Müteferrika's first Ottoman Turkish printing press
Arabic-script printing arrives, 270 years after Gutenberg
During the Tulip Era, the Hungarian-born convert İbrahim Müteferrika won Sultan Ahmed III's permission and a fatwa to print secular books in Arabic script. The first, Vankulu's dictionary, came out in 1729. By his death in 1745 he had issued 17 titles on history, geography and language, with his own maps and engravings.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 18th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1709 Battle of Poltava — 20 years earlier
- 1721 Proclamation of the Russian Empire — 8 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Johann Sebastian Bach (aged 44)
- Voltaire (aged 35)
- Benjamin Franklin (aged 23)
- Mikhail Lomonosov (aged 18)
- James Cook (aged 1)
- Catherine the Great (aged 0)
- Ahmed III (aged 56)
- Vitus Bering (aged 48)
- Tokugawa Yoshimune (aged 45)
- Nader Shah (aged 41)