlı Araştırmaları - The Journal of Ottoman Studies , Volume 44 (2014), pp. 99–121 ( onlineTemplate: dead link /! ... nourl  ( page no longer available )).
  • Orlin Sabev: Waiting for Müteferrika: Glimpses of Ottoman Print Culture . Academic Studies Press, Boston 2018, ISBN 9781618116185 . (English)
  • William J. Watson: "İbrāhīm Müteferriḳa and Turkish Incunabula", in: Journal of the American Oriental Society , Vol. 88, No. 3 (1968), pp. 435-441. (on-line)

Web links


personal data
SURNAME İbrahim Müteferrika
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ottoman scholar and diplomat of Hungarian origin
DATE OF BIRTH between 1670 and 1674
PLACE OF BIRTH Kolozsvár
DATE OF DEATH 1745