Why did the Ottomans ban the printing press? | AskHistorians Archive Observer

I'm gonna write an alternative to the other comments explaining on why the printing got popularized late in the Ottoman Empire. It's quite complicated and involves several social-cultural factors. It should be noted however, that the Islamic world isn't unfamiliar to printing techniques, and the Sultan still allowed European printed books to be sold in the Ottoman Empire and for non-Muslims to print books for their own community.

First of all, there were significant technical difficulties related to Arabic (as well as Persian and Ottoman Turkish) calligraphy. Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman orthography posed real challenges for typesetters because of the rounded and connected letters. The letters also changed shapes depending on their locations in the word and requires a lot of vowels and punctuation marks.

However, technical difficulty, as great as it may be, can be overcome in most cases if the atmosphere is ripe for the appearance of a solution. That solution may already exist but face implementation difficulties for the afromentioned social and cultural reasons.

First, the craft of manuscript writing is highly esteemed in the Ottoman community, to the point it created an aversion towards printed books. The Ottomans had maintained a connection between writing and authority and legitimacy, especially concerning religious texts. The elite and middle-classed society enjoyed fine manuscripts more than the printed books. The French traveller Antoine Galland said he came across printed books in the markets. One could purchase Ibn Sina's Canon, but no one wanted it, and like other printed books, it gathered dust on store shelves. Manuscript copies of the same works were easily and quickly sold, though for a higher price than that of the printed versions.

Secondly, there was prejudice against printed books because the fear of possible unintentional errors, especially concerning religious texts. Fear arose that an unintentional error in a religious text could mislead the unlearned. Handwriting can always be corrected or a single manuscript destroyed. However, printed text, which by its very nature is issued in large numbers of copies, posed the danger of an irrevocably unfixable error. This attitude mellowed in the years of Mütefferika, and religious texts were printed later on.

Thirdly, the existence of printing could endanger the livelihood and identity of manuscript writers and copiers. The Ottoman Empire was run by bureaucrats: an "army" of officials. It was a state of craftsmen and merchants that was run on documented bookkeeping. It was a society that consumed books, with many people making their living from the crafts of book publishing: manufacturing paper and ink, preparing writing implements, creating the writing itself, drawing illustrations, and bookbinding. According to Luigi Marsligi, there were around 80,000 manuscript copiers in Istanbul around the late 17th century (though numbers given by Katip Çelebi is a bit lower). So these professional group of clerks (scribes and copiers) depended on writing for their livelihood, and the mass adoption of printing press could endanger their livelihood and status.

Despite being accepted pretty late, the printing press in the Ottoman Empire eventually received a full acceptance in the 19th century, and the Ottomans developed their own lucrative printing culture in that era

Source is mainly from Science among The Ottomans