# The Ottoman Empire's Forbidden Books: Censorship and Print

An episode of [The Ottoman Empire: How It Ruled Three Continents for 600 Years — Fexingo History](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1895336292), 14 Aug 2026, 7:21.

Audio: https://audio.fexingo.com/history/the-ottoman-empire/episode-0203.mp3

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the Ottoman Empire's complex relationship with the printed word. From the early ban on printing presses to the slow, contested arrival of movable type, they uncover how the sultans, scribes, and scholars controlled knowledge for centuries. Discover the role of the Imperial Council in vetting books, the fierce resistance from calligraphers who feared for their craft, and the surprising moment when a Hungarian convert introduced the first Ottoman Turkish press in the 1720s. Along the way, they touch on the censorship of political and religious texts, the secret circulation of banned works, and how the empire's cautious embrace of print ultimately shaped its reforms in the nineteenth century. A story of tradition, control, and the relentless pull of the modern world. #OttomanEmpire #HistoryOfPrint #Censorship #IbrahimMuteferrika #SuleimanI #TopkapiPalace #OttomanCalligraphy #Hattat #Kanunname #Ulema #Edirne #Nishanji #OttomanTurkish #PrintingPress #EarlyModern #MiddleEastHistory #FexingoHistory #History Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo

## Transcript

Lucas: So we've talked about Ottoman law, the harem, even their sign language, but today I want to dig into something that touches all of it: the written word. Specifically, how the Ottomans controlled what people could read, and why it took them so long to embrace the printing press.
Luna: I've always wondered about that. Europe had movable type in the 1450s, but didn't the Ottomans wait centuries?
Lucas: They did, and the reasons are fascinating. It wasn't just about technology. The Ottoman scribal class, the calligraphers, the ulema, saw the handwritten manuscript as almost sacred. The sultan's own tuğra, that calligraphic seal, was a mark of divine authority. Print felt mechanical, impersonal, even a little blasphemous.
Luna: Blasphemous? That's strong.
Lucas: Well, for one, the Qur'an had to be written by hand, and many scholars worried that a printed version would be full of errors. But also, there was a practical fear: if anyone could mass-produce books, what happened to the authority of the sultan and the religious establishment? They controlled knowledge by controlling its production.
Lucas: So when a few enterprising figures tried to bring in a press in the late 1400s, the sultans shut it down. There's a famous story about Bayezid II, I think it was 1485, where he issued a decree banning printing in Arabic script, on pain of death. The only presses allowed were for non-Muslim communities, printing in Greek, Armenian, Hebrew — those were fine.
Luna: So they let the minorities print, just not the dominant language. That's a clever way to keep control.
Lucas: Exactly. And it set the tone for centuries. But the Ottomans didn't just ban the press. They had a whole apparatus of censorship for handwritten books coming into the empire. The Imperial Council, the Divan-ı Hümayun, would review works, especially those touching on religion, politics, or the sultan's legitimacy. Anything deemed dangerous could be confiscated or destroyed.
Lucas: There were also the nishanji — the chancellor — who had to approve any official document before it was issued. His seal was on everything. So you had this layered system: from the calligrapher's pen to the sultan's approval, every text was vetted.
Luna: I guess that explains why so few books from the early Ottoman period survive. They were literally controlled at the source.
Lucas: Right. And the censorship wasn't just about preventing dissent. It was also about protecting the Ottoman worldview. Take, for instance, the Kanunname of Suleiman the Magnificent. That was a legal code that defined the sultan's absolute power. Any book that challenged that, that suggested a different form of governance, was dangerous.
Lucas: There's a story about a scholar in the 1500s who wrote a treatise criticizing the Ottoman tax system, and he was executed. It wasn't just his ideas — the very act of writing them down and circulating them was a threat.
Luna: That's brutal. But I'm still curious — what finally changed? When did they allow the press?
Lucas: The big shift came in the early 18th century, after the disastrous wars with Europe. The Ottomans realized they were falling behind, not just militarily but intellectually. So a Hungarian convert named Ibrahim Muteferrika — he was a diplomat, a polymath — convinced Sultan Ahmed III to allow a press for Ottoman Turkish.
Lucas: In 1727, he got the official permission, and his press in Istanbul produced its first book two years later. It was a dictionary of Arabic and Turkish, I think, and then a history of the Ottoman empire. But even then, there were restrictions: no religious texts, and the press had to be inspected by the ulema.
Luna: So even when they allowed it, they kept the leash short.
Lucas: Precisely. And Muteferrika's press was a commercial failure. He printed maybe seventeen titles in total, and the calligraphers' guild lobbied hard against it. They saw it as a threat to their livelihood and their art. So the press sputtered along for a few decades, then died out.
Lucas: But here's the thing — even before Muteferrika, there were unofficial presses, especially in the provinces. In places like Izmir or Salonica, Jewish and Armenian printers would sometimes slip in a few Turkish works, or books that had been banned. It was a shadow economy of print.
Luna: And the authorities just let that happen?
Lucas: They turned a blind eye, mostly, as long as it wasn't openly seditious. But when a book did cross the line, they'd crack down. There's a case from the 1560s where a book about the prophecies of Nostradamus was circulating in Istanbul, and the sultan's agents confiscated every copy they could find. They even executed a couple of printers.
Lucas: So censorship was real, but it was also porous. You couldn't stop ideas completely.
Luna: It sounds like the Ottomans were trying to hold back the tide with a sieve.
Lucas: That's a good way to put it. And that's actually a lesson for us in the modern world, too. You know, we're lucky that we can share ideas so freely — and that's something worth supporting. If you've been enjoying these conversations, and you want us to keep digging into these stories, you can help keep the show going, ad-free, by grabbing us a coffee at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small gesture that makes a big difference for a small show like ours.
Luna: Yeah, every little bit helps us keep the archive growing.
Lucas: So back to the Ottomans. The real turning point came in the 19th century, during the Tanzimat reforms. That's when the state finally embraced print as a tool for modernization. They established a state press, and by the 1830s, they were printing official gazettes, law codes, even school textbooks.
Lucas: But even then, censorship didn't disappear. It just became more sophisticated. The state set up a commission to review every publication, and they would ban anything that criticized the sultan or the government. But now, with print, they could also use it to spread their own propaganda. So it was a double-edged sword.
Luna: So the Ottomans learned to use the tool they once feared.
Lucas: Exactly. And by the late 19th century, you had a vibrant press in Istanbul, with newspapers, magazines, even satirical journals. Some of them pushed the boundaries, and many journalists were jailed or exiled. But the genie was out of the bottle. The printed word had become a permanent part of Ottoman life.
Lucas: So when we look at the Ottoman empire, we often think of it as this timeless, unchanging world, but the story of print shows just how dynamic it really was. They weren't stuck in the past; they were constantly negotiating with the new, even when they tried to resist it.
Luna: I never thought of it that way. It makes you wonder what other stories we're missing.
Lucas: That's the beauty of history — there's always another layer to peel back. And that's what we'll keep doing, one episode at a time.

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