thumb|185px|Bust of Muteferrika
thumb|Sultan Ahmed III receives French ambassador Vicomte d'Andrezel at [[Topkapı Palace.]]
Ibrahim Muteferrika (; 1674–1745 CE) was a Hungarian-born Ottoman diplomat, publisher, economist, historian, Islamic theologian, sociologist, and the first Muslim to run a printing press with movable Arabic type.
Early life
Ibrahim Muteferrika was born in Kolozsvár (present-day Cluj-Napoca, Romania). He was an ethnic Hungarian Unitarian who converted to Islam, but his original Hungarian name is unknown.
It was during his years as a diplomat that he took a keen interest in collecting books that helped him understand the ongoing Renaissance, the emergence of Protestant movements in Europe, and the rise of powerful colonial empires in Europe.
Printing press
thumb|left|This map of the [[Indian Ocean and the China Sea was engraved in 1728 by the Hungarian-born Ottoman polymath and publisher Ibrahim Muteferrika; it is one of a series that illustrated Katip Çelebi’s (Universal Geography), the first printed book of maps and drawings to appear in the Muslim world.]]
The printing press had already been known in the Ottoman Empire since 1493 or 1504 in Hebrew characters. Other communities operated presses. The first Ottoman press using movable Arabic type was operated in 1706–1711 in Aleppo by Christians. Kenyan academic Calestous Juma argues that printing was delayed in the Islamic world due to the greater emphasis on oral transmission in Islamic tradition compared to Christianity and Judaism, as well as the cultural significance of religious books and calligraphy manuscripts; scribes especially exerted a strong resistance.
Muteferrika's volumes, printed in Istanbul and using custom-made fonts, are occasionally referred to as "Turkish incunabula". Muteferrika, whose last name derived from his employment as a , or head of the household, under Sultan Ahmed III and during the Tulip Era, was also a geographer, astronomer, and philosopher.
Among the works published by Müteferrika were historical and generically scientific works, as well as Katip Çelebi's world atlas Cihannüma (loosely translated as The Mirror of the World or the World Seer).
After 1742, however, Ibrahim Muteferrika's printing activities were discontinued and an attempt by the British diplomat James Mario Matra, motivated by the exorbitant prices for manuscript books, to re-establish a press in Istanbul was aborted in 1779. In his account, Matra refers to the strong opposition of the scribes that Müteferrika's enterprise had faced: