The first Ottoman Turkish book printed in Arabic script appeared almost 280 years after Gutenberg: a dictionary published by Ibrahim Müteferrika in Istanbul in 1729.
The events
- Müteferrika's first Ottoman Turkish printing press1729 · Istanbul. 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.
- Gutenberg's printing pressc. 1450 · Mainz. In Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg developed printing with movable metal type on a press. His Bible appeared around 1455; printing made books cheap and accelerated the spread of knowledge, the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution.
More amazing facts
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- 1450 · 1453 When Constantinople fell in 1453, Gutenberg was already printing in Mainz: the last Roman Empire vanished in the first years of the printed book.
- 1450 · 1455 The inventor of printing lost his press in court.
- 1450 · 1911 The Spanish never found Machu Picchu.
- 1450 · 1671 The legend of Kaldi the goatherd, whose goats perked up after eating coffee berries, was first written down only in 1671.