The Ottoman Printing Ban

In 1485, Sultan Bayezid II issued a decree prohibiting the use of the printing press throughout the Ottoman Empire, a prohibition reinforced by Sultan Selim I in 1515. The ban was framed in terms of religious purity — sacred texts must not be subjected to the mechanical reproduction that might introduce error into the word of God. The framing was sincere; the clerical authorities who advised the Sultan genuinely believed scriptural integrity required the human hand of the trained scribe. The framing was also strategic. The scribal class whose livelihood depended on the monopoly of textual reproduction stood to lose everything if the press proliferated. Their economic interest and their theological conviction were not experienced as separate phenomena — they had co-evolved over centuries of practice, and separating them would have required self-scrutiny no threatened class undertakes voluntarily.